Coalition Sues EPA Over Weak Regulation of Toxic Flame Retardant Found in Black Plastic Kitchen Utensils

By Zahra Ahmad. [email protected]

SAN FRANCISCO – Earthjustice, representing the Yurok Tribe, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, the Center for Environmental Transformation, and the Consumer Federation of America, filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) challenging its 2024 rule on decaBDE, a toxic flame retardant linked to cancer, reproductive issues, and harm to children’s brain development. DecaBDE is also highly toxic to salmon and other wildlife.

The EPA is not adequately regulating this highly toxic chemical. The federal rule has unlawful loopholes that, among other things, allow recycled decaBDE into our everyday products, like black plastic kitchen utensils. Allowing unrestricted recycling of plastics containing decaBDE also puts workers and nearby communities at risk of harm.

“Federal law requires aggressive regulation of chemicals like decaBDE that are highly toxic and persist in the environment and people’s bodies,” said Katherine O’Brien, an attorney with Earthjustice. “But EPA’s rule does virtually nothing to address the ongoing sources of decaBDE exposure that EPA itself identified as the biggest threats.”

The rule also allows ongoing pollution of waterways and lands with decaBDE-contaminated wastewater and sewage sludge and fails to regulate the disposal of products containing decaBDE. Indigenous communities that rely on salmon and marine mammals as cultural food sources and frontline communities living near recycling and waste disposal facilities face heightened risks of exposure to decaBDE through these loopholes.

DecaBDE was widely used for decades in electronics, furniture, and vehicles. Every year, millions of pounds of these products are burned, dumped, or recycled, releasing decaBDE and its toxic byproducts into the environment and contaminating water, soil, and food.

“DecaBDE is a toxic chemical that puts the health of Indigenous and frontline communities at risk,” said Pam Miller, Executive Director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics. “The EPA’s weak rules allow it to contaminate our water, food, and environment. We need stronger protections to keep our families and future generations safe.”

DecaBDE lingers in the environment, accumulates in people and wildlife, and poses serious health risks, including cancer, hormonal disruption, and developmental harm in children. It also endangers salmon recovery, which is vital to the cultures and economies of Tribal Nations.

“Our communities deserve to be free from decaBDE, a toxic chemical that continues to contaminate both human bodies and the environment,” said Courtney Griffin, Director of Consumer Product Safety at Consumer Federation of America. “Exposure to decaBDE can have serious lifelong consequences, including neurological development of children. Effective action is long overdue.”

Earthjustice sued the EPA in 2021 for issuing weak rules on DecaBDE that violated the Toxic Substances Control Act by failing to protect people and wildlife. After nearly four years of delays and promises for stronger safeguards, the EPA’s 2024 rule changes still left major loopholes, allowing decaBDE exposure to continue. Earthjustice and its partners are returning to court to protect communities and ecosystems from this toxic threat.

“Our community is surrounded by polluting industries, including a car shredder that stores huge piles of shredded car interiors on site,” said Jonathan Compton, executive director of the Center for Environmental Transformation. “Regulating proper disposal of decaBDE would mean one less toxic substance entering our air, soil, water, and bodies.”

Bad River Band Challenges Wisconsin’s Line 5 Reroute Permits

The Canadian oil pipeline could destroy local waters, wildlife, and economy

By Timna Axel.

MADISON, WI — The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in northern Wisconsin has filed two legal challenges to protect water resources in the Bad River and coastal wetlands, required because Wisconsin officials approved blasting, horizontal drilling, or trenching through at least 186 waterways and 101 acres of high-quality wetlands that drain into Lake Superior.

Bad River Band Chairman Robert Blanchard said: “This land does not belong to us, it is borrowed by us from our children’s children. We harvest our wild rice from the waters, we hunt from the land, fish from the lake, streams, and rivers to feed our families and gather the medicines to heal our relatives. Many of our people will feel the effects if we lose these resources. In my view, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) failed our children when it gave Enbridge the permits to build this reroute. They failed to consider the company’s multiple disasters in Minnesota and in Michigan, which are still being cleaned up. They failed to consider our Tribe, our water quality, and the natural resources of the entire Bad River watershed. As a tribal chairman and an elder, it’s my responsibility to protect the generations still to come. That is why we are fighting this reroute in court.”

The Band is contesting the wetland and waterway permit that the DNR granted last month in an administrative proceeding. In addition, the Band filed a lawsuit against the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for producing an inadequate final Environmental Impact Statement on the reroute that violates the Wisconsin Environmental Protection Act.

The reroute threatens to destroy and degrade wetlands such as the Kakagon-Bad River Sloughs, an internationally renowned mosaic of sloughs, bogs, and coastal lagoons that harbor the largest wild rice bed on the Great Lakes. Healthy wetlands protect human lives and infrastructure from severe flooding, saving enormous sums of money. Northern Wisconsin has experienced multiple 500- and 1000-year floods in the past 10 years, creating highly risky conditions for an oil pipeline.

“Once construction starts they can’t undo the damage,” said Senior Attorney Stefanie Tsosie of Earthjustice, which is representing the Band. “Enbridge has a terrible track record for pipeline construction and operation. And this place — this watershed and this territory — is not another place they can just plow through.”

In issuing state permits last month, the DNR also certified that the reroute will meet Wisconsin’s water quality standards, triggering a federal review by the Environmental Protection Agency and the US Army Corps of Engineers of the project’s impacts to the Band’s water quality standards.

Earthjustice Responds to Potential Trump Threat to Postal Service’s Electric Mail Truck Fleet

An executive order would be unlawful move that hurts American workers and dirties our air

By Zoe Woodcraft.

WASHINGTON – Amid reports from Reuters that an incoming Trump administration plans to issue an executive order unravelling the contract for USPS’s popular new fleet of electric mail trucks, Earthjustice issued the following statement:

“A president simply doesn’t have this kind of unilateral power. The funds to electrify mail trucks have been allocated under law by Congress, and the Postal Service is an independent agency. Not only would this be an unlawful breach of power, but it also undermines regulatory certainty for the American manufacturers who have contracts in place to build the country’s electric mail trucks,” said Adrian Martinez, deputy managing attorney on Earthjustice’s Right To Zero campaign. “Does Trump really want to put auto workers in places like South Carolina out of work over this?”

The Postal Service is using $3 billion in funds allocated by Congress under the Inflation Reduction Act to begin electrifying its mail delivery fleet. A 10-year contract was signed with Oshkosh in March of 2021, with the initial order for 50,000 vehicles placed in 2022, and production launched in 2023. Oshkosh built a factory in Spartanburg, South Carolina that employs roughly a thousand auto workers to build the new USPS fleet.

Electric mail trucks are now delivering mail in Georgia and Colorado and receiving an enthusiastic response from letter carriers and the American public for their safety features, efficiency, and comfort. Of the 106,000 mail trucks USPS plans to purchase in the next few years, 75% of 60,000 Next Generation Delivery Vehicles will be electric models, and 46% or more of 46,000 commercial off-the-shelf mail trucks will be electric models.

USPS’s peers in package and mail delivery are also electrifying their delivery fleets. Amazon has deployed over 20,000 electric delivery vans built by Rivian at a factory in Illinois. Fedex employs 7,136 electric vehicles in its fleet. Delivery vans and trucks are especially prime for electrification, as they travel short distances each day, they tend to idle as they traverse streets, and they park at night in centralized locations, making charging them easy.

Electrifying the full USPS fleet would prevent the U.S. from burning 135 million gallons of combustion fuel every year, delivering cleaner air in every neighborhood across the country.

Source – Earthjustice. Reprinted with permission.