The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday restricted the use of a toxic chemical used in paint strippers linked to dozens of deaths — but allowed commercial operators to use it as long as they underwent training.
Kevin Hartley died in 2017 while working in Nashville, Tenn. on refinishing a bathtub. His mother Wendy is now lobbying the Environmental Protection Agency to fully ban a chemical called methylene chloride, contained in a paint stripper used by her son.
The agency will solicit comments over the next 60 days on whether to impose new federal training requirements on commercial operators, Dunn said, to determine if it needs to limit access under those circumstances. That move drew immediate fire from public-health advocates and the family members of those who died after being exposed to its fumes.
Hartley, who personally appealed in May to then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to ban the chemical, has now joined with the advocacy groups Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families and the Vermont Public Interest Research Group in suing the EPA in federal court in Vermont. The EPA proposed an outright ban on methylene chloride and another lethal solvent, NMP, on Jan. 19, 2017, the day before President Barack Obama left office, saying they posed “unreasonable risks” to human health. Trump administration officials have repeatedly promised to remove methylene chloride from the market, while remaining silent on the fate of NMP.
“Methylene chloride’s efficacy is unmatched and it has been safely used for over sixty years,” the group said. “EPA’s action today is a watered-down protection that apparently values industry profits at the expense of public health and safety — particularly for the hardworking people who will still be risking their lives with exposure to these deadly products,” Udall said.
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