TITLE: How Tennessee has been impacted by the fossil fuel byproduct ethylene oxide
https://wpln.org/post/ethylene-oxide-from-mustard-gas-in-wwi-to-medical-sterilization-in-tennessee/
EXCERPT: Ethylene oxide — a colorless, faintly sweet-smelling gas — can damage DNA and increase cancer risks.
Short-term exposure to the gas can cause lung injury, headaches, nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath and cyanosis, the bluing of skin from a lack of oxygen.
Chronic exposure increases risks for lymphoma, leukemia and breast cancer. The gas is also associated with stomach cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute, as well as reproductive problems, neurotoxicity and heightened allergic reactions. Animal studies have also linked gas inhalation to tumors in the brain, lungs, connective tissue, uterus and mammary glands.
Last week, a study from Johns Hopkins University found that ethylene oxide facilities in Louisiana were causing pollution at levels far exceeding prior federal estimates — even six miles downwind from facilities.
“We saw concentrations hitting 40 parts per billion, which is more [than] a thousand times higher than the accepted risk for lifetime exposure,” Peter DeCarlo, the study’s lead author and environmental professor at the university, told the Johns Hopkins Hub.
A ProPublica analysis of cancer hotspots found that the gas was the single biggest contributor to excess industrial cancer risk from air pollutants in the U.S.
Ethylene oxide: from World War I chemical weapon to ubiquitous chemical
Ethylene oxide is used today to manufacture other chemicals put in cleaners, laundry detergents, soaps, cosmetics, antifreeze, clothes, asphalt, cement, batteries, plastic and more. The gas is also used to sterilize food — which has resulted in the European Union banning some U.S. food imports — and as much as 50% of medical equipment in the U.S.
The gas was first used on an industrial scale during World War I, when ethylene oxide was used to create the chemical weapon mustard gas and explosives. After the war, the fledgling industry found other ways to survive.
By the 1930s, the gas was being used as an insecticide to fumigate hospitals.
Ethylene oxide is a product of the fossil fuel industry
Ethylene oxide is closely intertwined with the fossil fuel industry: It is derived from fossil fuels and is used in many petrochemical products like plastic bottles and polyester clothing.
Ethylene oxide is produced from ethylene, which is produced from petroleum hydrocarbons, namely crude oil. The oil corporation Shell is one of the largest global producers of ethylene oxide, according to Shell.
The ethylene oxide industry also mirrors the fossil fuel industry in a few key ways. Production and use of the gas have serious health consequences, which have been known for 70 years. In 1981, a Shell executive said ethylene oxide was the “biggest problem” regarding industrial carcinogens.
Some government agencies and industry groups like the American Chemistry Council have denied its harms and actively opposed environmental regulations.
TITLE: How America’s “Most Powerful Lobby” Is Stifling Efforts to Reform Oil Well Cleanup in State After State
https://www.propublica.org/article/oil-industry-lobbying-unplugged-wells
EXCERPT: Because the oil and gas industry is largely governed at the state level, states banded together in the 1930s with the approval of Congress, and more recently with federal funding, to share best practices for regulating oil. The resulting organization, the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, has evolved into a forum where, much as happened in New Mexico, the industry influences the ideas that regulators take back to their states and write into the rules governing oil companies.
This was on full display in October at the commission’s annual conference, hosted among Utah’s Wasatch Mountains, which were blanketed by autumnal reds and yellows. With Chevron, ExxonMobil and Oxy Petroleum among the conference’s largest sponsors, oil and gas regulators from across the country had gathered at the Chateaux Deer Valley, an upscale ski resort overlooking Park City’s renowned pistes.
As the conference began, regulators were clear-eyed that taxpayers could be saddled with the cost of plugging orphan wells.
“This year, I spent $29 million, and somehow that’s still not enough,” Jason Harmon, one of West Virginia’s head oil regulators, said about his state’s well-plugging efforts.
Catherine Dickert, New York’s top oil regulator, noted that wells in her state get passed to ever-smaller companies “until finally they get transferred to somebody who owns two wells that never, ever will be able to plug them.”
And cleanup funds are “woefully inadequate in Pennsylvania right now,” Kurt Klapkowski, the commonwealth’s lead oil regulator, told the attendees. “And we’ve gotten a lot of opposition about increasing that.”
But as the conference progressed, talk of bonding regulations gave way to discussions of repurposing old wells. Perhaps natural gas would still be needed to develop hydrogen fuel, an ExxonMobil representative discussed on a panel at the conference. Or wells could be used for storing captured carbon dioxide, an Oxy Petroleum representative said on another. State regulators returned home with these and other pitches from the oil industry on how to manage aging oil fields.
In addition to conferences, the organization pens pro-oil and gas resolutions that it has placed in state legislatures. In these resolutions, its members have called on the federal government to minimize regulations on climate-warming gasses, increase oil-related tax credits and shield certain royalty owners from cleanup costs. States including Wyoming, Utah and Oklahoma, among others, have passed resolutions pushed by the commission.
By the 1970s, the Department of Justice was arguing that the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission had largely become a lobbying organization. Critics today say the commission is hampering reform.
“They’re this unique mechanism for corporate capture,” said Jesse Coleman, a senior researcher with public interest watchdog organization Documented who has tracked the commission for years. “They get to act as this impartial source of information, when in reality, they’re on the industry side.”
While about 60% of the people involved with the group were government officials, a quarter worked in the oil and gas industry, according to a 2021 membership survey Documented obtained via a public records request. The Environmental Defense Fund is typically the only green group in the room.
The survey also found that people involved with the group saw its role as promoting “diverse viewpoints on climate related issues” and “fighting back against measures that seek to ‘keep it in the ground’” — the “it” referring to climate-warming fossil fuels.
TITLE: Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Block Progress Again — This Time on Plastics
https://therevelator.org/fossil-fuel-lobbyists/
EXCERPT: Plastic production has increased nearly 230-fold in the past 70 years, with this persistent, mostly petrochemical-based material now found in ecosystems across the globe and the bodies of countless species, including our own. Fossil fuel and chemical companies have invested billions of dollars into large-scale plastic production projects over the last decade.
As a result, a staggering 196 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists signed up for the most recent round of meetings [at the United Nations Environment Program’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution] in Ottawa, a 37% increase since the third wave of negotiations at the end of 2023. Their group was seven times larger than the Indigenous Peoples Caucus and three times larger than the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastic Treaty.
This power imbalance makes it all the more unjust that industry crowded out the voices of those most affected by plastic pollution. Despite ambitious efforts by states such as Rwanda and Peru, tactics of deliberate obstruction and delay by vested interests resulted in a draft text muddled with uncertainties. Proposed intersessional work also fails to address the critical issue of primary plastic polymer production and makes the role of observers — including frontline communities and Indigenous people — unclear.
With no first draft of the Global Plastics Treaty decided, lobbyists and oil-producing states continue to protect their right to produce plastic without cleaning it up — and communities around the world remain burdened by an escalating waste crisis.
It is patently obvious that progress is more difficult, if not impossible, when those profiting from the planetary emergency enjoy so much influence over how — and whether — we address it. The industry lobby too often gains a preferential platform due to its vast funds and position in government backrooms, and that needs to end.
"By the 1930s, the gas was being used as an insecticide to fumigate hospitals." So it is not only the hospital food that makes people feel sicker when they are in the hospital.