Regardless of touting formidable targets of creating America more healthy, the Trump administration on Monday revealed in court docket paperwork that it’s backpedaling on a ban on cancer-causing asbestos.
Final 12 months, beneath the Biden administration, the Environmental Safety Company took a long-awaited step to ban the last type of asbestos still used in the US—chrysotile asbestos, aka “white asbestos.” Whereas use of chrysotile asbestos was on the decline, the harmful mineral has lingered in varied gaskets, brake blocks, aftermarket automotive brakes and linings, different automobile friction merchandise, and a few diaphragms used to make sodium hydroxide and chlorine.
With the ban, the US joined over 50 different international locations around the globe that had banned its use as a result of well being dangers. Usually, asbestos is understood to trigger lung most cancers, mesothelioma, ovarian most cancers, and laryngeal most cancers. Asbestos publicity is linked to greater than 40,000 deaths within the US annually, the EPA famous on the time.
“The science is clear—asbestos is a known carcinogen that has severe impacts on public health. President Biden understands that this [is a] concern that has spanned generations and impacted the lives of countless people. That’s why EPA is so proud to finalize this long-needed ban on ongoing uses of asbestos,” Michael Regan, EPA administrator on the time, stated in a statement.
“100 Percent Safe”
Whereas the transfer was many years within the making and hailed by well being proponents, it nonetheless allowed firms a beneficiant interval to part out use of asbestos—in some instances as much as 12 years. That didn’t cease business from taking authorized motion towards the regulation shortly after the EPA’s announcement. The litigation, introduced by plenty of firms and commerce teams, together with the American Chemistry Council, has been ongoing since then.
On Monday, the EPA, now beneath the Trump administration, filed court documents saying that it “now intends to reconsider” the ban, and it “expects that this process, including any regulatory changes, will take approximately 30 months.” The EPA requested the court docket to droop the court docket case within the meantime. The submitting included a declaration in help of the reconsiderations from new EPA Deputy Assistant Administrator of the Workplace of Chemical Security and Air pollution Prevention Lynn Ann Dekleva, who till final 12 months labored as a lobbyist and director for the American Chemistry Council.
As Ars reported last year, there was at all times concern that one other Trump administration would work to overturn the ban; Trump helps the usage of asbestos. In his 1997 e book The Artwork of the Comeback, Trump wrote that asbestos is “100 percent safe, once applied” and blamed the mob for its popularity as a carcinogen, writing: “I believe that the movement against asbestos was led by the mob, because it was often mob-related companies that would do the asbestos removal.”
Trump’s help for asbestos has been welcomed in Russia, a major asbestos provider to the US. In 2018, a Russian asbestos firm started marketing asbestos with Trump’s face and a seal studying “Approved by Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States.”
This story initially appeared on Ars Technica.
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