Clean Air Act

Earthjustice, on behalf of environmental and health advocacy groups, sent a 60-day Notice of Intent to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the agency’s inaction to regulate harmful carcinogenic air emissions from ethylene oxide facilities as the law required. The Clean Air Act directs the EPA to review its ethylene oxide standards every eight years but the agency has repeatedly missed this deadline; first in 2014 and again in April 2022. The EPA admits the chemical is 60 times more toxic than previously estimated and that facilities that emit ethylene oxide, including commercial sterilizers and chemical manufacturers, pose an elevated cancer risk to nearby communities. Children are particularly sensitive to ethylene oxide when exposed.

Earthjustice, along with a coalition of community advocacy and environmental groups, formally petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to eliminate loopholes in national Clean Air Act protections that allow facilities like oil refineries, chemical plants, and incinerators to disregard emission standards, stop reporting their pollution, and avoid fines or other consequences for excess pollution they emit during startup, shutdowns, and malfunctions (SSM). Courts have repeatedly told EPA that these exemptions are illegal — and EPA itself recognizes these exemptions are illegal.