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Companies Legally Use Poison to Make Your Decaf Coffee

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Saturday, May 4, 2024

Do you drink decaffeinated coffee? Are you aware that it’s often made by applying a chemical so dangerous it was banned for use in paint stripper five years ago? And are you aware that companies think banning this chemical is really, really unfair?This week the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule prohibiting all but “critical” uses of methylene chloride, a highly toxic liquid that is believed to have killed at least 88 people since 1980—mostly workers refinishing bathtubs or doing other home renovations. Methylene chloride can cause liver damage and is linked to multiple cancers, among other health effects. Amazingly, while the EPA banned its sale for paint stripping in 2019 for this reason, it continues to be used for a lot of other purposes. And one of those is decaffeinating coffee, because the Food and Drug Administration decided in the 1980s that the risk to coffee drinkers was low given how the coffee was processed.The EPA’s ban on noncritical use of methylene chloride is one of many rules the Biden administration has announced or finalized ahead of the Congressional Review Act deadline. (The CRA, essentially, makes it easier for an unfriendly Congress to nix any administrative regulations finalized in the last 60 days of a legislative session.) A lot of the recently announced rules ban or curtail toxic substances that have made their way into everyday life and are poisoning people. The EPA has limited long-lasting chemicals called PFAS in drinking water, requiring water utilities within five years to build treatment systems that remove it. The agency has categorized two types of PFAS as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, requiring manufacturers to monitor whether they’ve been released into the environment and, if so, clean them up. It has also—finally—fully banned asbestos. It’s finalized a rule to further restrict fine particulate pollution in the air, which has been linked to heart disease, heart attacks, asthma, low birth weight, Alzheimer’s, and other forms of dementia. It’s in the process of finalizing a rule reducing lead in drinking water, which would require the replacement of lead pipes throughout the nation.Banning poison is good politics. As mentioned in last week’s newsletter, while only 47 percent of respondents in a recent CBS News poll supported reentering the Paris climate agreement, 70 percent said they supported reducing toxic chemicals in drinking water. That’s consistent with other polls showing that a majority of people think the federal government is doing too little to protect “lakes, rivers and streams,” and that an overwhelming majority of people—even 68 percent of Republicans—believe the federal government should play some role in “addressing differences across communities in their health risks from pollution and other environmental problems.”But every single time one of these rules is announced, companies and industry groups respond with the most ridiculous statements. Let’s look at just a few recent examples.“A group of coffee makers against banning methylene chloride,” Boston radio station WBUR reported in early April, “recently wrote the FDA saying, ‘True coffee aficionados in blind tastings’ prefer coffee decaffeinated with the chemical.” Who knows how this study was done—“True coffee aficionados” are not known for preferring decaf, period, hence a recent P.R. push to improve decaf’s image. Nick Florko, a reporter for health news website Stat, told WBUR that the coffee makers’ letter to the FDA was a “pretty funny claim if you consider the fact that we’re talking about coffee here that’s essentially rinsed in paint thinner.” And this says nothing at all about what happens to workers involved in the decaffeination process. (Methylene chloride has previously been shown to poison even trained workers wearing protective gear.)National Coffee Association president William Murray said something even weirder, telling CNN via email that banning methylene chloride “would defy science and harm American[s’] health.” His logic appeared to be that since all coffee consumption, including decaf, shows signs of reducing cancer risk overall, it’s not really a problem to decaffeinate coffee using a known carcinogen. That’s loopy even for industry pushback. For one thing, it’s easy to imagine that coffee could be good in general, and less good if you add poison to it. For another, coffee can also be decaffeinated without methylene chloride, using only water. Now let’s look at PFAS pushback. Knowing the EPA rules were in progress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in March launched the “Essential Chemistry for America” initiative, with the goal of “protecting ‘forever chemicals’ it deems ‘critical,’” according to E&E News. “We’re increasingly concerned that overly broad regulatory approaches threaten access to modern fluorochemistries, so we’re taking action to ensure their availability,” chamber vice president Marty Durbin said. Given that “access” language is typically used in a social and environmental justice context, restyling the regulation of poisons as threatening “access to modern fluorochemistries” is gutsy, to say the least. The private water industry is meanwhile throwing a fit about being asked to filter out PFAS. The rule will “throw public confidence in drinking water into chaos,” Mike McGill, president of water industry communications firm WaterPIO, told the AP. (You’d think the existence of PFAS in the water is what would tank public confidence, not the requirement that it be removed.) Then there’s the common threat from private water utilities—which, remember, turn a profit off providing a substance people can’t live without—that removing PFAS will increase people’s water bills. Robert Powelson, the head of the National Association of Water Companies, said that the costs of the federal regulation “will disproportionately fall on water and wastewater customers,” according to The Washington Post. “Water utilities do not create or produce PFAS chemicals,” Powelson added. “Yet water systems and their customers are on the front lines of paying for the cleanup of this contamination.”It’s true enough that water utilities are not the ones creating PFAS chemicals. On the other hand, there are lots of water contaminants that water utilities are responsible for filtering out if they want to keep making money from providing people with drinking water. Is there really any reason PFAS shouldn’t be among them? Saying that the cost of this regulation “will disproportionately fall on water and wastewater customers” shouldn’t be read as an expression of sympathy for disadvantaged households. The burden will fall on customers because the utilities will make sure of it. It’s a threat, and one that doesn’t mention the federal money from the Inflation Reduction Act that is being made available to help shoulder that burden. Those funds may well fall short, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re paying for-profit entities to transition to removing something they ought to have been filtering out long ago. And even if this federal rule hadn’t been made, companies would probably have to start removing PFAS anyway, because they are facing increasingly expensive lawsuits over not doing so. (The water utilities, in turn, are suing polluters to cover remediation costs—another source of funding.)It’s worth emphasizing what PFAS chemicals actually do to people, particularly in light of the American Water Works Association’s assertion to the AP that the cost of removing the chemicals “can’t be justified for communities with low levels of PFAS.” Researchers are now pretty sure that PFAS exposure increases the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. Studying people in northern Italy who drank PFAS-contaminated water, researchers also saw increased rates of kidney and testicular cancer. The Guardian report on this contained this disturbing finding too: Women with multiple children had lower levels of PFAS only because pregnancy transferred PFAS into their children’s bodies instead.Don’t let that get in the way of a good comms statement from industry groups, though. Remember: Forcing companies even to report their PFAS pollution, or remove PFAS from the water, is unfair.Good News/Bad NewsTwenty-nine-year-old Andrea Vidaurre has won the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work in environmental justice, pushing California to adopt new standards for truck and rail emissions that will curtail the air pollution harming working-class Latino communities in California’s Inland Empire. The United States has sided with petrostates in opposing production controls on plastic at the negotiations in Ottawa for a U.N. treaty to reduce plastic pollution. (Two weeks ago, I wrote about these negotiations, noting that the number of plastics industry lobbyists attending this session was not yet known. Now it is: 196 lobbyists from the fossil fuel and chemical industries registered for this round, according to the Center for International Environmental Law—a 37 percent increase from the number at the last session.)Stat of the Week9.6%That’s the percentage of the 250 most popular fictional films released between 2013 and 2022 in which climate change exists and a character depicted on screen knows it, according to a new “Climate Reality Check” analysis from Colby University and Good Energy. Read Sammy Roth’s newsletter about why climate change in movies is so important here.What I’m ReadingBig Oil privately acknowledged efforts to downplay climate crisis, joint committee investigation findsCongressional Democrats this week released a report confirming what news outlets have previously reported: Companies like Exxon knew about climate change very early on and covered it up. They also found in subpoenaed emails that Exxon tried to discredit reporting of its duplicity, while privately acknowledging that it was true:The new revelations build on 2015 reporting from Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, which found that Exxon was for decades aware of the dangers of the climate crisis, yet hid that from the public.At the time, Exxon publicly rejected the journalists’ findings outright, calling them “inaccurate and deliberately misleading.” … But in internal communications, Exxon confirmed the validity of the reporting. In a December 2015 email about a potential public response to the investigative reporting, Exxon communications advisor Pamela Kevelson admitted the company did not “dispute much of what these stories report.” … “It’s true that Inside Climate News originally accused us of working against science but ultimately modified their accusation to working against policies meant to stop climate change,” Alan Jeffers, then a spokesperson for Exxon, wrote in a 2016 email to Kevelson. “I’m OK either way, since they were both true at one time or another.”Read Dharna Noor’s report in The Guardian.This article first appeared in Life in a Warming World, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Heather Souvaine Horn. Sign up here.

Do you drink decaffeinated coffee? Are you aware that it’s often made by applying a chemical so dangerous it was banned for use in paint stripper five years ago? And are you aware that companies think banning this chemical is really, really unfair?This week the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule prohibiting all but “critical” uses of methylene chloride, a highly toxic liquid that is believed to have killed at least 88 people since 1980—mostly workers refinishing bathtubs or doing other home renovations. Methylene chloride can cause liver damage and is linked to multiple cancers, among other health effects. Amazingly, while the EPA banned its sale for paint stripping in 2019 for this reason, it continues to be used for a lot of other purposes. And one of those is decaffeinating coffee, because the Food and Drug Administration decided in the 1980s that the risk to coffee drinkers was low given how the coffee was processed.The EPA’s ban on noncritical use of methylene chloride is one of many rules the Biden administration has announced or finalized ahead of the Congressional Review Act deadline. (The CRA, essentially, makes it easier for an unfriendly Congress to nix any administrative regulations finalized in the last 60 days of a legislative session.) A lot of the recently announced rules ban or curtail toxic substances that have made their way into everyday life and are poisoning people. The EPA has limited long-lasting chemicals called PFAS in drinking water, requiring water utilities within five years to build treatment systems that remove it. The agency has categorized two types of PFAS as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, requiring manufacturers to monitor whether they’ve been released into the environment and, if so, clean them up. It has also—finally—fully banned asbestos. It’s finalized a rule to further restrict fine particulate pollution in the air, which has been linked to heart disease, heart attacks, asthma, low birth weight, Alzheimer’s, and other forms of dementia. It’s in the process of finalizing a rule reducing lead in drinking water, which would require the replacement of lead pipes throughout the nation.Banning poison is good politics. As mentioned in last week’s newsletter, while only 47 percent of respondents in a recent CBS News poll supported reentering the Paris climate agreement, 70 percent said they supported reducing toxic chemicals in drinking water. That’s consistent with other polls showing that a majority of people think the federal government is doing too little to protect “lakes, rivers and streams,” and that an overwhelming majority of people—even 68 percent of Republicans—believe the federal government should play some role in “addressing differences across communities in their health risks from pollution and other environmental problems.”But every single time one of these rules is announced, companies and industry groups respond with the most ridiculous statements. Let’s look at just a few recent examples.“A group of coffee makers against banning methylene chloride,” Boston radio station WBUR reported in early April, “recently wrote the FDA saying, ‘True coffee aficionados in blind tastings’ prefer coffee decaffeinated with the chemical.” Who knows how this study was done—“True coffee aficionados” are not known for preferring decaf, period, hence a recent P.R. push to improve decaf’s image. Nick Florko, a reporter for health news website Stat, told WBUR that the coffee makers’ letter to the FDA was a “pretty funny claim if you consider the fact that we’re talking about coffee here that’s essentially rinsed in paint thinner.” And this says nothing at all about what happens to workers involved in the decaffeination process. (Methylene chloride has previously been shown to poison even trained workers wearing protective gear.)National Coffee Association president William Murray said something even weirder, telling CNN via email that banning methylene chloride “would defy science and harm American[s’] health.” His logic appeared to be that since all coffee consumption, including decaf, shows signs of reducing cancer risk overall, it’s not really a problem to decaffeinate coffee using a known carcinogen. That’s loopy even for industry pushback. For one thing, it’s easy to imagine that coffee could be good in general, and less good if you add poison to it. For another, coffee can also be decaffeinated without methylene chloride, using only water. Now let’s look at PFAS pushback. Knowing the EPA rules were in progress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in March launched the “Essential Chemistry for America” initiative, with the goal of “protecting ‘forever chemicals’ it deems ‘critical,’” according to E&E News. “We’re increasingly concerned that overly broad regulatory approaches threaten access to modern fluorochemistries, so we’re taking action to ensure their availability,” chamber vice president Marty Durbin said. Given that “access” language is typically used in a social and environmental justice context, restyling the regulation of poisons as threatening “access to modern fluorochemistries” is gutsy, to say the least. The private water industry is meanwhile throwing a fit about being asked to filter out PFAS. The rule will “throw public confidence in drinking water into chaos,” Mike McGill, president of water industry communications firm WaterPIO, told the AP. (You’d think the existence of PFAS in the water is what would tank public confidence, not the requirement that it be removed.) Then there’s the common threat from private water utilities—which, remember, turn a profit off providing a substance people can’t live without—that removing PFAS will increase people’s water bills. Robert Powelson, the head of the National Association of Water Companies, said that the costs of the federal regulation “will disproportionately fall on water and wastewater customers,” according to The Washington Post. “Water utilities do not create or produce PFAS chemicals,” Powelson added. “Yet water systems and their customers are on the front lines of paying for the cleanup of this contamination.”It’s true enough that water utilities are not the ones creating PFAS chemicals. On the other hand, there are lots of water contaminants that water utilities are responsible for filtering out if they want to keep making money from providing people with drinking water. Is there really any reason PFAS shouldn’t be among them? Saying that the cost of this regulation “will disproportionately fall on water and wastewater customers” shouldn’t be read as an expression of sympathy for disadvantaged households. The burden will fall on customers because the utilities will make sure of it. It’s a threat, and one that doesn’t mention the federal money from the Inflation Reduction Act that is being made available to help shoulder that burden. Those funds may well fall short, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re paying for-profit entities to transition to removing something they ought to have been filtering out long ago. And even if this federal rule hadn’t been made, companies would probably have to start removing PFAS anyway, because they are facing increasingly expensive lawsuits over not doing so. (The water utilities, in turn, are suing polluters to cover remediation costs—another source of funding.)It’s worth emphasizing what PFAS chemicals actually do to people, particularly in light of the American Water Works Association’s assertion to the AP that the cost of removing the chemicals “can’t be justified for communities with low levels of PFAS.” Researchers are now pretty sure that PFAS exposure increases the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. Studying people in northern Italy who drank PFAS-contaminated water, researchers also saw increased rates of kidney and testicular cancer. The Guardian report on this contained this disturbing finding too: Women with multiple children had lower levels of PFAS only because pregnancy transferred PFAS into their children’s bodies instead.Don’t let that get in the way of a good comms statement from industry groups, though. Remember: Forcing companies even to report their PFAS pollution, or remove PFAS from the water, is unfair.Good News/Bad NewsTwenty-nine-year-old Andrea Vidaurre has won the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work in environmental justice, pushing California to adopt new standards for truck and rail emissions that will curtail the air pollution harming working-class Latino communities in California’s Inland Empire. The United States has sided with petrostates in opposing production controls on plastic at the negotiations in Ottawa for a U.N. treaty to reduce plastic pollution. (Two weeks ago, I wrote about these negotiations, noting that the number of plastics industry lobbyists attending this session was not yet known. Now it is: 196 lobbyists from the fossil fuel and chemical industries registered for this round, according to the Center for International Environmental Law—a 37 percent increase from the number at the last session.)Stat of the Week9.6%That’s the percentage of the 250 most popular fictional films released between 2013 and 2022 in which climate change exists and a character depicted on screen knows it, according to a new “Climate Reality Check” analysis from Colby University and Good Energy. Read Sammy Roth’s newsletter about why climate change in movies is so important here.What I’m ReadingBig Oil privately acknowledged efforts to downplay climate crisis, joint committee investigation findsCongressional Democrats this week released a report confirming what news outlets have previously reported: Companies like Exxon knew about climate change very early on and covered it up. They also found in subpoenaed emails that Exxon tried to discredit reporting of its duplicity, while privately acknowledging that it was true:The new revelations build on 2015 reporting from Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, which found that Exxon was for decades aware of the dangers of the climate crisis, yet hid that from the public.At the time, Exxon publicly rejected the journalists’ findings outright, calling them “inaccurate and deliberately misleading.” … But in internal communications, Exxon confirmed the validity of the reporting. In a December 2015 email about a potential public response to the investigative reporting, Exxon communications advisor Pamela Kevelson admitted the company did not “dispute much of what these stories report.” … “It’s true that Inside Climate News originally accused us of working against science but ultimately modified their accusation to working against policies meant to stop climate change,” Alan Jeffers, then a spokesperson for Exxon, wrote in a 2016 email to Kevelson. “I’m OK either way, since they were both true at one time or another.”Read Dharna Noor’s report in The Guardian.This article first appeared in Life in a Warming World, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Heather Souvaine Horn. Sign up here.

Do you drink decaffeinated coffee? Are you aware that it’s often made by applying a chemical so dangerous it was banned for use in paint stripper five years ago? And are you aware that companies think banning this chemical is really, really unfair?

This week the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule prohibiting all but “critical” uses of methylene chloride, a highly toxic liquid that is believed to have killed at least 88 people since 1980—mostly workers refinishing bathtubs or doing other home renovations. Methylene chloride can cause liver damage and is linked to multiple cancers, among other health effects. Amazingly, while the EPA banned its sale for paint stripping in 2019 for this reason, it continues to be used for a lot of other purposes. And one of those is decaffeinating coffee, because the Food and Drug Administration decided in the 1980s that the risk to coffee drinkers was low given how the coffee was processed.

The EPA’s ban on noncritical use of methylene chloride is one of many rules the Biden administration has announced or finalized ahead of the Congressional Review Act deadline. (The CRA, essentially, makes it easier for an unfriendly Congress to nix any administrative regulations finalized in the last 60 days of a legislative session.) A lot of the recently announced rules ban or curtail toxic substances that have made their way into everyday life and are poisoning people. The EPA has limited long-lasting chemicals called PFAS in drinking water, requiring water utilities within five years to build treatment systems that remove it. The agency has categorized two types of PFAS as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, requiring manufacturers to monitor whether they’ve been released into the environment and, if so, clean them up. It has also—finally—fully banned asbestos. It’s finalized a rule to further restrict fine particulate pollution in the air, which has been linked to heart disease, heart attacks, asthma, low birth weight, Alzheimer’s, and other forms of dementia. It’s in the process of finalizing a rule reducing lead in drinking water, which would require the replacement of lead pipes throughout the nation.

Banning poison is good politics. As mentioned in last week’s newsletter, while only 47 percent of respondents in a recent CBS News poll supported reentering the Paris climate agreement, 70 percent said they supported reducing toxic chemicals in drinking water. That’s consistent with other polls showing that a majority of people think the federal government is doing too little to protect “lakes, rivers and streams,” and that an overwhelming majority of people—even 68 percent of Republicans—believe the federal government should play some role in “addressing differences across communities in their health risks from pollution and other environmental problems.”

But every single time one of these rules is announced, companies and industry groups respond with the most ridiculous statements. Let’s look at just a few recent examples.

“A group of coffee makers against banning methylene chloride,” Boston radio station WBUR reported in early April, “recently wrote the FDA saying, ‘True coffee aficionados in blind tastings’ prefer coffee decaffeinated with the chemical.” Who knows how this study was done—“True coffee aficionados” are not known for preferring decaf, period, hence a recent P.R. push to improve decaf’s image. Nick Florko, a reporter for health news website Stat, told WBUR that the coffee makers’ letter to the FDA was a “pretty funny claim if you consider the fact that we’re talking about coffee here that’s essentially rinsed in paint thinner.” And this says nothing at all about what happens to workers involved in the decaffeination process. (Methylene chloride has previously been shown to poison even trained workers wearing protective gear.)

National Coffee Association president William Murray said something even weirder, telling CNN via email that banning methylene chloride “would defy science and harm American[s’] health.” His logic appeared to be that since all coffee consumption, including decaf, shows signs of reducing cancer risk overall, it’s not really a problem to decaffeinate coffee using a known carcinogen. That’s loopy even for industry pushback. For one thing, it’s easy to imagine that coffee could be good in general, and less good if you add poison to it. For another, coffee can also be decaffeinated without methylene chloride, using only water.

Now let’s look at PFAS pushback. Knowing the EPA rules were in progress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in March launched the “Essential Chemistry for America” initiative, with the goal of “protecting ‘forever chemicals’ it deems ‘critical,’” according to E&E News. “We’re increasingly concerned that overly broad regulatory approaches threaten access to modern fluorochemistries, so we’re taking action to ensure their availability,” chamber vice president Marty Durbin said. Given that “access” language is typically used in a social and environmental justice context, restyling the regulation of poisons as threatening “access to modern fluorochemistries” is gutsy, to say the least.

The private water industry is meanwhile throwing a fit about being asked to filter out PFAS. The rule will “throw public confidence in drinking water into chaos,” Mike McGill, president of water industry communications firm WaterPIO, told the AP. (You’d think the existence of PFAS in the water is what would tank public confidence, not the requirement that it be removed.) Then there’s the common threat from private water utilities—which, remember, turn a profit off providing a substance people can’t live without—that removing PFAS will increase people’s water bills. Robert Powelson, the head of the National Association of Water Companies, said that the costs of the federal regulation “will disproportionately fall on water and wastewater customers,” according to The Washington Post. “Water utilities do not create or produce PFAS chemicals,” Powelson added. “Yet water systems and their customers are on the front lines of paying for the cleanup of this contamination.”

It’s true enough that water utilities are not the ones creating PFAS chemicals. On the other hand, there are lots of water contaminants that water utilities are responsible for filtering out if they want to keep making money from providing people with drinking water. Is there really any reason PFAS shouldn’t be among them?

Saying that the cost of this regulation “will disproportionately fall on water and wastewater customers” shouldn’t be read as an expression of sympathy for disadvantaged households. The burden will fall on customers because the utilities will make sure of it. It’s a threat, and one that doesn’t mention the federal money from the Inflation Reduction Act that is being made available to help shoulder that burden. Those funds may well fall short, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re paying for-profit entities to transition to removing something they ought to have been filtering out long ago. And even if this federal rule hadn’t been made, companies would probably have to start removing PFAS anyway, because they are facing increasingly expensive lawsuits over not doing so. (The water utilities, in turn, are suing polluters to cover remediation costs—another source of funding.)

It’s worth emphasizing what PFAS chemicals actually do to people, particularly in light of the American Water Works Association’s assertion to the AP that the cost of removing the chemicals “can’t be justified for communities with low levels of PFAS.” Researchers are now pretty sure that PFAS exposure increases the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. Studying people in northern Italy who drank PFAS-contaminated water, researchers also saw increased rates of kidney and testicular cancer. The Guardian report on this contained this disturbing finding too: Women with multiple children had lower levels of PFAS only because pregnancy transferred PFAS into their children’s bodies instead.

Don’t let that get in the way of a good comms statement from industry groups, though. Remember: Forcing companies even to report their PFAS pollution, or remove PFAS from the water, is unfair.


Good News/Bad News

Twenty-nine-year-old Andrea Vidaurre has won the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work in environmental justice, pushing California to adopt new standards for truck and rail emissions that will curtail the air pollution harming working-class Latino communities in California’s Inland Empire.

The United States has sided with petrostates in opposing production controls on plastic at the negotiations in Ottawa for a U.N. treaty to reduce plastic pollution. (Two weeks ago, I wrote about these negotiations, noting that the number of plastics industry lobbyists attending this session was not yet known. Now it is: 196 lobbyists from the fossil fuel and chemical industries registered for this round, according to the Center for International Environmental Law—a 37 percent increase from the number at the last session.)


Stat of the Week
9.6%

That’s the percentage of the 250 most popular fictional films released between 2013 and 2022 in which climate change exists and a character depicted on screen knows it, according to a new “Climate Reality Check” analysis from Colby University and Good Energy. Read Sammy Roth’s newsletter about why climate change in movies is so important here.


What I’m Reading

Big Oil privately acknowledged efforts to downplay climate crisis, joint committee investigation finds

Congressional Democrats this week released a report confirming what news outlets have previously reported: Companies like Exxon knew about climate change very early on and covered it up. They also found in subpoenaed emails that Exxon tried to discredit reporting of its duplicity, while privately acknowledging that it was true:

The new revelations build on 2015 reporting from Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, which found that Exxon was for decades aware of the dangers of the climate crisis, yet hid that from the public.

At the time, Exxon publicly rejected the journalists’ findings outright, calling them “inaccurate and deliberately misleading.” … But in internal communications, Exxon confirmed the validity of the reporting. In a December 2015 email about a potential public response to the investigative reporting, Exxon communications advisor Pamela Kevelson admitted the company did not “dispute much of what these stories report.” … “It’s true that Inside Climate News originally accused us of working against science but ultimately modified their accusation to working against policies meant to stop climate change,” Alan Jeffers, then a spokesperson for Exxon, wrote in a 2016 email to Kevelson. “I’m OK either way, since they were both true at one time or another.”

Read Dharna Noor’s report in The Guardian.

This article first appeared in Life in a Warming World, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Heather Souvaine Horn. Sign up here.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Related News

Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ ubiquitous in Great Lakes basin, study finds

PFAS chemicals present in air, rain, atmosphere and water in basin, which holds nearly 95% of US freshwaterToxic PFAS “forever chemicals” are ubiquitous in the Great Lakes basin’s air, rain, atmosphere and water, new peer-reviewed research shows.The first-of-its-kind, comprehensive picture of PFAS levels for the basin, which holds nearly 95% of the nation’s freshwater, also reveals that precipitation is probably a major contributor to the lakes’ contamination. Continue reading...

Toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” are ubiquitous in the Great Lakes basin’s air, rain, atmosphere and water, new peer-reviewed research shows.The first-of-its-kind, comprehensive picture of PFAS levels for the basin, which holds nearly 95% of the nation’s freshwater, also reveals that precipitation is probably a major contributor to the lakes’ contamination.“We didn’t think the air and rain were significant sources of PFAS in the Great Lakes’ environment, but it’s not something that has been studied that much,” said Marta Venier, a co-author with Indiana University.PFAS are a class of 15,000 chemicals used across dozens of industries to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. The chemicals are linked to cancer, kidney disease, birth defects, decreased immunity, liver problems and a range of other serious diseases.They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down and are highly mobile once in the environment, so they continuously move through the ground, water and air. PFAS have been detected in all corners of the globe, from penguin eggs in Antarctica to polar bears in the Arctic.The new paper is part of a growing body of evidence showing how the chemicals move through the atmosphere and water.Measurements found PFAS levels in the air varied throughout the basin – they were much higher in urban locations such as Chicago than in rural spots in northern Michigan. That tracks with how other chemical pollutants, like PCBs, are detected, Venier said.But levels in rain were consistent throughout the basin – virtually the same in industrialized areas such as Chicago and Cleveland as in Sleeping Bear Dunes, a remote region in northern Michigan. The finding was a bit “puzzling” Venier said, adding that it probably speaks to the chemicals’ ubiquity.A fisherman in Bayfield, Wisconsin. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty ImagesPFAS “background levels” are now so high and the environmental contamination so widespread that the atmospheric counts, including in rain, are relatively consistent. The PFAS in rain could be carried from local sources, or have traveled long distances from other regions. Regardless, it is a major source of pollution that contributes to the lakes’ levels, Venier added.Water contamination levels were highest in Lake Ontario, which holds the most major urban areas, such as Toronto and Buffalo, and is last in line in the lake system’s west to east flow. Lake Superior, which is the largest and deepest body with few urban areas on its shores, showed the lowest levels.PFAS tend to accumulate in Lake Superior and Huron because there’s little water exchange, while Lake Ontario relatively quickly moves the chemicals into the Saint Lawrence Seaway and Atlantic Ocean.The study did not address what the levels mean for human health and exposure, but fish consumption advisories are in place across the region, and many cities have contaminated drinking water.The levels found in water and atmosphere will probably increase as scientists are able to identify more PFAS, most of which cannot be detected by currently reliable technology.“We need to take a broad approach to control sources that release PFAS into the atmosphere and into bodies of water … since they eventually all end up in the lakes,” Venier said.

Chemicals
Water
Pollution

MIT Researchers Identify Genetic Markers That Could Revolutionize ALS Treatment

In a study of cells from nearly 400 ALS patients, MIT researchers identified genomic regions with chemical modifications linked to disease progression. An analysis revealed...

MIT researchers have discovered significant epigenetic modifications in ALS patients that could lead to targeted therapies. These modifications, identified in motor neurons from 380 ALS patients, indicate that ALS might consist of various subtypes, each with distinct genetic influences on disease progression.In a study of cells from nearly 400 ALS patients, MIT researchers identified genomic regions with chemical modifications linked to disease progression.An analysis revealed a strong differential signal associated with a known subtype of ALS, and about 30 locations with modifications that appear to be linked to rates of disease progression in ALS patients.For most patients, it’s unknown exactly what causes amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a disease characterized by degeneration of motor neurons that impairs muscle control and eventually leads to death. Studies have identified certain genes that confer a higher risk of the disease, but scientists believe there are many more genetic risk factors that have yet to be discovered. One reason why these drivers have been hard to find is that some are found in very few patients, making it hard to pick them out without a very large sample of patients. Additionally, some of the risk may be driven by epigenomic factors, rather than mutations in protein-coding genes.Working with the Answer ALS consortium, a team of MIT researchers has analyzed epigenetic modifications — tags that determine which genes are turned on in a cell — in motor neurons derived from induced pluripotent stem (IPS) cells from 380 ALS patients.This analysis revealed a strong differential signal associated with a known subtype of ALS, and about 30 locations with modifications that appear to be linked to rates of disease progression in ALS patients. The findings may help scientists develop new treatments that are targeted to patients with certain genetic risk factors.“If the root causes are different for all these different versions of the disease, the drugs will be very different and the signals in IPS cells will be very different,” says Ernest Fraenkel, the Grover M. Hermann Professor in Health Sciences and Technology in MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering and the senior author of the study. “We may get to a point in a decade or so where we don’t even think of ALS as one disease, where there are drugs that are treating specific types of ALS that only work for one group of patients and not for another.”MIT postdoc Stanislav Tsitkov is the lead author of the paper, which was published on May 2 in the journal Nature Communications.What is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)?Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a neurological disorder that targets motor neurons—nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord responsible for controlling voluntary muscle movement and breathing. As these motor neurons deteriorate and die, they cease transmitting messages to muscles, leading to muscle weakening, twitching (fasciculations), and wasting away (atrophy).Over time, ALS progresses, and individuals affected by the disease gradually lose the ability to initiate and control voluntary movements such as walking, talking, and chewing, including the ability to breathe. The symptoms of ALS worsen progressively.Finding Risk FactorsALS is a rare disease that is estimated to affect about 30,000 people in the United States. One of the challenges in studying the disease is that while genetic variants are believed to account for about 50 percent of ALS risk (with environmental factors making up the rest), most of the variants that contribute to that risk have not been identified.Similar to Alzheimer’s disease, there may be a large number of genetic variants that can confer risk, but each individual patient may carry only a small number of those. This makes it difficult to identify the risk factors unless scientists have a very large population of patients to analyze.“Because we expect the disease to be heterogeneous, you need to have large numbers of patients before you can pick up on signals like this. To really be able to classify the subtypes of disease, we’re going to need to look at a lot of people,” Fraenkel says.About 10 years ago, the Answer ALS consortium began to collect large numbers of patient samples, which could allow for larger-scale studies that might reveal some of the genetic drivers of the disease. From blood samples, researchers can create induced pluripotent stem cells and then induce them to differentiate into motor neurons, the cells most affected by ALS.“We don’t think all ALS patients are going to be the same, just like all cancers are not the same. And the goal is being able to find drivers of the disease that could be therapeutic targets,” Fraenkel says.In this study, Fraenkel and his colleagues wanted to see if patient-derived cells could offer any information about molecular differences that are relevant to ALS. They focused on epigenomic modifications, using a method called ATAC-seq to measure chromatin density across the genome of each cell. Chromatin is a complex of DNA and proteins that determines which genes are accessible to be transcribed by the cell, depending on how densely packed the chromatin is.In data that were collected and analyzed over several years, the researchers did not find any global signal that clearly differentiated the 380 ALS patients in their study from 80 healthy control subjects. However, they did find a strong differential signal associated with a subtype of ALS, characterized by a genetic mutation in the C9orf72 gene.Additionally, they identified about 30 regions that were associated with slower rates of disease progression in ALS patients. Many of these regions are located near genes related to the cellular inflammatory response; interestingly, several of the identified genes have also been implicated in other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease.“You can use a small number of these epigenomic regions and look at the intensity of the signal there, and predict how quickly someone’s disease will progress. That really validates the hypothesis that the epigenomics can be used as a filter to better understand the contribution of the person’s genome,” Fraenkel says.“By harnessing the very large number of participant samples and extensive data collected by the Answer ALS Consortium, these studies were able to rigorously test whether the observed changes might be artifacts related to the techniques of sample collection, storage, processing, and analysis, or truly reflective of important biology,” says Lyle Ostrow, an associate professor of neurology at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, who was not involved in the study. “They developed standard ways to control for these variables, to make sure the results can be accurately compared. Such studies are incredibly important for accelerating ALS therapy development, as they will enable data and samples collected from different studies to be analyzed together.”Targeted DrugsThe researchers now hope to further investigate these genomic regions and see how they might drive different aspects of ALS progression in different subsets of patients. This could help scientists develop drugs that might work in different groups of patients, and help them identify which patients should be chosen for clinical trials of those drugs, based on genetic or epigenetic markers.Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a drug called tofersen, which can be used in ALS patients with a mutation in a gene called SOD1. This drug is very effective for those patients, who make up about 1 percent of the total population of people with ALS. Fraenkel’s hope is that more drugs can be developed for, and tested in, people with other genetic drivers of ALS.“If you had a drug like tofersen that works for 1 percent of patients and you just gave it to a typical phase two clinical trial, you probably wouldn’t have anybody with that mutation in the trial, and it would’ve failed. And so that drug, which is a lifesaver for people, would never have gotten through,” Fraenkel says.The MIT team is now using an approach called quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis to try to identify subgroups of ALS patients whose disease is driven by specific genomic variants.“We can integrate the genomics, the transcriptomics, and the epigenomics, as a way to find subgroups of ALS patients who have distinct phenotypic signatures from other ALS patients and healthy controls,” Tsitkov says. “We have already found a few potential hits in that direction.”Reference: “Disease related changes in ATAC-seq of iPSC-derived motor neuron lines from ALS patients and controls” by Stanislav Tsitkov, Kelsey Valentine, Velina Kozareva, Aneesh Donde, Aaron Frank, Susan Lei, the Answer ALS Consortium, Jennifer E. Van Eyk, Steve Finkbeiner, Jeffrey D. Rothstein, Leslie M. Thompson, Dhruv Sareen, Clive N. Svendsen and Ernest Fraenkel, 2 May 2024, Nature Communications.DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-47758-8The research was funded by the Answer ALS program, which is supported by the Robert Packard Center for ALS Research at Johns Hopkins University, Travelers Insurance, ALS Finding a Cure Foundation, Stay Strong Vs. ALS, Answer ALS Foundation, Microsoft, Caterpillar Foundation, American Airlines, Team Gleason, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Fishman Family Foundation, Aviators Against ALS, AbbVie Foundation, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, ALS Association, National Football League, F. Prime, M. Armstrong, Bruce Edwards Foundation, the Judith and Jean Pape Adams Charitable Foundation, Muscular Dystrophy Association, Les Turner ALS Foundation, PGA Tour, Gates Ventures, and Bari Lipp Foundation. This work was also supported, in part, by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the MIT-GSK Gertrude B. Elion Research Fellowship Program for Drug Discovery and Disease.

Chemicals
Food
Nature

California's effort to plug abandoned, chemical-spewing oil wells gets $35-million boost

The Biden administration funding is among the "largest ever in American history to address legacy pollution," U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said.

California will receive more than $35 million in federal funding to help address the scourge of abandoned oil wells that are leaking dangerous chemicals and planet-warming methane in areas across the state, including many in Los Angeles.The investment from the Biden-Harris administration is among the “largest ever in American history to address legacy pollution,” U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said Friday during a joint announcement with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Deputy Secretary for Energy Le-Quyen Nguyen.California will use the funding to plug and remediate 206 high-risk orphaned oil and gas wells and decommission 47 attendant production facilities with about 70,000 feet of associated pipelines.“Capping hazardous orphaned wells and addressing legacy pollution across our country will have a profound impact on our environment, our water quality, and the health and well-being of our communities,” Haaland said. Aggressive and impactful reporting on climate change, the environment, health and science. The Golden State is home to at least 5,300 abandoned or orphaned oil wells — or wells for which there are no legally liable parties to plug them — according to estimates from the California Geologic Energy Management Division. There are more than 35,000 known idle wells, with thousands more that will soon come to the end of their lives.Many are located in and around communities where residents have been sickened by their toxic emissions. What’s more, many unclogged wells leak methane, a planet-warming gas that is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. California Deputy Secretary for Energy Le-Quyen Nguyen, left, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announce federal funding to plug and remediate orphaned oil wells. (Hayley Smith / Los Angeles Times) “We have thousands of orphaned wells in California, and each well poses a risk to public health, safety and the environment, as well as further contributes to climate change,” Nguyen said. “The funding that was announced today by Secretary Haaland will continue our momentum in plugging these orphaned wells in California, as well as remediating those sites and removing that legacy pollution. It will also make a meaningful, positive impact to our communities, as well as creating good jobs.”California’s award is part of a larger, $660-million formula grant pot that will be released to states on a rolling basis, Haaland said. As part of its award, California will also work to detect and measure methane emissions from orphaned oil and gas wells, screen for groundwater and surface water impacts, and prioritize cleaning up wells near disadvantaged communities. The grant program stems from an overall $4.7-billion investment from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to plug orphaned wells nationwide. Other buckets of funding include more than $565 million in initial grant funding that has already been awarded to 25 states, including $25 million to California. A planned matching grants program will also award up to $30 million apiece to states that commit to increasing their spending on cleaning up orphaned wells. Bass said it was too soon to specify how much of the state’s latest award will go to Los Angeles. However, state officials said some of the initial funding is being used to plug 19 wells that remain uncapped at the AllenCo drill site in South Los Angeles, which stand among more than 370 high-priority wells identified in the first round of planning. Residents who live near the AllenCo site have complained for years about headaches, nosebleeds, respiratory diseases and other health issues. Among them is Nalleli Cobo, who grew up about 30 feet from the site and was diagnosed with reproductive cancer at age 19. “I’ve lost my childhood to the fossil fuel industry and I’ve also lost my future to the fossil fuel industry, and that’s not the reality that our community should be facing,” Cobo said. “When you ask a person what belongs in a community, not a lot of people will say an oil well.” She noted that about 18 million Americans live one mile or less from an active oil or gas well. Friday’s federal investment announcement is “definitely a step in the right direction,” she said, “but we need to make sure we are prioritizing communities like sacrifice zones, because we are the front-line communities that live day in and day out breathing these toxic emissions.”Officials said the latest round of funding advances Biden’s Justice40 Initiative, which aims to deliver at least 40% of benefits from certain climate, housing and energy investments to disadvantaged communities.“This is an issue of environmental justice,” Bass said. “Today we are locking arms across the city, state and federal governments to continue our work to end neighborhood oil drilling in the city of Los Angeles to protect the health of Angelenos and advance our vision of environmental justice.” Since the enactment of Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021, states have plugged more than 7,700 orphaned wells and reduced approximately 11,530 metric tons of potential methane emissions, according to the Department of the Interior.Gov. Gavin Newsom in October also approved AB 1167, legislation that will require companies that acquire oil wells to secure bonds to properly seal the wells once their use has ended. Some local communities, such as Culver City, have banned new drilling and are moving to phase out existing wells. “California is one of the states that is leading the way in putting these new resources to work, because it’s going to take all of us working together to ensure that we are making the kind of enduring impact that will last for generations to come,” Haaland said.But while the federal support is encouraging, there is still much work that remains, said Brenda Valdivia, a lifelong resident of the Vista Hermosa Heights neighborhood in L.A. Valdivia said she developed an autoimmune disease and had two strokes following her exposure to nearby wells. “We could always do more,” she said. Times staff writer Tony Briscoe contributed to this report.

Chemicals
Pollution
CO2

Study Reveals That Organic Farming Changes Plants’ Genetic Code

A research project conducted at the University of Bonn reveals differences in the growth of plants under organic and conventional farming methods. A long-term study...

Over a 23-year study at the University of Bonn, researchers found that barley grown organically adapted genetically to its environment, becoming more genetically diverse and robust compared to barley grown conventionally. The study emphasizes the necessity of developing crop varieties specifically for organic farming to harness these adaptive benefits. Credit: SciTechDaily.comA research project conducted at the University of Bonn reveals differences in the growth of plants under organic and conventional farming methods.A long-term study at the University of Bonn has shown that plants can genetically adapt to the specific conditions of organic farming. In the study, researchers cultivated barley on two adjacent fields, employing conventional farming techniques on one and organic practices on the other.Over the course of more than 20 years, the organic barley was enriched with specific genetic material that differed from the comparative culture. Among other things, the results demonstrate how important it is to cultivate varieties, especially for organic farming. The results have now been published in the journal Agronomy for Sustainable Development.At the end of the 1990s, Prof. Dr. Jens Léon started an experiment at the University of Bonn that he knew would run for a long period of time. His research group wanted to investigate the effects that farming conditions have on genetic material in plants. To this end, they carried out a complex long-term study over a period of 23 years at the Institute of Crop Science and Resource Conservation (INRES). “We first crossed high-yield barley with a wild form to increase genetic variation,” says Léon. “We then planted these populations on two neighboring fields so that the barley grew in the same soil and under the same climatic conditions.” The image above depcits the conventional population on the left and the organic barley on the right: Only experts can spot the differences with the naked eye. However, huge differences can be identified using molecular genetics. Credit: AG Prof. Léon/University of BonnThe only difference was the farming method. Conventional farming was used in one of the fields where the researchers used pesticides to combat pests, chemical agents to eliminate weeds, and mineral fertilizers to help ensure a good supply of nutrients. The researchers took a more ecological sound approach in the other field: no pesticides, combating weeds using mechanical methods, and fertilizing the soil with manure from stables. Some of the grains were retained every fall to sow the fields the following spring – using the organic grains on the organic field and the barley grown under conventional conditions on the comparative field. “We didn’t choose the grains based on any particular characteristics, however, but simply selected a small part of the harvest at random,” emphasizes Léon’s colleague Dr. Michael Schneider.Analyzing genome development in time-lapseThe researchers also analyzed the genomes of the conventionally and organically farmed plants on a yearly basis. Every single gene can exist in a variety of different forms called alleles. For example, the human gene responsible for eye color exists in the alleles “brown” and “blue.” The frequency with which certain alleles arise in a population can change over generations. Environmental conditions are one factor that plays a role in this process: Alleles that ensure plants thrive in their current environment are usually found more and more frequently.The researchers identified two interesting trends in their genetic tests: In the first twelve years, the allele frequency in the barley changed in the same way on both fields. “Our interpretation of this finding is that the very diverse populations caused by a cross with wild barley were adapting to the local conditions,” says Dr. Agim Ballvora, who also participated in the study. “After all, factors such as the climate, soil, and especially length of day were identical for both populations.” However, the allele frequencies of both cultures diverged increasingly in subsequent years. In particular, the barley grown using organic farming methods developed gene variants that were less sensitive to a nutrient deficit or lack of water – i.e., alleles that influenced the structure of the roots. “One reason for this is presumably the strong variations in the availability of nutrients in organic farming,” says Léon.Genetic heterogeneity facilitates the adaptation processThe conventionally farmed barley also became more genetically uniform over time, meaning that the genetic material in the individual plants grown on the field became more and more similar from year to year. However, the organic barley remained more heterogeneous. The allele frequencies of the organic culture also varied more widely over time. This resulted in some years being extremely favorable or unfavorable for some alleles. This could be because the environmental conditions fluctuate much more in organic farming than with conventional framing methods: If certain plant diseases take hold in one year, for example, the plants will rely most on those alleles that will protect them. The variability of the environmental forces acting on the plants seems to lead to greater genetic heterogeneity. “As a result, the plants are better able to adapt to these types of changes,” says Léon.Overall, the results demonstrate the importance of cultivating varieties optimized for organic farming. As their genetic makeup has adapted to these conditions, they will be more robust and deliver higher yields. “Furthermore, it seems to make sense when cultivating plants to cross-breed them with older or even wild varieties,” explains Léon. “Our data also indicate that this could even benefit conventional high-yield varieties.”Reference: “Deep genotyping reveals specific adaptation footprints of conventional and organic farming in barley populations—an evolutionary plant breeding approach” by Michael Schneider, Agim Ballvora and Jens Léon, 8 May 2024, Agronomy for Sustainable Development.DOI: 10.1007/s13593-024-00962-8The study was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Chemicals
Climate
Conservation

Proposed Plastics Law Could Slash Wasteful Packaging

A law proposed in New York State seeks to reduce plastic packaging, ban certain plastic chemicals and mandate that producers of packaged consumer goods fund the recycling or disposal of what they sell

CLIMATEWIRE | ALBANY, New York — Democratic lawmakers are still fine-tuning a sweeping measure aimed at reducing the amount of plastic and packaging trash headed to the state’s crammed landfills.The rebranded extended producer responsibility bill seeks to reduce the amount of packaging being used, increase recyclability and charge producers of consumer goods for the costs of disposing of packaging that mostly ends up in landfills.But tweaks are still expected to the current version, and some lawmakers have concerns about the costs for consumers with the legislative session set to end June 6.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said there are still conversations ongoing.“We want to make sure that we have input so at least whatever we do legislatively not only reflects, to the extent possible, the real concerns that people bring to us and we weigh it against the real results that we’re trying to achieve,” the Democrat from Yonkers said Tuesday.“Obviously, we all are getting all kinds of things that should not be in landfills, so we are trying to get to a point where we’ve got a piece of legislation that will pass.”Broadly, the goal is to mandate producers of packaged consumer goods — think Amazon, Unilever, Procter & Gamble — to fund the recycling or disposal of what they sell. There’s also mandates to stop using potentially harmful substances.Money raised would be used to reimburse local governments for the costs of waste disposal and recycling programs.It’s a big shift in the way recycling is funded in New York.Most costs are currently borne by local governments. The state’s climate plan, approved in late 2022 to map out the path for New York to achieve dramatic emissions reductions, backs sweeping new “extended producer responsibility” legislation to begin reducing emissions from waste in landfills.Industry opponents of the bill warn the measure would increase costs and limit the convenient choices that grocery shoppers have come to expect. They say there aren’t readily available alternatives to some of the chemicals that would be banned.Most supporters acknowledge there would be changes, but argue that habits are already shifting and that healthier, more refillable and less disposable choices would become more widely available because of the new requirements.They’re also emphasizing that customers ultimately pay for sending the trash to the landfill anyway, and that reducing packaging material can lower costs.“You don’t have to wrap everything in plastic,” said Assemblymember Michaelle Solages, a Democrat from Nassau County who is the chair of the influential Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, and Asian Legislative Caucus. “I think it is a sin to even wrap fruits and vegetables in plastic.”Solages said there’s still work to do on the details, although there’s support for the spirit of the proposal. She said there are concerns about costs, and there are currently discussions about how to ensure those costs aren’t only on consumers.“We’re just throwing all this waste in our garbage,” Solages said in an interview. “At the end of the day, it’ll cost us more to clean up all the impacts to the Earth.”Under the legislation, companies that are covered would have to reduce packaging by 10 percent within three years, increasing to 50 percent in 12 years. Recycling rates would also have to increase to 75 percent of packing material, including plastic, to be reused or recycled in 2050.Assemblymember Deborah Glick, a Democrat from Manhattan, said there are also health risks from current packaging. Glick sponsors the bill, and as chair of the Environmental Conservation Committee, she has made it her top priority as the end of the legislative session nears.“We have a variety of problems related to the chemicals that are in the plastic that is wrapped around our food,” she said. “We know we have a growing health problem.”Producers could give consumers more options than are currently available, said Vanessa Fajans-Turner, executive director of Environmental Advocates NY.“This is product agnostic. This is not a referendum on how we shop or what we shop for,” she said. “There are alternatives for packaging.”There’s also significant labor opposition to the bill, and supporters recognize the challenge.The New York State Conference of Teamsters and United Steelworkers District 4 oppose the bill, as does the New York State AFL-CIO.The steelworkers oppose the inclusion of paper products, given the high recycling rate already, while the teamsters who represent some sanitation workers have concerns about the potential for new organizations to be responsible for collecting waste.“This legislation is a direct assault on organized labor,” the Teamsters opposition memo states. “This legislation allows municipal waste removal forces, both public employee and currently contracted private companies, to be replaced by a state supervised private collection force without any regard to workers’ rights.”Meera Joshi, New York City deputy mayor for operations, said there have been discussions with organized labor, and the city agrees there might be some protections that could be added.The city estimates it would get $150 million if the bill were enacted, and it would have to pay less to ship waste to landfills, meaning additional savings.“Our sanitation system covers all the cost of packaging that’s not recycled,” Joshi said in an interview. “Many states have adopted this. … We’re not reinventing the wheel here.”Assembly Democrats are sensitive to the prospect of higher costs being passed on to consumers. The Assembly conferenced on the bill earlier this week.Assemblymember Carrie Woerner, a Democrat from Saratoga County, said that any policies that would increase costs in an inflationary environment are a concern. She said she has a “conceptual appreciation” for the goals of the bill.But she said she has questions about the time lines, given how many food suppliers are national brands and would face difficulty specifically making changes in New York. Policymakers should consider aligning implementation with California’s measure, which was signed in 2022, she said.“I think the industry is trying hard to reduce the plastics they use and improve recyclability,” Woerner said. Food suppliers “have to be on a time line that is consistent from state to state. California got there first.”Glick said the gradual implementation of the requirements to reduce plastics and other packaging helps address cost concerns.“We're just giving them an incentive to be innovative,” she said. “The less packaging they use, the less they pay into a fund. So they reduce their costs and the less packaging they use, the less money they spend on that material. So it's just an excuse to raise prices.”The opposition from companies, including makers of plastics represented by the American Chemistry Council, has been consistent since environmental groups began pushing for an extended producer responsibility program several years ago.The chemical industry opposes restrictions on chemical recycling counting as recycling, arguing it unfairly bars the technology.Sen. Peter Harckham, the chair of the Environmental Conservation Committee, has pointed out the bill includes a provision requiring a report every three years that could spur changes to the definition by lawmakers.Business groups, chemical makers and product manufacturers of everything from toys and home appliances to footwear have also objected to a list of chemicals that would bar material from being recycled. There would also be a ban on additional toxic substances in packaging including various chemicals used to make plastics, flame retardants and PFAS.“This overly broad prohibition disregards sound science and could potentially have major unintended socioeconomic, environmental, and public health consequences by arbitrarily eliminating packaging best suited for, among other uses, food preservation, medical supply and device protection and hazardous materials containers,” the groups wrote in a memo opposing the bill.Environmental advocates in the past were split on different versions of the measure and strategies to get it passed. So that has made it even more difficult to get a bill passed.Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed her own version of the extended producer responsibility for packaging plan in her 2022 and 2023 budget proposals, but her administration has concerns about the current version.That includes the large number of staff they expect would be needed to implement it.This year, however, a key organization hired a high-powered and well-connected lobbyist with close ties to Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie to work on the bill.Beyond Plastics retained the firm of Patrick Jenkins, Heastie’s former college roommate, on May 1, according to public records. The group is based at Bennington College in Vermont and led by former EPA regional administrator Judith Enck.“We don’t have the firepower that Albany lobbyists have, but we could only afford him for a month,” Enck said.So far, it appears to have helped: Shortly afterward, the measure moved through several key Assembly committees.But opponents have retained many more lobbyists to block the bill, and national companies have been actively involved in the effort.Enck said she’s open to some changes, including around recycled content requirements for plastics due to potential health concerns about plastic touching food and beverages.One issue she won’t budge on, though: any allowance for chemical recycling. And she’s pushing the Legislature to also keep it out of any final deal.“The industry opposition is ferocious to say the least, and we're trying to counter that with grassroots support,” Enck said. “This is the closest we’ve ever been.”Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

Chemicals
Waste
Climate

Suggested Viewing

Toxic Business

A documentary on the profits international chemical companies are gaining in Africa at cost of the health of small-scaled-farmers and consumers.International chemical companies sell high toxic agro-chemicals in Kenya, which are banned since long in Europe. They are banned because their ingredients cause cancer and have a major negative impact on the nature and environment. Anyhow – in developing countries like Kenya those toxic chemicals are sold without any regulations through small agro-shops all over the country. The small scaled farmers do believe in the promises of better and safer harvest those companies give. Today, the use of pesticides even inside the villages is already a daily business. Furthermore many of them already depend on hybrid seeds, old and resistant seeds supplants. Most of the consumers do not have the knowledge, how dangerous those agro-chemicals are: the WHO announced that annually 346.000 people die, caused by accidentally poisoning with those chemicals, 2/3 of them within developing countries.In the face of world food, industry is trying to push its way into the markets. On the contrary, statistics and alternative farming methods in East Africa show that it no longer needs chemicals and hybrid seeds to feed the world, but a general rethinking.

Agriculture
Chemicals
Business

Unacceptable Risk: Dr. Margaret Kripke on Cancer and the Environment

Unacceptable Risk tells the story of a prominent cancer researcher who rethinks her assumptions about the causes of cancer and the true burden of environmentally-induced cancers.

Chemicals
Science
Health

We Trees

Ever wonder what trees think of us now that we have created a climate disaster? This 2-minute film answers that question. As Bill McKibben recently tweeted about the film, “Who speaks for trees? In this short and elegant video, the trees themselves.” It has been screened at Green Fest (Serbia), The Colorado Environmental Film Festival, The Wildlife Conservation Film Festival and Winner of Merit at the Nature Without Borders Film Festival.

Forests
Chemicals
Climate

The Story of Plastic

A searing expose uncovering the ugly truth behind the global plastic pollution crisis. Striking footage shot over three continents illustrates the ongoing catastrophe: fields full of garbage, veritable mountains of trash; rivers and seas clogged with waste; and skies choked with poisons from plastic production and recycling processes with no end in sight. Original animations, interviews with experts and activists, and never-before-filmed scenes reveal the disastrous consequences of the plastic flood around the world – and the global movement rising up in response.

Chemicals
Pollution
Crisis

Sprayed

An exploration of what happens when whole communities get exposed to toxins: Naled sprayed on Miami residents to fight Zika virus, Agent Orange sprayed on the Vietcong, and release of GMO mosquitoes in Brazil with pyriproxyfen added to drinking water to fight dengue. What are the results for nature and humanity? We meet Agent Orange survivors at Vietnamese detoxification and rehabilitation centers, parents of babies born with microcephaly from Zika virus, and Florida residents dealing with efforts to kill mosquitoes carrying Zika virus. Perspectives of doctors, scientists, and politicians are balanced with voices of ordinary citizens and victims to explore concerns about the potential impact on current and future generations.

Chemicals
Health
Science

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