According to journalists, current and former EPA officials are sounding the alarm, claiming an unprecedented threat level that is six times higher than the lifetime risk of lung cancer from smoking.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved the use of a marine fuel component made from waste plastic. But even according to the EPA’s risk formula, this component is so dangerous that anyone with lifetime exposure to it can develop cancer. This is reported by Salon.
Current and former EPA officials are sounding the alarm, saying the level of threat is unprecedented: a million times higher than what the agency typically considers acceptable for new chemicals, and six times higher than the lifetime risk of lung cancer from smoking.
Before any new chemical products appear on the market in the United States, legislation requires testing to see how safe they are. If a substance is found to be hazardous to health or the environment, it may not be approved unless ways to reduce the risk are found.
But in this case, they didn’t, and the Environmental Protection Agency decided that the risks the scientists claimed were overstated. So, Chevron received approval to produce the new fuel component at its Pascagoula refinery in Mississippi.
The substance can poison the air and pollute water, but EPA officials did not specify any protective equipment other than gloves for workers, according to documents cited by reporters.
In February, ProPublica and The Guardian wrote about the risks associated with Chevron’s other new plastic-based fuels.
EPA officials entered numbers into the filing that allowed reporters to calculate the lifetime risk of cancer from air pollution from exhaust from the new boat fuel. The risk was 1.3 to 1, meaning that every person exposed to this substance during their lifetime could develop cancer, the journalists said.
