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United States

EPA Will Make Polluters Pay To Clean Up Two 'Forever Chemicals' (nytimes.com) 39

Posted by msmash from the step-in-the-right-direction dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: The Biden administration is designating two "forever chemicals," man-made compounds that are linked to serious health risks, as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, shifting responsibility for their cleanup to polluters from taxpayers. The new rule announced on Friday empowers the government to force the many companies that manufacture or use perfluorooctanoic acid, also known as PFOA, and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, known as PFOS, to monitor any releases into the environment and be responsible for cleaning them up. Those companies could face billions of dollars in liabilities.

[...] The announcement follows an extraordinary move last week from the E.P.A. mandating that water utilities reduce the PFAS in drinking water to near-zero levels. The agency has also proposed to designate seven additional PFAS chemicals as hazardous waste. "President Biden understands the threat that forever chemicals pose to the health of families across the country," Michael S. Regan, the administrator of the E.P.A., said. "Designating these chemicals under our Superfund authority will allow E.P.A. to address more contaminated sites, take earlier action, and expedite cleanups, all while ensuring polluters pay for the costs to clean up pollution threatening the health of communities."

EPA Will Make Polluters Pay To Clean Up Two 'Forever Chemicals' More | Reply

EPA Will Make Polluters Pay To Clean Up Two 'Forever Chemicals'

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  • The funds will come from increased prices from those companies, so once again trickle down economics pisses all over the little guy.

    • Or it could price out those chemicals. We'll either do without, or find replacements.

      Now I'll take off my rose tinted glasses:
      It probably won't, because the costs will be tacked onto water bills, which can't be avoided.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      So does having 3-eyed babies.

      • PFAS are mostly inert and in most cases better than the alternative which are actually harmful. The problem is that this is regulated solely by the EPA without scientific proof or action and investigations from congress. It will drive manufacturers into making really bad choices.

        • Re: True trickle down economics. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Mspangler ( 770054 ) on Friday April 19, 2024 @07:01PM (#64409234)

          They are chemically inert which is why they were used (in fire suppression and as gaskets in chemically aggressive processes) and why they do not easily break down.

          The problem is that their shape and charge distribution mimic certain biological molecules, and this turns out to possibly mess with certain hormones in the body.

          How much of this is proven and how much is supposition is being argued. A similar problem surfaced a decade or more in the past with a chemical used to fireproof children's pajamas. Chemically inert, biochemically active.

          They will be tough to phase out completely as Viton and various similar gaskets are widely used in industry, including the Green ones.

        • Can't decide if you are that ill-informed, or just lying for some reason. C8 Teflon was a PFAS: are you telling me you didn't know it caused cancers?

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by guruevi ( 827432 )

            Can you conclusively link human exposure to non-industrial levels of this stuff (I'm not talking being exposed as a worker in a factory to some of the product needed to make them) to cancer?

    • That only applies if there's not competition (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday April 19, 2024 @05:25PM (#64409042)
      if the companies have to compete then they can't just pass whatever costs are on down to the consumer.

      So I guess it's a good thing we didn't just spend the last 44 years gutting anti-trust law enforcement in favor of getting bogged down on pointless culture war issues & moral panics...

      Wait a second...

    • But, you, the little guys, are practically salivating on yourselves to stick it to "These Big Corporations". Economic activity doesn't take place in a vacuum, you add cost somewhere - anywhere - and it drags down the entire system. And you, the little guys, are the ones that are least able to cope.

            You are deluding yourselves, and you are doing it to yourselves. Pick only things that really matter because *you*, and me, and everyone else is going to wind up paying for it.

    • The funds will come from increased prices from those companies, so once again trickle down economics pisses all over the little guy.

      That's not a bad thing. The little guy should be supported through a social programs or some program that helps elevate them, not at the expense of the wider environment. You can live on super cheap if you want to, just go to India and shit on the sidewalk, throw your garbage in your backyard. No need for taxes or expenses when there's no services to pay for. No need to worry about PFAS when we let companies poison you in countless other ways.

      Support your poor, don't support your companies.

  • Superfund is poorly written (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bryanandaimee ( 2454338 ) on Friday April 19, 2024 @05:35PM (#64409072) Homepage
    Unfortunately it is often not the polluters that are stuck with the bill. My dad worked at a university that "bought" an old mining site for $1. I think it was for the geology department. Later on the site was declared a superfund site due to tailings from a mine that had operated there decades ago. The mining company was no longer around so guess who got stuck with the bill to clean up the new superfund site. The university. They had never run any polluting operations on the site, but the superfund law was written such that anyone that ever owned any part of the site can be held fully responsible whether or not they did any of the polluting.

    • Of course, the laws are not written to punish the polluters but to absolve the government of having to pay for it.

      • 1. 'Donate' the polluted land to a conversation non-profit, spun off subsidiary or other entity
        2. Move the parent company assets out of the USA by reincorporating in the Bahamas
        3. Lease all of plant, property or equipment in the USA
        4. Continue selling products and profiting in the USA

    • My dad worked at a university that "bought" an old mining site for $1.

      No, your dad worked at a university that didn't do its due diligence. There's nothing wrong with the superfund concept or the laws in this case. The university just seemed to be run by absolute suckers. The point isn't "who did the polluting", it is "who owns the pollution". If you bought the risk, it's yours, you can't come crying about it afterwards. Why do you think it was given away for $1. Actual land is worth more than that even if there's nothing else on it.

      • Due diligence in this case would have been looking into the future to read the text of a bill that had not been written yet. Many of the original legislators that worked on the bill admitted later that it is a very poorly written law.

        • No. Due diligence in this case would have been doing a risk assessment of the fact that it is an unremediated coal mine. Risk assessments include things such as potential future legislation. They either looked at the risk and accepted it, deemed it worthwhile, and bought it (in which case they have zero right to cry about it), or they didn't do their due diligence.

          That's really all there is to it. You can't buy a polluted site and then complain when someone asks you to clean it up. In fact a truly poorly wr

  • Do these chemicals pose an actual, realized risk? Or do they only present risk on models or in lab environments, and they're extrapolating?

    How many annual deaths can be directly attributed to these chemicals - as in, these chemicals were the root cause of death?

    • I think the Dupont workers in the C8 Teflon factory realized the risk, along with the farmers who lived nearby.

  • Companies don't absorb costs. They pass them onto consumers. Consumers are also taxpayers. So we pay for it no matter what. Biden is just thumping his chest in front of voters ignorant of this basic fact.

  • Will this actually happen? (Score:3)

    by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Friday April 19, 2024 @08:57PM (#64409416)

    Will this actually happen or will the companies in question simply tie it up in court action long enough to get a more favorable administration?

    • YUP. This took like 70? years to finally have this get done... after like a decade after a long court case and massively huge study proving this shit is bad. It'll be maybe 100 years before it finally is all over with and the chemicals will continue to be everywhere.

      Stupid voters keep choosing the enablers who take their anger and redirect it at the politicians who are trying to make the system work faster. Republican has become a synonym for fool. We really need to start sticking it to the stupid people wh

  • The problem is from China, and the EPA will never fix that problem. China is the world's largest producer of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a synthetic chemical that is part of a group of manmade chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs). China's production and emissions of PFOA roughly tripled between 2004 and 2012, and the country now produces between 64 and 292 tons per year, with most of it released into the air and water. China is also the only remaining producer of perfluorooctane

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