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In one of its few major Clean Air Act (CAA) rulemaking actions that is not deregulatory, the Trump EPA is proposing to add significant requirements to its existing National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) for the Miscellaneous Organic Chemical Manufacturing source category. Called the MON, the existing rule covers an estimated 201 facilities […]
In its current review of its 2012 National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for particulate matter (PM), the EPA may need to closely consider a new report from the National Toxicology Program (NTP) on the relationship between traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) and hypertension during pregnancy.
Following an evaluation of the carcinogenic risks posed by ethylene oxide (EtO), which the EPA released in 2016, and a follow-up National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) for EtO, the EPA has decided that the health risks posed by EtO air emissions are “significantly higher” than previously believed.
Depending on who is talking, the federal government is either meeting its obligations to ensure that environmental justice (EJ) is provided equally to all U.S. citizens or is merely taking credit for progress on EJ that is either not occurring or is falling well short of what is needed.
In its February 2019 Action Plan for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), the EPA said it planned to consider listing some PFAS under the federal Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) (Section 313 of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) and Section 6607 of the Pollution Prevention Act (PPA)). The Agency has now taken the […]
In Montana v. United States (1981), the U.S. Supreme Court found that Indian tribes do not have civil or criminal jurisdiction over nontribal members within a reservation. This opinion has proven to be one of the clearest indications that Indian tribes possess no authority over lands they do not own (called non-Indian fee lands), even […]
The growing severity of flooding, storm surge, and wildfires brought on by climate change increases the risk that these events will spread contamination from Superfund sites and damage remedies put in place to control those risks. In a new report, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that 60% (945 of 1,571) of all nonfederal […]
The EPA has issued a policy memo largely to accommodate industry concerns about the rigidity of the Clean Air Act’s (CAA) New Source Review (NSR) program, as it has been implemented by the Agency, as well as states with CAA permitting authority.
On its way to becoming a final rule, an odd thing happened to an EPA proposal that would withdraw requirements promulgated by the Obama administration—major players in the affected sector itself have come out against the proposal and requested that the Agency preserve the provisions it wants to eliminate.
An assemblage of environmental, public health, and worker rights groups filed three challenges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit against the chemical Risk Evaluation Rule the EPA issued in July 2017 as required by the 2016 amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Petitioners also challenged aspects of the Agency’s […]