People say that the Biden Administration got in the way of a scientific study that was supposed to be done on a chemical plant in Louisiana to find out if its fumes cause cancer.
Neoprene is made at a chemical plant in LaPlace, Louisiana. The plant was going to be studied by scientists to see if it causes cancer. Neoprene production creates a liquid waste product known as chloroprene. The fumes from this are believed to cause cancer in all people living in the Saint John the Baptist Parish area in Louisiana.
Environmental Protection Agency worker Michael Morton said in court that the email that stopped the probe was not written by him. Basically, this email told them they shouldn’t go ahead with the science studies about the emissions that cause cancer.
“I didn’t write that,” Morton told lawyers for Denka Performance Elastomer, a company that makes synthetics. “I didn’t say that,” he said next. I didn’t know who wrote that part, so I don’t know who wrote it.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan spoke out, saying, “When I went to Saint John the Baptist Parish on my first Journey to Justice tour, I promised the community that the EPA would do everything it could to protect families’ health and safety from the Denka facility’s harmful chloroprene emissions.”
After this, the Justice Department asked the plant to either control its emissions right away or shut down.
Chemical facility DPE replied that being asked to shut down would be disastrous, as it would mean “complete loss of revenue streams, substantial loss of workforce, supply chain disruptions and contractual impacts, and regulatory challenges.”
In their answer, they also said that the US was asking for these tests because of a report that was made in 2010 using female mice. They also said that the risk of cancer in Saint John the Baptist Parish is the lowest in the area.
When the Denka facility got the email from Morton, they stopped their research studies. Morton later said the email wasn’t written by him. That the email was written by people from the EPA Office of Research and Development is clear from the metadata that was given to the judges.
