At several recent<\/u> information sessions on the risks posed by the carcinogenic air pollutant ethylene oxide, the Environmental Protection Agency invited local polluters to participate and failed to correct the companies\u2019 false assertions that the chemical poses no danger.<\/p>\n
The EPA held eight meetings about ethylene oxide in Texas and Louisiana in August and September, more than a year after a March 2020 report<\/a> from the EPA inspector general noted that the\u00a0agency had failed to inform 25 communities about local dangers from the chemical. Before the report, the\u00a0EPA did tell some people living near facilities that emit ethylene oxide that they had an increased risk of developing cancer, and in the case of one affluent Illinois town<\/a>, that information led to the shuttering of the offending plant. But the agency neglected to notify many low-income and Black people who had the highest risk of cancer from breathing the chemical.<\/p>\n The inspector general\u2019s report directed the agency to correct the problem, noting the EPA\u2019s responsibility \u201cto speak with one voice and clearly explain to the American people the relevant environmental and health risks that they face.\u201d Yet a virtual meeting held in August in Port Neches, Texas, where a plant owned by Indorama Ventures<\/a>\u00a0emits more of the carcinogenic gas than any other industrial facility in the country, was anything but clear.<\/p>\n The event was hosted by the EPA, which acknowledged at the meeting that the emissions from the plant cause an elevated risk of cancer and other health problems.\u00a0But the agency\u00a0also invited the polluter \u2014\u00a0and the company brought in its own hired expert, who dismissed the EPA\u2019s science and presented the harms of ethylene oxide as negligible.<\/p>\n