Trump's EPA Helped Erase Records of Almost 270,000 Pounds of Carcinogenic Pollution

The Intercept Briefing

The Intercept

Politics, Unknown, Daily News, History, News

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

The Environmental Protection Agency under the Trump administration invited companies to retroactively amend emissions records of a deadly carcinogenic chemical. This week on Intercepted: Investigative reporter Sharon Lerner explains how 270,000 pounds of the chemical ethylene oxide vanished from the public record right after the EPA determined that it was more toxic than previously known. Ethylene oxide is a colorless and odorless gas used to produce many consumer goods and used extensively as an agent in the sterilization of medical equipment.

Despite the EPA’s transition to new leadership under the Biden administration, regulatory capture is a persistent obstacle in the agency’s ability to protect public health and the environment. And as Lerner reports, a disproportionate number of poor communities and communities of color have yet to be alerted to the fact that elevated levels of cancer-causing ethylene oxide permeate the air they breathe. We also hear from a group of Texas women that believes their breast cancer diagnoses are linked to exposure to the chemical.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is intercepted.
0:30.0	I'm Roger Hodg, the deputy editor of the intercept and long time editor of
0:42.2	Sharon Learner. One of our investigative reporters who covers the environment and
0:48.7	toxic pollution. We've been chasing this story for years now that really gets
0:56.9	started in 2018 when the EPA issued a national air toxic assessment. Suddenly,
1:05.6	when that new assessment comes out, hundreds of communities around the country have a serious
1:12.0	air pollution problem. This latest story is called tracking the invisible killer.
1:19.9	One of the things that Sharon found as she was reporting was that the public data
1:26.0	in the EPA's databases that are buried in its website was that the data was changing.
1:36.6	Sure, it starts digging, talking to experts, asking the EPA what's going on.
1:42.8	The companies are saying, well, we went back and checked and we discovered that we had over-reported.
1:49.6	Well, why is this? Well, in 2018, suddenly, they had a big problem because they were way
1:55.4	over the safety limit. Well, why did that happen? Well, we suspected that maybe the Trump EPA had something
2:07.3	to do with that. The EPA asked them, invited them to go back and revise their emissions.
2:18.0	And that is a much more pernicious story. What Sharon's reporting in this story and many others
2:34.3	demonstrates is that you can't trust the EPA. You have to put pressure on the EPA and put pressure
2:42.8	on the government because the regulatory agencies are confronted with multi-billion dollar propaganda,
2:53.3	misinformation budgets from industry. They're outgunned. Even when the EPA is not actively corrupt
3:01.0	as it was under Trump, Ethelene Oxide is just one example. The Trump administration gutted,
3:07.4	and the damage they did will take a long time to undo. But what does all this translate to?
3:18.0	It translates to how many people are we going to sacrifice for these conveniences that these chemicals
3:26.5	provide for people. How many thousands of people per million are you willing to kill? But ultimately,
	...

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