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The U.S. Environmental Safety Company has denied a request from the Washington State Division of Ecology to set tighter limits for dangerous chemical substances utilized in manufacturing that discover their method into the state’s waterways.
Ecology petitioned the federal authorities final month to decrease the allowable restrict for polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, in shopper merchandise. The present federal customary for PCBs is much less strict than Washington’s clear water customary, which companies and producers say is not possible to satisfy with present know-how.
That can lead to some chemical substances left over from manufacturing flowing into rivers and different waterways. Research present PCBs can hurt fish and pose well being dangers for people.
State lawmakers handed a invoice unanimously final yr requiring Ecology to petition the EPA to reexamine the federal PCB limits beneath the Poisonous Substances Management Act.
In its April 4 denial of the petition, the EPA stated that although it shares Washington’s considerations about PCB air pollution, the state’s request and the knowledge it offered didn’t show that altering the federal limits was crucial at the moment.
“It’s disappointing however not fully stunning,” invoice sponsor Senate Majority Chief Andy Billig, D-Spokane, advised the Washington State Normal. “We had been making an attempt to do a wake-up name and get the federal authorities’s consideration on this downside. I believe we nonetheless achieved that.”
Though federal legal guidelines handed within the Seventies outlawed PCBs in lots of shopper merchandise, some can nonetheless be current as a byproduct of some manufacturing processes, akin to recycling newspapers or magazines with coloured ink and making paint used on roads.
The federal Poisonous Substances Management Act limits PCBs to 50 elements per million, whereas the water high quality customary presently solely permits for seven elements per quadrillion.
So, whereas environmentalists in Washington try to scrub decades-old PCB air pollution from waterways, a small quantity of latest PCB contamination nonetheless results in them.
PCB water air pollution is especially related in Spokane, the place producers, environmentalists and enterprise teams have all sought methods to maintain PCBs out of the area’s water, together with the Spokane River.
Producers have argued the federal authorities’s water high quality requirements are nearly not possible to satisfy with present chemical rules that permit for some PCBs. In December, The Spokesman-Evaluation reported that Washington enterprise teams, together with these situated close to the Spokane River, sued the EPA over its 2022 water high quality requirements.
Supporters of the state legislation handed final yr, together with environmentalists and enterprise teams, stated on the time that altering the federal chemical customary might start to chop PCBs out on the supply and make it simpler to stick to the stricter water requirements.
Within the EPA response denying the state’s petition, Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for the Workplace of Chemical Security and Air pollution Prevention, wrote the company is continuous to analysis the “complicated points” of inadvertently generated PCBs.
Earlier than proposing extra stringent rules on these chemical substances, Freedhoff stated the company needs extra info to know how they find yourself in U.S. waters.
“The Company continues to work in direction of higher understanding and lowering exposures to PCBs,” Freedhoff wrote.
Though the EPA denied Ecology’s petition, the division stated it’s nonetheless dedicated to discovering methods to scale back PCBs.
“We proceed to imagine that stricter PCB limits in shopper merchandise are possible,” the division acknowledged Thursday. “We strongly encourage producers, retailers, and different regulatory our bodies to scale back human well being and environmental impacts by voluntarily lowering inadvertent PCBs in merchandise.”
Billig, who is not going to be within the Legislature subsequent yr, stated the state must discover a strategy to regulate these merchandise that doesn’t conflict with the federal authorities’s authority.
Washington is already shifting in the appropriate path by not buying yellow highway paint, a typical materials the place PCBs are discovered, Billig stated. He added the state ought to do extra to incentivize producers to not use the chemical substances of their merchandise or packaging.
“If the federal authorities is just not going to vary their method, then we as a state want to determine a strategy to shield our waterways,” Billig stated. “We’re not going to cease in search of options.”
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