{"id":769047,"date":"2022-08-05T11:00:21","date_gmt":"2022-08-05T11:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=404382"},"modified":"2022-08-05T11:00:21","modified_gmt":"2022-08-05T11:00:21","slug":"massive-quantities-of-pfas-waste-go-unreported-to-epa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/08\/05\/massive-quantities-of-pfas-waste-go-unreported-to-epa\/","title":{"rendered":"Massive Quantities of PFAS Waste Go Unreported to EPA"},"content":{"rendered":"
A waste management<\/u> company received millions of pounds of waste containing toxic firefighting foam<\/a> and other materials contaminated with the industrial chemicals<\/a> known as PFAS in 2020 yet did not report it to the Environmental Protection Agency, according to public records.<\/p>\n US Ecology, a hazardous waste company with dozens of sites around the U.S., received 11,638,732 pounds of waste containing the firefighting foam known as aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF, at its facility in Beatty, Nevada, in 2020, according to public reports filed under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The company has also received, and did not report, waste containing AFFF at its facilities in Robstown, Texas, and Grand View, Idaho. It is unclear whether the company\u2019s failure to disclose the waste violated the law or whether it was legal under a loophole in the reporting requirement.<\/p>\n US Ecology referred questions for this story to Republic Services, a waste management company that acquired US Ecology in May. Republic Services did not respond to multiple requests for comment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n AFFF \u2014 which has been used for decades by firefighters in the military<\/a>, airports, and other settings to put out jet fuel fires \u2014 contains PFAS chemicals that have been detected in drinking water across the country, as The Intercept was the first to report<\/a> in 2015. (At the time, PFAS chemicals were known as \u201cPFCs.\u201d) PFAS have also been used to make Teflon<\/a> and hundreds<\/a> of other products, and some of the compounds have been shown to cause health problems<\/a>, including immune deficiency, cancer, liver damage, thyroid disease, decreased fertility, obesity, hormonal irregularities, and high cholesterol.<\/p>\n In 2019, as the public became increasingly aware of the health risks from widespread water and soil contamination from PFAS, Congress passed the\u00a0National Defense Authorization Act, which\u00a0required the EPA to add certain PFAS compounds to the Toxics Release Inventory, or TRI, a public EPA database to which companies must legally report if they have \u201cmanufactured, processed, or otherwise used\u201d certain chemicals. There are now\u00a0180\u00a0PFAS compounds<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0the list.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/p>\n But there are critical gaps in the requirements for reporting PFAS-containing waste, as the massive amount of unreported waste at the Nevada facility suggests. There\u00a0is a 100-pound reporting threshold for PFAS chemicals \u2014 a huge amount considering that even extremely low levels can cause health problems. The\u00a0agency recently acknowledged the threat when it set dramatically lower safety<\/a> thresholds<\/a> for levels of PFOA, PFOS, and two other PFAS compounds in drinking water in June.<\/p>\n The EPA allows companies to avoid reporting PFAS to the TRI, through\u00a0a loophole known as the “de minimis exemption,” if the individual PFAS compound makes up less than 1 percent of the total volume of the waste \u2014 or .1 percent, in the case of PFOA. But AFFF often contains multiple PFAS chemicals, and even low concentrations of a single compound can add up to extremely dangerous amounts \u2014 especially when large quantities are involved, as is the case with the 11 million pounds of AFFF-related waste at the US Ecology facility in Beatty, a small town northwest of Las Vegas.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The loopholes undermine the intent of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, according to advocates. The law, which was passed after a leak of poisonous gas <\/a>killed thousands<\/a> in Bhopal, India,\u00a0enabled community members and environmental agencies to learn about chemical releases and pollution control measures reported by local companies. \u201cWithout it, it’s impossible for regulators to have any idea where they might have hot spots of pollution, where they might have industries where they should be looking into wastewater permitting, where these chemicals are being burned, where you might need to put a fish advisory in place,\u201d said Sonya Lunder,\u00a0the senior toxics policy adviser\u00a0at\u00a0the Sierra Club.<\/p>\n According to Eve Gartner, the managing attorney for the Toxic Exposure and Health Program at Earthjustice, the exemptions violate the letter and spirit of the 1986 law. \u201cThe fact that EPA made PFAS subject to these exemptions was an illegal move that was first adopted during the Trump administration and has now unfortunately been replicated two times in the Biden administration,\u201d said Gartner, who sued the EPA<\/a> in January on behalf of the Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the National PFAS Contamination Coalition over the issue. \u201cThis is not at all what Congress intended.\u201d<\/p>\n In an emailed response to questions from The Intercept, EPA spokesperson Timothy Carroll wrote that the agency plans to address the problem soon. “This fall EPA plans to propose a rulemaking that would classify certain PFAS as ‘chemicals of special concern,’\u201d Carroll wrote. “Such a rule, if finalized, would increase PFAS reporting under TRI by, among other changes, removing the eligibility of the de minimis exemption for PFAS for reporting and supplier notification purposes \u2014 reversing the approach set forth by the previous Administration. Until such a rule is finalized, EPA must continue to allow the de minimis exemption.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\nEPA Loopholes Violate Law<\/h2>\n