they are only referred to by numbers in the redacted EPA document. Very suspicious.

Chevron and the EPA don't even give the substances names, only numbers. As a group they're referred to as New Chemical Substances (NCSs).

Intended as additives for petroleum-based fuels, NCSs are manufactured from waste plastic -- the plastic bottles and containers you and I diligently recycle.

From the above Guardian article: "Maria Doa, a scientist who worked at EPA for 30 years and once directed the division that managed the risks posed by chemicals, first saw the one-in-four cancer risk for the jet fuel, she thought it must have been a typo. The even higher cancer risk for the boat fuel component left her struggling for words. “I had never seen a one-in-four risk before this, let alone a 1.3-in-1,” said Doa. “This is ridiculously high.”"

Also from the article:

"Another serious cancer risk associated with the boat fuel ingredient that was documented in the risk assessment was also missing from the consent order. For every 100 people who ate fish raised in water contaminated with that same product over a lifetime, seven would be expected to develop cancer – a risk that’s 70,000 times what the agency usually considers acceptable.

When asked why it didn’t include those sky-high risks in the consent order, the EPA acknowledged having made a mistake. This information “was inadvertently not included in the consent order”, an agency spokesperson said in an email."

Sen. Jeffrey A. Merkely, D-Oregon, wrote to EPA administrator Michael S. Regan in April demanding answers concerning the sketchy (my adjective) review of these NCSs.

"Is it true that the EPA streamlined the review of a premanufacture notice for
production of a chemical for use as a fuel in Pascagoula that could emit air pollution so
toxic that 1 in 4 people exposed to it over a lifetime could get cancer? If so, how did the
EPA justify streamlining that approval? How many times has the EPA ever approved
exposure levels with this level of toxicity?"

Merkeley also wanted to know why the EPA decided to approve these new chemicals under a bio-based fuels program.

https://www.merkley.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/imo/media/doc/epa_toxics_letter_2023.pdf

What the hell is going on in the EPA that it apparently failed to include the chemicals' risks in its consent order? Is Chevron a special exception to the rules? And why is a fuel additive made from plastics classified as a bio-based fuel? The EPA and Chevron need to provide answers.

We need a comprehensive study of Federal regulative employees placed by Trump.
Law enforcement, too. DoJ, FBI, CBP, ICE...

At the first big anti-Trump march, I spoke with some EPA employees. They felt singled out. Like now with election workers, the honest ones quit under pressure and get replaced with crooks.

If we keep ignoring the world around us and our responsibility for the direction it is heading then maybe we’ll soon be the ones trying to avoid out of control manifestations of that ignorance which lead to our demise.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127165879

... when his bosses decided fuels would be a good place to dump all those nuisance Chemical Substances of Unknown or Variable Composition.

That was in the 'seventies.

Gasoline has smelled funny ever since.

disposing of toxic chemicals by dissolving them in heating oil.

... it's just that the oil company (a big one that sold supposedly superior grades of gasoline) suddenly became a lot less interested in the actual chemical composition of their gasoline and began using less well characterized hydrocarbon streams in their blends.

This might be an interesting thing to research. It may have been related to the oil embargo of 1973 now that I think about it.

Gasoline has always been a toxic brew, as NNadir notes below.

I'm only noting the recent parallels between Big Oil and the Jersey Mob.

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/crime-waste-oil-industry

It still does.

Air pollution causes cancer; lots of it, and petroleum and air pollution have long been connected.

I'm not sure that anyone since the 19th century (when petroleum products were actually used in a number of medical settings) has ever thought anything in petroleum is good for you.

I note that petroleum use over more than a century has left the planet in flames, not that anyone is willing to surrender access to their precious cars.

I oppose all fossil fuels, but this said, having waded through lots of innuendo and bad thinking I reserve judgement on this article.

Science from journalists, particularly about risk, is almost uniformly bad. It is often couched in statements about "million times" without referencing the risk independent of exposure.

I repeat my oft stated half serious joke that one cannot get a degree in journalism if one has passed a college level science course with a grade of C or better.

Last edited Fri Aug 4, 2023, 11:04 PM - Edit history (1)

Inject tons and tons of secret chemicals into the ground (lotta PFAS in the mix) in order to squeeze out the last of the oil and gas, then use the gas to make plastic, then use the plastic to make more secret chemicals.

Whew.

edit: there's a post about the secret fracking chemicals here:
https://democraticunderground.com/1127165880#post1
Frackers Can Use Dangerous Chemicals Without Disclosure Due to "Halliburton Loophole"