In the News

“It would mean a real disservice to communities, first responders and workers,” said Adam Kron, an attorney with Earthjustice. “It would put them in greater harm’s way from these chemical disasters.” Earthjustice is part of a coalition of environmental groups that tracks chemical disasters. This coalition has found that since January 2021, there have been more than 1,100 chemical incidents. The news of a potential rewrite comes days after Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress, in which he vowed to take on toxic chemicals, saying, “our goal is to get toxins out of our environment, poisons out of our food supply and keep our children healthy and strong.” Yet that rhetoric also comes as Trump has pledged broad deregulatory action, which could clash with upholding chemical safeguards. 

The Trump administration has moved to rewrite rules designed to prevent disasters at thousands of chemical facilities across the country. EPA filed a motion in federal court on Thursday saying it was pulling back the safety regulations, introduced last year under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. The rules, which took effect in May, require sites that handle hazardous chemicals to adopt new safeguards including explicit measures to prepare for storms, floods and other climate-related risks. They also require some facilities to scrutinize their use of particularly dangerous chemicals and switch to safer alternatives as well as to share more information with neighbors and emergency responders. In addition, facilities that have suffered prior accidents also must undergo independent audits.

Biden increased transparency around the risks of chemical disaster — industry lobbyists just asked Trump’s new EPA chief Lee Zeldin to roll that back. For years, environmentalists fought for the EPA to make public what chemical facilities were covered by its Risk Management Program rule as well as the chemicals that they handled and the safety protocols they had in place. Such transparency was critical for nearby communities and the public, activists argued. In March 2024, regulators revealed a public website that for the first time allowed viewers to search for high-risk chemical facilities — revealing the toxins they handle and details about past accidents and safety violations. As of Feb. 7, the EPA data tool remains online. But as other EPA webpages go dark — like webpages mentioning the climate crisis, as The Lever reported — advocates worry that soon, a critical accountability tool for communities in the vicinity of hazardous chemical plants will also be taken down.

We are continuing to learn more every day about the extent of damage caused by Hurricane Helene – one of the deadliest and costliest storms in U.S. history. But one thing we should have learned by now is that there is no such thing as being over-prepared when it comes to the safety of industrial facilities, whether they be on the coast or farther inland. We know that there are thousands of facilities across the country at risk and we should be doing everything we can to mitigate that risk.

See additional reporting on the chemical fire in Georgia following Hurricane Helene.

year before a Georgia chemical plant fire engulfed an Atlanta suburb in toxic gas this week, a federal watchdog agency issued a warning: The plant, and others like it, were not covered by regulations intended to prevent catastrophic chemical accidents. Yet despite years of outcry from environmentalists, powerful chemical industry lobbyists have for years kept regulators from updating these rules to include these facilities, potentially leaving workers and communities across the country at greater risk of devastating toxic disasters. Over the last five years, there have been hundreds of chemical accidents at facilities that are not covered by these regulations, watchdog groups have found.According to a database maintained by the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters, an advocacy group, there have been more than 100 chemical accidents at industrial facilities not covered by this federal risk oversight so far in 2024 — disasters that impacted communities from Oregon to Tennessee. Last year, there were 184.

Hundreds of chemical facilities around the US must implement new procedures to try to better safeguard communities from accidents that are happening with alarming frequency and jeopardizing human and environmental health, regulators said this week. New measures announced Friday by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) require industrial operators to “prevent accidental releases of dangerous chemicals that could otherwise cause deaths and injuries, damage property and the environment, or require surrounding communities to evacuate or shelter-in-place.” The final rule, which amends the EPA’s Risk Management Program (RMP) that applies to plants dealing with hazardous chemicals, asks facilities to evaluate the risks of natural hazards and climate change, makes information about chemical hazards more accessible for people living near these facilities. The rule also allows for plant employees to stop working when they think there is a potential hazard.

Hazardous chemical incidents such as explosions, fires, and toxic releases happen almost daily in the United States, often at fossil fuel facilities, and the Biden administration won praise on Friday for stepping up safeguards for impacted communities. The agency finalized changes to a Risk Management Program (RMP) that covers 11,740 facilities across the country. Noting that many communities "vulnerable to chemical accidents are in overburdened and underserved areas," EPA Administrator Michael Regan framed the rule as a key piece of the administration's "commitment to advancing environmental justice."

The Biden administration issued new rules on Friday designed to prevent disasters at almost 12,000 chemical plants and other industrial sites nationwide that handle hazardous materials.The regulations for the first time tell facilities to explicitly address disasters, such as storms or floods, that could trigger an accidental release, including threats linked to climate change. For the first time, chemical sites that have had prior accidents will need to undergo an independent audit. And the rules require chemical plants to share more information with neighbors and emergency responders. Former President Barack Obama had tried to strengthen the rules, proposing safeguards after a deadly 2013 explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas killed 15 people. The Trump administration rolled back most of those rules before they took effect, part of a slew of environmental and safety regulations that it unraveled. In 2021, the E.P.A. announced plans to restore the rule. Since then, a coalition of environmental groups and experts, as well as national security experts and former military officials concerned with terrorist and other threats to chemical sites, have pushed the E.P.A. to require hazardous sites to use safer chemicals.

A group called the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters puts out a very useful database of chemical incidents. The coalition is an alliance of scores of groups, mostly environmental, ranging from local to national in scope. They have been doing it since January 2021. Nongeeks will love that this tracker presents its data in interactive map form; geeks will love that you can access the underlying data in table form. The whole thing is nicely searchable.

Texas has more chemical disasters than any other state, according to the chemical incident database from the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters. A recent report created using the database suggests that a chemical incident — such as a spill, an emission leak or an explosion — occurs every other day in the U.S. These disasters affect communities in a variety of ways, including road closures, shelter in place orders, emergency room visits and, depending on exposure, increased cancer risks. Those living within a mile or less radius of a chemical facility – known as fenceline communities – are the most vulnerable.

Out of the 322 chemical incidents reported last year, 138 caused either injury, evacuation, a shelter-in-place order, or death, according to the database. Put another way, a chemical incident caused serious consequences in the U.S. about once every two-and-a-half days in 2023. The majority of last year’s chemical incidents involved fossil fuels and fossil fuel-derived products. At least 47 incidents occurred directly at oil and gas extraction sites, while 83 incidents occurred at plastic and petrochemical manufacturing sites, according to the database. At least 48 chemical incidents occurred in transport, like the infamous East Palestine, Ohio train derailment, which spilled the petrochemical vinyl chloride. And at least 39 chemical incidents occurred at food and beverage storage facilities, most of which involved leakage of ammonia, a particularly toxic petrochemical that is responsible for about 1 to 2 percent of global carbon emissions.

Hazardous chemical accidents are occurring almost daily, on average, in the United States, exposing people to dangerous toxins through fires, explosions, leaks, spills and other releases, according to a new analysis by non-profit researchers. The report, prepared by Coming Clean, in conjunction with a network of environmental and economic justice organizations in the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters, documents what it calls an “alarming frequency” of accidents, and comes a month before US regulators are expected to release final rules aimed at preventing such incidents.

A shelter-in-place order has been lifted in two Texas counties after a chemical plant fire on Wednesday, which came on the eve of a report showing just how frequent such incidents are across the United States, particularly at sites tied to the fossil fuel industry. There have been at least 287 hazardous chemical incidents—including explosions, fires, and toxic releases—this year alone, and over 825 since the beginning of 2021, according to the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters' online database.

Eight months after a train derailed and spilled toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio, people are still waiting for answers about long-term health and environmental consequences. What happened isn’t uncommon — on average, there’s a chemical incident in the U.S. every two days. John Yang reports from North Carolina, where one city is trying to move forward after a chemical disaster in 2022.

A chemical fire, explosion or toxic release occurs every two days in the U.S., according to data compiled by the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters, a group of environmental justice organizations. At least 25 chemical incidents have occurred in Texas so far this year, the most of any state, according to the data, which is compiled from news, industry and government reports. About a third of facilities that store hazardous chemicals are located in areas that are susceptible to natural hazards made worse by climate change, such as wildfires and storm surges, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

“We call things ‘accidents,’” as National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy told NPR. “There is no accident. Every single event that we investigate is preventable."

The units at a Houston-area Shell refinery that caught fire this weekend repeatedly malfunctioned in recent years without recourse from Texas regulators.  Since the start of 2022, the British oil giant reported at least four malfunctions at one olefins unit in its Deer Park petrochemical refinery that had resulted in thousands of pounds of illegal pollution but no fines or citations. Olefins units—the heart of petrochemical complexes—separate hydrocarbons into the components of plastics.

 Today, U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Congresswoman Nanette Diaz Barragán (D-CA-44^th) led 29 of their colleagues in urging the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to implement strong safeguards at high-risk chemical facilities to protect fenceline environmental justice communities, facility workers, and first responders from chemical disasters.

Attica Scott and Larry Lambert are state representatives for Kentucky and Delaware, respectively. For decades our constituents have lived under the constant threat of explosions or toxic releases in our neighborhoods, never knowing what or when the next disaster will be. Parents must weigh the benefits of allowing their children to go outdoors with the risks of being exposed to harsh chemicals. We recently saw air pollution in our communities lead to disproportionate rates of severe illness and death during this pandemic, a trend that has been observed across the country. 

More than 70 elected officials in states including Colorado are urging the Environmental Protection Agency to strengthen the chemical disaster prevention rule in order to protect communities from toxins at high-risk facilities, like the Suncor oil refinery in Commerce City. The EPA’s “Risk Management Plan,” or RMP, rule is meant to prevent disasters at chemical facilities across the country — more than 200 exist in Colorado — but advocates say the rule is lacking.

Elected officials in Louisville are joining lawmakers from around the country in calling for stronger federal rules to prevent disasters at high-risk chemical facilities. The Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing Risk Management Plan (RMP) rules for more than 12,000 high-risk facilities around the country. The facilities covered by the rules contain highly corrosive, explosive and toxic chemicals that present a danger to the public when disasters strike. In a letter to EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan, 70 elected officials from 16 states are calling for stronger rules to prevent explosions, limit catastrophic releases, improve accountability and account for the cumulative health impacts of living near industrial corridors. 

Have you ever watched somebody shake a can of soda, and then get ready to crack open the top? You know it’s going to explode, but you don’t know when, or how bad it will be. That’s what it’s like living near a chemical plant. Except the consequences can be deadly. As a lifelong resident of Kanawha County, West Virginia — an area that has been home to dozens of industrial facilities making everything from pesticides to plastics — I know this uncertain feeling all too well. For the past several decades, I’ve listened to emergency sirens go off in my community, indicating that we need to shelter in place, while virtually no information is shared about what happened or how dangerous it might be.

While families across the country celebrated Thanksgiving with their loved ones, more than 50,000 people in Port Neches, Tex., were forced to evacuate from their homes and spend the holiday in makeshift shelters. The reason? Two explosions at the Texas Petroleum Chemical plant sent flames into the sky, injured eight people, and released plumes of butadiene, a carcinogen, into the air. The disaster erupted six days after the Trump administration gutted Obama-era regulations meant to improve safety at 12,000 chemical plants around the country.