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 yr, underneath the Biden administration, the Environmental Safety Company took a long-awaited step to ban the final sort of asbestos nonetheless used within the US—chrysotile asbestos, aka “white asbestos.” Whereas use of chrysotile asbestos was on the decline, the harmful mineral has lingered in numerous 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 world wide that had banned its use as a result of well being dangers. Usually, asbestos is thought 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 obvious—asbestos is a identified carcinogen that has extreme impacts on public well being. President Biden understands that this [is a] concern that has spanned generations and impacted the lives of numerous individuals. That’s why EPA is so proud to finalize this long-needed ban on ongoing makes use of of asbestos,” Michael Regan, EPA administrator on the time, stated in an announcement.
“100 P.c Secure”
Whereas the transfer was a long time 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 in opposition to the regulation shortly after the EPA’s announcement. The litigation, introduced by a variety of firms and commerce teams, together with the American Chemistry Council, has been ongoing since then.
On Monday, the EPA, now underneath the Trump administration, filed court docket paperwork saying that it “now intends to rethink” the ban, and it “expects that this course of, together with any regulatory modifications, will take roughly 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 yr labored as a lobbyist and director for the American Chemistry Council.
As Ars reported final yr, there was at all times concern that one other Trump administration would work to overturn the ban; Trump helps using asbestos. In his 1997 ebook The Artwork of the Comeback, Trump wrote that asbestos is “100% secure, as soon as utilized” and blamed the mob for its popularity as a carcinogen, writing: “I consider that the motion in opposition to asbestos was led by the mob, as a result of it was usually mob-related firms that may do the asbestos removing.”
Trump’s help for asbestos has been welcomed in Russia, a main asbestos provider to the US. In 2018, a Russian asbestos firm started advertising and marketing asbestos with Trump’s face and a seal studying “Accredited by Donald Trump, forty fifth President of the US.”
This story initially appeared on Ars Technica.
