The Environmental Protection Agency, for the first time ever, is beginning the process of adding a new substance to the list of hazardous air pollutants it regulates.
The EPA will issue a notice on Thursday granting decadeold petitions to add 1-bromopropane, or 1-BP, also known as n-propyl bromide, to the list of hazardous air pollutants, after the agency determined it causes adverse human health effects, including cancer, agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler told the Washington Examiner.
The list of hazardous air pollutants was last updated in 1990 when Congress amended the Clean Air Act. Since then, the EPA has modified the list and reduced its number from 189 to 187, but it has never once added a substance.
“This is a process that can be replicated in the future for other additions to the hazardous air pollutant list,” Wheeler said in an interview. “I think it shows that this administration is really taking serious the Clean Air Act and improving air quality for everyone.”
1-BP is a chemical used in applications such as electronics cleaning, dry cleaning, and adhesives, as well as in pharmaceutical and agricultural product manufacturing, according to the EPA.
In its 2011 petition, New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation raised concerns that use of 1-BP was rapidly increasing, already at a rate of 10% to 15% each year. The Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance, which represents companies that make and use chlorinated solvents, also petitioned the agency to list 1-BP back in 2010.
California has already listed 1-BP as a “developmental and reproductive (male and female) toxicant and as a carcinogen” under state environmental laws, state air regulators told the EPA in 2017 comments.
Wheeler acknowledged it’s been 10 years since the EPA first received petitions on 1-BP, but he largely blamed the delay on the Obama administration.
“They seemed to have one singular mindset, and that was carbon dioxide,” he said of the Obama EPA. “They let a lot of things go.”
Environmentalists and former EPA officials, though, have slammed the Trump EPA for neglecting climate change and for extensively rolling back Obama-era regulations, including on air and water pollution. In April, the EPA declined to strengthen national standards for industrial soot pollution, rejecting tighter limits environmentalists and the agency’s own scientists said were needed to protect public health.
Under the Obama administration, in 2015, the EPA took comment on the two petitions on 1-BP and reviewed them, along with relevant scientific research, according to a timeline on the EPA’s website. In 2017, just before the administration left office, the EPA issued a draft rationale for granting the petitions.
The EPA had to craft an entirely new process for how to add substances to its list of hazardous air pollutants, Wheeler said.
Environmental groups have previously expressed support for listing 1-BP and have demanded the EPA move more quickly. In 2017 comments, the Sierra Club, along with local California and Kentucky environmental groups, said the listing was “long overdue” and argued the EPA had violated the Clean Air Act by taking so long.
Such petitions are supposed to be considered within 18 months after the EPA determines they are complete, meaning the agency’s deadline to take action was Aug. 8, 2016, the groups said then.
Some chemical makers have opposed the EPA taking steps to list 1-BP. In 2017 comments, ICL Industrial Products told the EPA 1-BP “should not pose negative health impact in controlled environment,” and, therefore, listing the substance is “not justified.”
The EPA must still go through a notice-and-comment rule-making process to make the 1-BP listing official, but Wheeler said he doesn’t foresee any “showstoppers” that would refute the scientific evidence the agency has reviewed showing the substance is harmful.
He added that once 1-BP is formally listed as a hazardous air pollutant, he’d anticipate the EPA would issue new emissions standards.
