The Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday that it has finalized a ban on consumer use of methylene chloridea chemical widely used as a paint stripper but known to cause liver cancer and other health problems.
The EPA said its action would protect Americans from health risks while allowing some commercial uses to continue with strong protections for workers.
The rule banning methylene chloride is the second risk management rule to be finalized by President Joe Biden’s administration in a historic move. 2016 Amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act. The first was an action carried out last month to ban asbestosa carcinogen that kills tens of thousands of Americans each year but is still used in some chlorinated bleaches, brake pads and other products.
“Exposure to methylene chloride has devastated families across the country for too long, including some who have watched their loved ones go to work and never come home. » Michael Regan, EPA Administrator said in a statement. The new rule, he said, “ends dangerous methylene chloride practices and implements the strongest possible worker protections for the few remaining industrial uses, ensuring that no one in this country is put endangered by this dangerous chemical.”
Methylene chloride, also called dichloromethane, is a colorless liquid that emits a toxic vapor that has killed at least 88 workers since 1980, the EPA said. Long-term health effects include various cancers, including liver and lung cancer, as well as damage to the nervous, immune and reproductive systems.
The EPA rule would ban all consumer uses but allow some “critical” uses in military and industrial processing, with protections for workers in place, said Michal Freedhoff, deputy administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and of EPA Pollution Prevention.
Methylene chloride will continue to be allowed to make refrigerants as an alternative to other chemicals that produce greenhouse gases and contribute to climate change, Freedhoff said. Its use will also be authorized in electric vehicle batteries and for critical military functions.
“The uses that we believe can continue safely occur in sophisticated industrial environments, and in some cases there are no real substitutes available,” Freedhoff said.
The chemical industry has argued that the EPA overestimates the risks from methylene chloride and that adequate protections have mitigated the health risks.
The American Chemistry Council, the industry’s leading lobbying group, has called methylene chloride an “essential compound” used in the manufacturing of many products and goods that Americans rely on every day, including paint stripping, manufacturing pharmaceutical and metal cleaning and degreasing.
An EPA proposal last year could introduce “regulatory uncertainty and confusion” with existing exposure limits set by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the group said.
The Chemical Council also expressed concern that the EPA had not fully assessed the rule’s impacts on the domestic supply chain and could end up banning up to half of all uses final subject to regulation under the Toxic Substances Control Act.
Although the EPA banned the use of methylene chloride by a single consumer in 2019, the chemical’s use has remained widespread and continues to pose a significant, even fatal, danger to workers, the agency said. agency. EPA’s final risk management rule requires companies to rapidly reduce the manufacturing, processing, and distribution of methylene chloride for all consumer uses and most industrial and commercial uses, including in home improvement home.
Consumer use will be phased out within a year, and most industrial and commercial uses will be banned within two years.
Liz Hitchcock, director of a safer chemicals program for the advocacy group Toxic-Free Future, welcomed the new rule but added: “As happy as we are to see today’s rule banning all consumer and most commercial uses, we are concerned that the limits of its scope will allow too many workers to be continually exposed to the dangerous and deadly effects of methylene chloride.
Consumers should look for labels indicating that a product is free of methylene chloride, said the toxic-free group, which published a list of paint and varnish strippers and removers sold by major U.S. retailers and which does not do not contain any.
Wendy Hartley, whose son Kevin died of methylene chloride poisoning after refinishing a bathtub at work, called the new rule “a huge measure that will protect vulnerable workers.”
Kevin Hartley, 21, of Tennessee, died in 2017. He was an organ donor, Wendy Hartley said, adding that thanks to the EPA’s actions, “Kevin’s death will continue to save lives.”
