Failing the People Most Likely to Be Harmed
| Author | Eve C. Gartner |
| Position | Earthjustice's managing attorney, toxic exposure and health program |
| Pages | 57-57 |
MAY/JUNE 2021 | 57
Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, May/June 2021.
Copyright © 2021, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.
THE DEBATE
Failing the People
Most Likely
to Be Harmed
By Eve C. Gartner
T
wenty times the Toxic
Substances Control Act
commands EPA to take
into account “potentially
exposed or susceptible subpopula-
tions” — groups at greater risk of
harm from chemicals because they
are more exposed or more suscep-
tible or both. But the Trump EPA
did not get the message.
Or, more likely, it simply chose
to ignore that some subpopula-
tions — often Black, Indigenous,
and other people of color — suer
disproportionate harm from chemi-
cal exposure. is can be because of
where they live or work, or because
they eat a subsistence diet involving
contaminated sh or marine mam-
mals, or because they have health
problems that make them more
susceptible.
e only way to protect these
“greater risk” subpopulations, as
Congress required, is to identify all
of them and separately calculate the
risks they face. Yet the Trump EPA
nalized 10 risk evaluations — and
nalized the “scope” documents for
20 more –– and not a single one
identied communities near pollut-
ing facilities as being a greater-risk
subpopulation.
is is especially troubling because
people living near high-volume chemi-
cal facilities have greater exposures
than the general population — and
higher rates of illness and disease. For
example, Mossville, Louisiana, and
surrounding towns, which are pre-
dominantly Black, are home to seven
industrial facilities that manufacture,
process, and dispose of chemicals that
are now undergoing TSCA risk evalua-
tion —and home to many other facili-
ties that release chemicals not yet being
reviewed.
e Mossville area is subjected
to more than 36 percent of all U.S.
environmental releases of TBBPA, a
carcinogenic ame retardant whose
risks EPA is currently evaluating under
TSCA, and further bears the burden of
receiving nearly 18 percent of national
shipments of TBBPA waste. Yet the
area accounts for only .06 percent of
the national population.
A true analysis of greater-risk sub-
populations requires consideration
of cumulative impacts from expo-
sure to multiple chemicals. People
who live and work around industrial
facilities are rarely exposed to one
chemical in isolation; the Mossville
area alone is subjected to 15 percent
or more of the nation’s environ-
mental releases of four of the 20
high-priority chemicals undergoing
TSCA review.
Moreover, dierent chemicals of-
ten aect the same bodily organs or
systems, or have cumulative eects,
such that exposure to one can leave
a community more vulnerable to
harm from another. If TSCA’s direc-
tive to consider subpopulations at
greater risk means anything, it must
mean that frontline communities
whose risks are many times higher
than most should be designated
“potentially exposed or susceptible”
so their risks, including combined
risks, can be considered — and, most
importantly, managed — without
dilution by general population risks.
e Trump administration never at-
tempted that analysis.
Even when the Trump EPA identi-
ed greater-risk subpopulations, it
frequently ignored or understated the
likelihood they would be harmed. For
instance, the agency acknowledged
that workers face greater exposures
to, and risks from, each of the rst 10
TSCA chemicals. But EPA improperly
discounted those risks by assuming
workers would protect themselves with
personal protective equipment, and it
completely ignored the risks to people
who clean for a living, such as domes-
tic workers and janitors, by assuming
that no one uses cleaning products
containing 1,4-dioxane, a known car-
cinogen, more than 30 minutes per
day. EPA also found that nearly one in
three people have a genetic condition
that makes them more likely to de-
velop cancer from methylene chloride
exposure, but EPA didn’t calculate that
chemical’s cancer risks based on this
greater-risk subpopulation, ignoring its
science advisory committee’s recom-
mendation.
To make matters worse, the Trump
EPA also opted not to use its fact-gath-
ering authority to obtain information
about the extent to which communi-
ties are exposed to chemicals undergo-
ing risk evaluation. ese data gaps,
which will take time to ll because
studies and monitoring cannot hap-
pen overnight, threaten the credibility
and reliability of the agency’s TSCA
risk evaluations. e primary data
tool EPA uses to estimate chemical
exposure is the Toxics Release Inven-
tory. But more than 19 months after
the Trump administration announced
the rst batch of high-priority chemi-
cals to undergo risk evaluation, 30
percent of those are still not listed on
the TRI. Nor has EPA required on-
site monitoring of releases by major
emitters, which is necessary since, as
recent reports show, at least some are
not accurately reporting the volume of
carcinogens and other toxics they are
releasing.
Given TSCA’s mandate that EPA
protect greater-risk subpopulations and
consider risks in combination, coupled
with the agency’s authority to gather
health and exposure data, the statute
could be a major tool for combating
environmental injustices for frontline
communities, workers, and others
at high risk. e Trump EPA under-
mined a core purpose of TSCA by sys-
tematically elevating chemical industry
interests while ignoring the plight of
populations most likely to be harmed
by toxic exposures.
Eve C. Gartner is Earthjustice’s managing
attorney, toxic exposure and health program.
She expresses her gratitude to her colleague
Jon Kalmuss-Katz for his contributions to this
article.
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