Environmental and public health activists cheered the development, saying EPA should have banned vinyl chloride years ago.
Vinyl chloride is among a range of chemicals eligible for review, and “EPA could begin a risk evaluation on vinyl chloride in the near future,’’ the agency said in a statement to The Associated Press.
“That accident was a chilling warning that we must act now to ban petrochemicals like vinyl chloride, and keep communities safe from known carcinogens,’’ added Heather McTeer Toney, another former regional EPA administrator who leads a separate group called Beyond Petrochemicals. A July 27 news conference at EPA headquarters, attended by Enck, Toney and other activists, was little more than a “publicity stunt that irresponsibly ignores decades of credible science” showing that vinyl chloride is “safely and responsibly manufactured in the United States,” Ned Monroe, president and CEO of the Vinyl Institute, said in a statement.
Debate over vinyl chloride has simmered for years, but gained a new urgency after the Feb. 3 derailment of a 50-car Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine. Three days later, emergency crewsThat sent a billowing plume of black smoke over the town near the Pennsylvania border and prompted the evacuation of about half of its 5,000 residents.
Jessica Conard, an East Palestine resident who lives near the crash site, called the Ohio train derailment “a very grim warning.” The crash demonstrates that the rail industry “values profit over human lives and the environment,’’ while state and federal regulators “failed to keep the industry in check,’’ she said.
“We’re here today for one reason and one reason only: to tell the EPA that it’s time now. We can’t wait to ban vinyl chloride. We can’t slow-walk this,’’ said Daniel Winston, co-executive director ofWinston, who lives 17 miles from the derailment site, said the controlled burn, conducted just three days after the derailment, allowed Norfolk Southern to quickly reopen the tracks “so they could get their profits back up.
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