Sign up for our free email newsletter, Watchdog, a weekly look at public integrity reporters.
        Following a Center for Public Integrity investigation into decades-long methylene chloride deaths, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2019 banned the sale of paint strippers containing the ingredient to consumers, and victims’ relatives and safety advocates continue to launch a public pressure campaign . The Environmental Protection Agency is taking action.
       Sign up for our free weekly Watchdog newsletter to get the latest inequality news from community organizations.
        The coalition is demanding more: workers, they say, are not protected by narrow restrictions. The vast majority of deaths from methylene chloride exposure occur at work. Paint removers aren’t the only products where you can find them.
       Now the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to ban most uses of methylene chloride—some exceptions are still in effect, but they are far fewer.
        “I’m a little shocked, you know?” Brian Wynn’s 31-year-old brother, Drew, died in 2017 while removing paint from the company’s walk-in refrigerator. Wynn initially thought the EPA’s 2019 action against paint strippers “would be the furthest we could go—we were met with a brick wall of funded lobbyists and Congress who were paid to stop people like this.” like us and made sure their profits came first and safety.” “
       The proposed rule would ban the use of methylene chloride in all consumer products and “most industrial and commercial applications,” the agency said in a statement last week.
        The Environmental Protection Agency said it hopes the rule will take effect in August 2024. Federal regulations must go through a set process that gives the public the opportunity to influence the final outcome.
        This chemical, also known as methylene chloride, is found on retail shelves in products such as aerosol degreasers and brush cleaners used in paints and coatings. It is used in commercial adhesives and sealants. Manufacturers use it to make other chemicals.
       The agency said at least 85 people have died from rapid exposure to methylene chloride since 1980, including workers who received safety training and protective equipment.
        That figure comes from a 2021 study by OSHA and the University of California, San Francisco, which calculated the current death toll based on earlier Public Integrity counts. This number is almost certainly an underestimate because one of the ways methylene chloride kills people is by causing cardiovascular disease, which to an observer looks like death from natural causes unless one is willing to do toxicology studies.
        Nate Bradford Jr. works to preserve Black agricultural livelihoods. This season of Heist chronicles his fight for survival against the government’s history of discrimination against black farmers. Subscribe to get behind-the-scenes info and notifications when new episodes are released.
       According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the chemical has also caused “serious and long-term health effects” such as cancer in people exposed to the chemical, but not at fatal levels.
       “The dangers of methylene chloride are well known,” the agency wrote in the proposed rule.
        A 2015 Public Integrity investigation found that opportunities for life-saving intervention had been repeatedly missed since the 1970s. However, more deaths occurred after the Environmental Protection Agency first proposed the rule in January 2017, late in the Obama administration, and the Trump administration delayed the proposal until it was forced to act.
        Liz Hitchcock, director of Safer Chemicals for Healthier Families, a federal policy initiative for a toxic-free future, is among those who have worked for years to end the carnage caused by methylene chloride. She welcomed the announcement of the proposed ban as a “momentous day”.
        “Again, people are dying from using these chemicals,” she said. “When people use these chemicals, people nearby get sick and people develop chronic diseases due to the use of these chemicals. We want to make sure we protect as many people as possible.”
       But she was glad to hear that the Environmental Protection Agency believes the rule won’t be finalized for another 15 months.
        Lauren Atkins, whose 31-year-old son Joshua died in 2018 after using paint stripper to paint his BMX bike, is concerned that its use will not be banned. She was devastated to see these holes in the ad.
        “I almost jumped out of my shoes until I got through the whole book, and then I felt so sad,” Atkins said. After her son’s death, her goal was to remove methylene chloride from the market so it would not kill. anyone else. “I lost my son, but my son lost everything.”
        The Environmental Protection Agency said the chemical’s use in drug production is not covered by the Toxic Substances Control Act, so it is not prohibited by the proposed regulations. The agency said workers who continue to use methylene chloride in other activities permitted under the proposal would be protected by the new “Occupational Chemical Control Program with Strict Exposure Limits.” Methylene chloride can be fatal when vapors accumulate in enclosed spaces.
        Certain large-scale uses will remain within these exemptions, including “critical” or “safety-critical” work by the military, NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration, and their contractors; use in laboratories; The US and companies that use it as a reagent or produce it for permitted purposes, the Environmental Protection Agency said.
        With the exception of federal agencies, methylene chloride is no longer found in paint strippers. This product is a common cause of death among workers renovating old bathtubs in homes and apartments.
       And methylene chloride will no longer be allowed to be used in commercial and industrial steam degreasing, adhesive removal, textile finishing, liquid lubricants, hobby glues and a long list of other uses.
       “Currently, approximately 845,000 people are exposed to methylene chloride in the workplace,” the Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement. “Under the EPA proposal, fewer than 10,000 workers are expected to continue using methylene chloride and undergo required chemical protection programs in the workplace from Unjustified risks.”
        Dr. Robert Harrison, a clinical professor of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, has been working on methylene chloride for about a decade. He said the Environmental Protection Agency is following the proposal to try to balance safety with economic and national security concerns, and he found the scope of the ban encouraging.
        “I think this is a victory. This is a win for workers,” said Harrison, who was involved in a 2021 study on chemical-related deaths. “This sets a very good precedent for making decisions and establishing principles based on clear science… We must phase out these toxic chemicals in favor of safer alternatives that do more harm than good.”
        You may think that chemicals should not be sold on the market unless they are found to be safe. But that’s not how the American system works.
        Concerns about chemical safety prompted Congress to pass the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1976, which imposed certain requirements on chemicals. But the measures are widely seen as weak, leaving the Environmental Protection Agency without authority to make broad safety assessments. The Federal Inventory, published in 1982, lists approximately 62,000 chemicals, and that number continues to grow.
        In 2016, Congress amended TSCA to authorize the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct chemical risk assessments. Methylene chloride was the first problem the agency addressed.
       “That’s why we’re trying to reform TSCA,” said Hitchcock, who shared with congressional offices public integrity investigations during that period as prime examples of fatal inaction.
        The next step in the proposed methylene chloride ban will be a 60-day public comment period. People will be able to have their say on the EPA’s agenda, and safety advocates are rallying around the issue.
        “This is a big step forward for public health, but it’s not without its downsides,” Hitchcock said. She wanted to see comments “calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to adopt the strongest regulations possible.”
        Harrison once said that chemical regulation in the United States progressed extremely slowly until glaciers began to overtake it. But he sees progress since the 2016 TSCA amendments. The new regulation on methylene chloride gives him hope.
       “There are many other chemicals that could follow the U.S. decision on methylene chloride,” he said.
        Public Integrity has no paywall and does not accept advertising so our investigative journalism can have the broadest possible impact on solving inequality in America. Our work is possible thanks to the support of people like you.
       Jamie Smith Hopkins is an editor and senior reporter for the Center for Public Integrity. Her work includes other works by Jamie Smith Hopkins.
        The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit investigative journalism organization focused on inequality in America. We do not accept advertising or charge people to read our work.
        This article first appeared in Center for Public Integrity and republished under a Creative Commons license.