Regardless of touting bold objectives of constructing 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, underneath 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 damaging mineral has lingered in varied gaskets, brake blocks, aftermarket automotive brakes and linings, different car 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 resulting from 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 every year, the EPA famous on the time.
“The science is obvious—asbestos is a recognized 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 folks. 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, mentioned in a statement.
“100 % Protected”
Whereas the transfer was a long time within the making and hailed by well being proponents, it nonetheless allowed corporations a beneficiant interval to part out use of asbestos—in some instances as much as 12 years. That didn’t cease trade from taking authorized motion towards the regulation shortly after the EPA’s announcement. The litigation, introduced by quite a few corporations 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 documents saying that it “now intends to rethink” the ban, and it “expects that this course of, together with any regulatory adjustments, 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 assist 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 all the time concern that one other Trump administration would work to overturn the ban; Trump helps the usage of asbestos. In his 1997 guide 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 imagine that the motion towards asbestos was led by the mob, as a result of it was typically mob-related corporations that might do the asbestos removing.”
Trump’s assist for asbestos has been welcomed in Russia, a main asbestos provider to the US. In 2018, a Russian asbestos firm started 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.
