5 ms·

"The fifth circuit judges wrote that the EPA would have to regulate the containers under Section 6 of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which the judges

"The fifth circuit judges wrote that the EPA would have to regulate the containers under Section 6 of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which the judges and Inhance claim would require the EPA to take into account the economic impact on Inhance. The company has said a ban on its fluorination process would put it out of business." With that mindset we would still have Asbestos factories around. The economic situation of polluters should be completely outweighed by the health and environmental concerns of the population.

Dalewyn 3y ago
That actually is exactly what the court told the EPA to do. >TSCA section 6(b)(4) requires EPA to establish, by rule, a process to conduct risk evaluations. Specifically, EPA is directed to use this process to “determine whether a chemical substance presents an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment, without consideration of costs or other non-risk factors, including an unreasonable risk to a potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulation identified as relevant to the risk evaluation by the Administrator, under the conditions of use.” https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2023-23428/p-52 https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2023-23428/p-52 Also, this was even linked right below the paragraph you cited.
- shadowfacts 3y ago
  The article says, "However, Peer noted Section 6 states health risks should be weighed “without consideration of costs or other non-risk factors”." Peer is not the court, it's a non-profit involved in the litigation. You can read the opinion, and the court doesn't tell the EPA to use section 6, just that they can't use section 5: https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-60620-CV0.pdf https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-60620-CV0.pd...
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    >the court doesn't tell the EPA to use section 6, Yes they do: >Second, the EPA may regulate chemical substances under Section 6. See 15 U.S.C. § 2605. The mandate of Section 6 is broader than Section 5, in that Section 6 applies to all chemical substances, not just new chemical substances or significant new uses of a chemical substance. See id. § 2605(a). However, the rulemaking process under Section 6 is also more rigorous than Section 5: It requires the EPA to conduct a cost-benefit analysis, weighing the negative effects of the chemical substance against the benefits of the substance and the economic consequences of prohibiting or limiting the substance. See id. § 2605(c)(2)(A)–(C). No such analysis is required under Section 5. >We hasten to add that our ruling to this effect does not render the EPA powerless to regulate Inhance’s fluorination process. The agency can properly proceed, abiding the APA’s procedural guardrails, under TSCA’s Section 6 by conducting inter alia the appropriate cost-benefit analysis required for ongoing uses—a proposition even Inhance concedes. The EPA is just not allowed to skirt the framework set by Congress by arbitrarily deeming Inhance’s decades-old fluorination process a “significant new use.” See Perez v. Mortg. Bankers Ass’n, 575 U.S. 92, 105–06 (2015).
Nifty3929 3y ago
It's not a question of protecting the producer, it's the fact that the producer is making something that has at least some benefit to society - the containers. If we stop them from producing the containers, then society loses out on that benefit. It may still be worthwhile to stop them, but businesses exist to the benefit of their customers and stopping them is not without it's own costs. We banned the use of asbestos in most situations, and therefore lost the benefit of an excellent building and insulation material. But we decided that was a worthwhile tradeoff considering the well-established health impacts.
- Fauntleroy 3y ago
  Wouldn't banning the material also lead to market pressure to develop containers that aren't in violation? Why are we ignoring this point?
  - unglaublich 3y ago
    Exactly. The market is not asking for PFAS containers, the market is asking for containers with the price and quality aspects of these containers.
  - woleium 3y ago
    or why not ban in 18 months, like they do in the eu, give companies time to retool
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    Market pressure to produce an asbestos functional equivalent has led nowhere (at a similar cost), after several decades. Since the outcome is unknown until after a huge amount of time and expense, how would you factor it in beforehand?
    - unglaublich 3y ago
      Does 'similar cost' include all the down-stream healthcare and lost productive life years cost?
jtuente 3y ago
Except we did still have asbestos factories around until recently. This ruling is in line with the previous asbestos one, so just 30 more years until PFOA, etc. will be properly banned. https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/asbestos-ban-and-phase-out-federal-register-notices https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/asbestos-ban-and-phase-out-fede...
rayiner 3y ago
The article mischaracterizes the decision and the law. The economic analysis under Section 6 requires the EPA to do a system-wide cost-benefit analysis: https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-60620-CV0.pdf https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-60620-CV0.pd... (see p. 10). The question isn’t the economic impact on the polluters per se, but the economic benefits of the use of the chemical versus the economic costs. For example, if asbestos was the only way to have fire-proof insulation, an economic analysis might well show that the benefit of having insulated houses that don’t burn down outweighs increased cancer deaths. This is a common requirement in most environmental statutes.
heresWaldo 3y ago
[flagged]
- rayiner 3y ago
  This was a three judge panel with a Bush, Obama, and Trump appointee, who all agreed on the result.
  - heresWaldo 3y ago
    Sorry failed to call out I wasn’t delineating along typical party lines. Politicians, judges, gen pop; those empowered by past political and socioeconomic choices they ram down the futures throat are conservative quacks, full stop. Preferring political/economic norms in the face of evidence it’s actively harmful is conservative quackery.
    - rayiner 3y ago
      > Preferring political/economic norms in the face of evidence it’s actively harmful What a laughable statement. The default state of humanity is scrounging around in the forest for scraps. All the prosperity around you is the result of a particular set of “political/economic norms” and once you’ve found a magic combination that results in the US rather than Afghanistan you should be extremely afraid to change anything. You’re standing high on a mountain your ancestors climbed up and there’s very little keeping you from falling back down it. You should be particularly skeptical of new ideas, because according to Sturgeon’s law there’s a 90% chance it’s crap.
      - heresWaldo 3y ago
        The past also screwed up a lot. At best their effort is a wash, still leaving little reason to deify them through intentional conservation of their legacy. I’d qualify your default less literally; solving their problems with recursion and memoization There are billions of people preventing implosion, none of us are an island unto ourselves. But since you bring it up… If it goes bad for me, so what? Been there already; had to be zapped back to life. It all just goes dark. Quite peaceful relative to daily life, really. On the upside, along with stem degrees, I spent my youth in farmland slaughtering and growing my own food, fixing heavy machinery. IMO one of the elders biggest mistakes is helping so many avoid the real work required to survive. I’m no Dick Proennekke, but neither are all the office workers who can’t even bake a potato let alone grow one (first hand experience with that; that was a very short romantic relationship). Makes this economy that much harder to adjust and will probably just collapse given the lack of elasticity due to so many with so narrow a skill set. Adam Smith is claimed to have written (paraphrasing) extreme division of labor will lead to humans as dumb as the lowest animal. I think this economic experiment has proven his 200 year old quote.
speedylight 3y ago
The economic impact requirements has lobbyist fingerprints all over it. Imagine if the FDA had to consider the economic impact of rejecting or accepting new therapeutics, or if the FBI can just decide not to prosecute some individuals because the economy would lose money! All meaningful regulations will have negative economic impacts on those being regulated, that’s why the Republican conference loves de-regulation, it makes their donors and themselves more money!
incompatible 3y ago
The US has actually managed to shut down asbestos factories? I'm impressed. Surely it's good that there is one country in the world that's prepared to allow unrestricted usage of any type of chemical, a kind of vast environmental petri dish, so that the rest of the world can find out exactly what the human effects will be? It seems that conservatives in the US would be all in favour of taking this role. Perhaps it doesn't even need to be the entire country, but just a few conservative states? Disclaimer: I live a safe distance from the US.

Dalewyn 3y ago

That actually is exactly what the court told the EPA to do. >TSCA section 6(b)(4) requires EPA to establish, by rule, a process to conduct risk evaluations. Specifically, EPA is directed to use this process to “determine whether a chemical substance presents an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment, without consideration of costs or other non-risk factors, including an unreasonable risk to a potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulation identified as relevant to the risk evaluation by the Administrator, under the conditions of use.” https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2023-23428/p-52 https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2023-23428/p-52 Also, this was even linked right below the paragraph you cited.

shadowfacts 3y ago
The article says, "However, Peer noted Section 6 states health risks should be weighed “without consideration of costs or other non-risk factors”." Peer is not the court, it's a non-profit involved in the litigation. You can read the opinion, and the court doesn't tell the EPA to use section 6, just that they can't use section 5: https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-60620-CV0.pdf https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-60620-CV0.pd...
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  >the court doesn't tell the EPA to use section 6, Yes they do: >Second, the EPA may regulate chemical substances under Section 6. See 15 U.S.C. § 2605. The mandate of Section 6 is broader than Section 5, in that Section 6 applies to all chemical substances, not just new chemical substances or significant new uses of a chemical substance. See id. § 2605(a). However, the rulemaking process under Section 6 is also more rigorous than Section 5: It requires the EPA to conduct a cost-benefit analysis, weighing the negative effects of the chemical substance against the benefits of the substance and the economic consequences of prohibiting or limiting the substance. See id. § 2605(c)(2)(A)–(C). No such analysis is required under Section 5. >We hasten to add that our ruling to this effect does not render the EPA powerless to regulate Inhance’s fluorination process. The agency can properly proceed, abiding the APA’s procedural guardrails, under TSCA’s Section 6 by conducting inter alia the appropriate cost-benefit analysis required for ongoing uses—a proposition even Inhance concedes. The EPA is just not allowed to skirt the framework set by Congress by arbitrarily deeming Inhance’s decades-old fluorination process a “significant new use.” See Perez v. Mortg. Bankers Ass’n, 575 U.S. 92, 105–06 (2015).

Nifty3929 3y ago

It's not a question of protecting the producer, it's the fact that the producer is making something that has at least some benefit to society - the containers. If we stop them from producing the containers, then society loses out on that benefit. It may still be worthwhile to stop them, but businesses exist to the benefit of their customers and stopping them is not without it's own costs. We banned the use of asbestos in most situations, and therefore lost the benefit of an excellent building and insulation material. But we decided that was a worthwhile tradeoff considering the well-established health impacts.

Fauntleroy 3y ago
Wouldn't banning the material also lead to market pressure to develop containers that aren't in violation? Why are we ignoring this point?
- unglaublich 3y ago
  Exactly. The market is not asking for PFAS containers, the market is asking for containers with the price and quality aspects of these containers.
- woleium 3y ago
  or why not ban in 18 months, like they do in the eu, give companies time to retool
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  Market pressure to produce an asbestos functional equivalent has led nowhere (at a similar cost), after several decades. Since the outcome is unknown until after a huge amount of time and expense, how would you factor it in beforehand?
  - unglaublich 3y ago
    Does 'similar cost' include all the down-stream healthcare and lost productive life years cost?

jtuente 3y ago

Except we did still have asbestos factories around until recently. This ruling is in line with the previous asbestos one, so just 30 more years until PFOA, etc. will be properly banned. https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/asbestos-ban-and-phase-out-federal-register-notices https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/asbestos-ban-and-phase-out-fede...

rayiner 3y ago

The article mischaracterizes the decision and the law. The economic analysis under Section 6 requires the EPA to do a system-wide cost-benefit analysis: https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-60620-CV0.pdf https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-60620-CV0.pd... (see p. 10). The question isn’t the economic impact on the polluters per se, but the economic benefits of the use of the chemical versus the economic costs. For example, if asbestos was the only way to have fire-proof insulation, an economic analysis might well show that the benefit of having insulated houses that don’t burn down outweighs increased cancer deaths. This is a common requirement in most environmental statutes.

heresWaldo 3y ago

[flagged]

rayiner 3y ago
This was a three judge panel with a Bush, Obama, and Trump appointee, who all agreed on the result.
- heresWaldo 3y ago
  Sorry failed to call out I wasn’t delineating along typical party lines. Politicians, judges, gen pop; those empowered by past political and socioeconomic choices they ram down the futures throat are conservative quacks, full stop. Preferring political/economic norms in the face of evidence it’s actively harmful is conservative quackery.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    > Preferring political/economic norms in the face of evidence it’s actively harmful What a laughable statement. The default state of humanity is scrounging around in the forest for scraps. All the prosperity around you is the result of a particular set of “political/economic norms” and once you’ve found a magic combination that results in the US rather than Afghanistan you should be extremely afraid to change anything. You’re standing high on a mountain your ancestors climbed up and there’s very little keeping you from falling back down it. You should be particularly skeptical of new ideas, because according to Sturgeon’s law there’s a 90% chance it’s crap.
    - heresWaldo 3y ago
      The past also screwed up a lot. At best their effort is a wash, still leaving little reason to deify them through intentional conservation of their legacy. I’d qualify your default less literally; solving their problems with recursion and memoization There are billions of people preventing implosion, none of us are an island unto ourselves. But since you bring it up… If it goes bad for me, so what? Been there already; had to be zapped back to life. It all just goes dark. Quite peaceful relative to daily life, really. On the upside, along with stem degrees, I spent my youth in farmland slaughtering and growing my own food, fixing heavy machinery. IMO one of the elders biggest mistakes is helping so many avoid the real work required to survive. I’m no Dick Proennekke, but neither are all the office workers who can’t even bake a potato let alone grow one (first hand experience with that; that was a very short romantic relationship). Makes this economy that much harder to adjust and will probably just collapse given the lack of elasticity due to so many with so narrow a skill set. Adam Smith is claimed to have written (paraphrasing) extreme division of labor will lead to humans as dumb as the lowest animal. I think this economic experiment has proven his 200 year old quote.

speedylight 3y ago

The economic impact requirements has lobbyist fingerprints all over it. Imagine if the FDA had to consider the economic impact of rejecting or accepting new therapeutics, or if the FBI can just decide not to prosecute some individuals because the economy would lose money! All meaningful regulations will have negative economic impacts on those being regulated, that’s why the Republican conference loves de-regulation, it makes their donors and themselves more money!

incompatible 3y ago

The US has actually managed to shut down asbestos factories? I'm impressed. Surely it's good that there is one country in the world that's prepared to allow unrestricted usage of any type of chemical, a kind of vast environmental petri dish, so that the rest of the world can find out exactly what the human effects will be? It seems that conservatives in the US would be all in favour of taking this role. Perhaps it doesn't even need to be the entire country, but just a few conservative states? Disclaimer: I live a safe distance from the US.