"Environmental groups had been waiting nearly three years for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to comply with a federal judge’s orders to update Clean Air Act rules governing emissions of various toxic chemicals.
The agency finally proposed those new rules last week, saying they would reduce emissions of ethylene oxide, a carcinogen that the EPA recently determined is more dangerous than the agency once believed.
But interviews and records show that the new rules, if implemented, would scarcely make a dent in emissions of the cancer-causing pollutant. The rules call for annual airborne emissions of ethylene oxide to be reduced by 10 tons nationwide, which would represent a roughly 7% reduction from the 140.7 tons that chemical plants emitted in 2018.
That reduction would barely make up for the ethylene oxide that’s likely to be emitted by a planned Formosa Chemicals plant in St. James Parish, which according to permitting documents will release up to 7.7 tons of the carcinogen into the atmosphere each year. The plant is scheduled to be built by 2022."
Mark Schleifstein reports for Nola.com November 14, 2019.
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