Chemical manufacturer launched aggressive campaign instead of reining in pollution, according to documents

This article is more than 9 months old

This article is more than 9 months old

Facing public pressure to rein in its pollution, a Japanese chemical manufacturer has instead launched an aggressive, years-long campaign to undermine the science showing that its compounds could cause cancer, according to newly released documents reviewed by the Guardian.

Chloroprene, the primary constituent of the synthetic rubber neoprene, is the major air pollutant in the town of Reserve, Louisiana, an area which according to the Environment Protection Agency has the highest risk of cancer due to airborne toxins anywhere in the US.

The town, and the chemicals plant operated by Denka Performance Elastomer, is the subject of a year-long Guardian reporting project, Cancer Town.

Robert Taylor, director of the Concerned Citizens of St John – the community group leading the fight for clean air in the town – said a reversal of the EPA classification would be “devastating” for his fellow residents.

“I think it’s very audacious of them to challenge all of this work that the government has done. To me it’s indicative of how callous these people are and how they really just don’t care about the people here,” Taylor, who has numerous relatives that have died of cancer he blames on the plant, said. “If they are successful it would leave us at the mercy of this plant.”

In 2010, the EPA concluded an extensive, independent, peer-reviewed assessment of chloroprene which found that the compound was “likely to be carcinogenic to humans”. The federal government has recommended a maximum level of chloroprene humans should inhale over a lifetime as 0.2 micrograms a cubic metre. The agency, however, doesn’t enforce its guidelines.

For years Denka has been quietly fighting to discount the underlying science that proves chloroprene is a dangerous carcinogen even in low amounts. Denka argues that lifetime chloroprene exposure levels could be 156 times higher than what the EPA has determined and that the chemical shouldn’t be considered a likely carcinogen.

A series of documents, shared with the Guardian and released to lawyers for Reserve residents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), shows the company and its contractors have pursued EPA scientists and pushed them to accept their own new modeling, which Denka has offered multiple new peer-reviewed studies to try to bolster.

Emails show EPA officials resisting Denka’s efforts.

A spokesman for Denka said the company is “dedicated to sound science” and stated it has “worked collaboratively with EPA to seek EPA’s reconsideration of the faulty science” underlying the 2010 classification.

The plant, named the Pontchartrain Works facility, was built by the US chemicals giant DuPont in the mid-1960s, and began producing neoprene in 1968. DuPont sold the facility to Denka in 2015, shortly before the EPA found that a census tract next door to the plant had a cancer risk rate 5o times the national average.

Denka’s campaign began shortly after Donald Trump won election and just days before he took office, with an “urgent” memo to the presidential transition team on 17 January 2017, accusing EPA of “using faulty and highly inflated risk data”.

The company said the EPA’s findings about the dangers of chloroprene would hurt its bottom line, according to another set of public records obtained by the Sierra Club under the FOIA.

“These studies will result in unwarranted compliance costs that pose a direct threat to [Denka’s] ability to keep its facility open and to keep jobs in Louisiana,” Denka said.

'It’s been killing us for 50 years': residents on living in Cancer Town Read more

A Denka spokesman pointed to the $35m spent by the company to install emissions controls in recent years. The company said these installations have reduced chloroprene emissions by 86%, but it has been challenged on this claim by the Louisiana department of environmental quality (LDEQ). The plant continues to emit chloroprene above the 0.2 EPA guideline, according to the agency.

Emails show lawyers working for Denka repeatedly seeking meetings with top EPA officials throughout 2017. In September 2017, Ramboll Environ, Denka’s consultants, testified at a Republican-run House hearing to criticize the chloroprene review as bad science.

Denka’s crusade continued through 2019, new records reviewed by the Guardian show. Ken McQueen, EPA’s regional administrator over Louisiana, met with the company as recently as 30 October.

A Denka spokesman said the purpose of this meeting was “to introduce plant management and executives” to EPA officials and that meeting included a short update on Denka’s request for reconsideration of the agency’s chloroprene findings.

Emails earlier this year show EPA officials repeatedly pushing back on Denka’s campaign, arguing that the new studies Denka presented weren’t enough and that the full model would have to undergo internal peer review at the agency.

The EPA has since paused its reconsideration of chloroprene until that peer review is complete, the agency confirmed by providing the Guardian with a letter written from the air quality planning director, Peter Tsirigotis, to Louisiana’s environment secretary, Chuck Carr Brown, on 23 September.

Tsirigotis noted that EPA’s chloroprene review is not an air quality standard and is not used directly to regulate plants.

“Risk is one factor that we need to consider, along with information on costs, energy, safety, control technologies and other relevant factors,” Tsirigotis said.

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Emails show the EPA’s Tina Bahadori, who was at the time director of the National Center for Environmental Assessment, insisting that Denka’s model be further analyzed by the agency.

On 6 June, she explained that Denka’s physiologically-based pharmacokinetic, or PBPK model – must pass peer review before it could factor into any of EPA’s decisions. A PBPK model is a technique for predicting how a human or animal will absorb and metabolize a chemical.

“I want to emphasize … the focus of this engagement is on the model and its acceptability in the context of this request for reconsideration,” Bahadori told Harvey Clewell, the principal consultant at Ramboll Environ. “We are not having a discussion about the risk calculations.”

Clewell – who has also conducted tobacco industry-funded studies with his models - pushed back in two more emails, asking if protocol had changed.

“No, nothing has changed,” Bahadori said.

Clewell declined to answer specific questions from the Guardian, citing “client confidentiality”, but stated that company’s work for Denka “meets the highest scientific, professional and ethical standard”.

“We are confident that the ongoing EPA quality assurance review and upcoming EPA peer review of the chloroprene PBPK model will find our methodology and conclusions to be scientifically valid, he said on behalf of the company.

A Denka spokesman said the company believes “a robust and thorough peer review process is the best way to reach a sound scientific consensus”.

Experts who have reviewed the situation say that if Denka is successful in its appeal, it could have license to release even more chloroprene into the air in Reserve, avoiding possible future regulations. Denka is already facing a civil suit in the state courts involving dozens of local plaintiffs under nuisance abatement laws.

The decision on chloroprene could also set a precedent for other chemical manufacturers to seek reviews to the science that has deemed their products unsafe.

Penny Fenner-Crisp, the former deputy director and senior advisor for EPA’s pesticide program who is now retired, said the type of model Denka is backing is also under discussion in evaluations of two industrial solvents that make people ill, methylene chloride and NMP.

“It’s a big deal. I think it’s an appropriate big deal because it is providing a tool to better understand at least partially the similarities and differences between the test animals and people,” Fenner-Crisp said.

But Sonya Lunder, a senior toxics adviser Sierra Club, said Denka’s fight for lax guidance on chloroprene fits a broader trend of industry trying to delay, complicate and control the regulatory process.

“I think industry knows that these numbers have an incredibly powerful impact, or can, on downstream regulation,” she said.