An EPA document shows that a new Chevron fuel ingredient has a lifetime cancer risk more than 1 million times higher than what the agency usually finds acceptable — even greater than another Chevron fuel’s sky-high risk disclosed earlier this year.

The Environmental Protection Agency approved a component of boat fuel made from discarded plastic that the agency’s own risk formula determined was so hazardous, everyone exposed to the substance continually over a lifetime would be expected to develop cancer. Current and former EPA scientists said that threat level is unheard of. It is a million times higher than what the agency usually considers acceptable for new chemicals and six times worse than the risk of lung cancer from a lifetime of smoking.

Federal law requires the EPA to conduct safety reviews before allowing new chemical products onto the market. If the agency finds that a substance causes unreasonable risk to health or the environment, the EPA is not allowed to approve it without first finding ways to reduce that risk.

But the agency did not do that in this case. Instead, the EPA decided its scientists were overstating the risks and gave Chevron the go-ahead to make the new boat fuel ingredient at its refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Though the substance can poison air and contaminate water, EPA officials mandated no remedies other than requiring workers to wear gloves, records show.

  • insomniac@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    11 months ago

    Why don’t they ever name “the chemical”? And then they switch to the 2 chemicals later in the article. All I found was this article trying to Google it although I didn’t go too deep.

    This is really oddly written. I almost expected it to end with some kind of gotcha and “the chemical” was water.

    • darmabum@lemm.ee
      1·
      11 months ago

      The reason they don’t identify these chemicals is, um, …because they don’t really know what they are. They are the reaction products from recycled plastic feedstock, which contain a wide variety of source materials, and so they call them “UVCB substances" meaning “Substances of Unknown or Variable composition, Complex reaction products or Biological materials”. Also called “Natural Complex Substances (NCS) of biological origin.”

      In other words, junk from plastic garbage that will be added to boat fuel.

      • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
        2·
        11 months ago

        See my post above for the listing of chemicals, although they are generically labeled and not specifically identified has your correct, they don’t know the actual composition of the stuff.