Biden’s EPA Planning to Ban Methylene Chloride, an Industry-Essential Chemical
Business organizations assert that the EPA’s impact analysis did not include the detrimental effects on the national economy, which appear to be enormous and highly destructive.
I did not think Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under environmental-justice-extremist administrator Michael Regan could unleash more destruction on American industry.
I. Was. Wrong.
The EPA is now planning to ban an industry-essential chemical, methylene chloride, with serious ramifications on the economy and national security.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed on Thursday to ban most uses of a toxic chemical used in paint removal.
The proposal would ban most industrial and commercial uses of methylene chloride, which, in addition to paint removal, is used as a solvent in making pharmaceuticals and in electronics.
One study found that methylene-chloride exposure killed 85 people between 1980 and 2018. The substance has also been linked to certain cancers.
The new proposal, from the Biden administration, goes further than a Trump administration rule that banned the sale to consumers of paint strippers using methylene chloride but did not address its industrial uses.
Where do I even begin with this hot mess of a policy directive? As an environmental health and safety professional, I have been assisting my clients with the safety and environmental requirements for using methylene chloride. All chemicals can be used safety with the correct combination of engineering controls, administrative practices, and personal protective equipment.
Methylene Chloride is an important organic solvent that has wide application in an array of industries. Here are a few examples:
- Methylene chloride is used as an extraction solvent in the food and beverage manufacturing industry. For example, methylene chloride can be used to remove caffeine from unroasted coffee beans and tea leaves, to make decaffeinated coffee and tea.
- Methylene chloride also is used in processing spices, creating hops extract for beer and other flavorings for the food and beverage industries.
- Methylene chloride can be used to degrease metal surfaces and parts, such as airplane components and railroad tracks and equipment. Lubricating and degreasing products used in automotive products, for example in gasket removal and for prepping metal parts for a new gasket, could contain methylene chloride.
- Automotive specialists use a vapor methylene chloride degreasing process to remove oils and grease from car transistor parts, diesel motors and aircraft components and spacecraft assemblies.
- In laboratories, methylene chloride is used to extract chemicals from plants or foods for medicine such as steroids, antibiotics and vitamins.
- Medical equipment can be quickly and efficiently cleaned with methylene chloride cleaners without causing corrosion problems or damage to heat-sensitive parts.
The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), American Petroleum Institute, and Ohio Manufacturers’ Association (OMA) are sounding the alarm at this highly disturbing regulatory mandate. Furthermore, these organizations also assert that the impact analysis did not include the detrimental effects on the national economy.
“OMA can appreciate EPA’s desire to restrict use of methylene chloride to the general public, retailers, and consumers such as home contractors/remodelers who may not be fully aware of the necessary precautions to safely use this chemical,” OMA stated in its comment letter. “However, this proposed rule is a case of ‘throwing-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater.’”
“We have grave concerns that EPA is going beyond its statutory authority with this rule, and usurping [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA)] authority to regulate workplace safety by replacing OSHA’s limits with EPA’s own limits and practices,” it continued. “Therefore, we urge in the strongest terms that the final rule exempts commercial and industrial sectors, that are already highly regulated by OSHA.”
…In addition, the NFIB, which is the largest U.S. small business group, stated the regulations would have “business-closing and job-killing” impacts. The group argued the EPA should withdraw the rule since its determination of health impacts is “fatally flawed,” there isn’t a viable replacement for MCL and the EPA failed to properly study the impact on the national economy.
The move also threatens the nations military readiness, and defense department equipment requires the use of methylene chloride for production. Supplies, by default, would then need to come from China and other foreign manufacturers.
President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency last year unveiled rule proposals aimed at banning certain chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act. At least one chemical on the chopping block—methylene chloride—is used to produce military equipment such as bulletproof glass, helmets, and fighter jet canopies. As a result, companies that rely on the chemical to produce such products are sounding the alarm, with polymer manufacturer Covestro arguing in a June letter to the EPA that the ban would “require military and police related applications to be manufactured from foreign sourced materials.”
The proposed ban comes as China works to ramp up its chemical production.
The Biden administration has taken a blow-torch to the rule-of-law through its abuse of the powers of regulating agencies. This is perhaps one of the most chilling and destructive of the eco-extremist policies that will poison the economy.
One last note: I am sorry about 85 people dying from methylene chloride exposure each year. However, over 2400 die of alcohol poisoning annually. ALL CHEMICALS – INCLUDING WATER – can be toxic if misued. We can’t regulate people into making good choices 100% of the time.
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Comments
“One study found that methylene-chloride exposure killed 85 people between 1980 and 2018″… a drop in the bucket for what FJB has done. It’s tragic for the 85 but horrendous for the US…if…. if… one wasn’t trying the kill the country off one cut of thousands at a time. What is the end point…. I guess no humans remaining to “pollute” Mother Earth,
Less that 3 people a year die from exposure and we’re going to tank the economy over it? How much is Biden getting from China if we have to import it? How much is Biden getting from Putin over natural gas sales? Republicans in congress need to get off their asses and start throwing monkey wrenches into the administration’s plans.
I have been using this for about 50 years without issues. The difference between man and beast are tools, which includes chemicals.
Way more than that have been killed this year by illegal aliens that Biden and the Democrats allowed in to the country. I would guess by at least an order of magnitude. I mean directly murdered not hit while drunk driving or bringing in fentanyl..
367 people were killed with hammers and similar blunt objects last year.
Oops, I better not bring that up they will ban hammers.
But then fists and feet killed 665.
Don’t you just love how they grab a big, arbitrary chunk of years and then plop a big number next to it to scare you? Especially when the big number is actually… pretty pissant?
According to trivia column author L. M. Boyd, over 100 people in the US choke themselves to death every year on ballpoint pens.
More tellingly, roughly 27 children under age 15 are killed using bicycles every week. Bicycles are a commodity considered such a rite of childhood that we parents actively supply these weapons of mass destruction to our kids ourselves.
One study found. Let’s read the study. Edith Efron covered all this craziness in The Apocalyptics, which is still worth reading.
Biden. Is this the same Biden whose EPA ok’d a gigantic flaming cloud of butyl acrylate, vinyl chloride, benzene, etc. to pollute the skies and water in East Palestine, Ohio after a train derailment last year??
Oh, yes. Quite the humanitarian, that Biden. Anyone seen Trans. Secty. Pete Buttigig lately after doors and wheels fell off a few airliners lately??
But, hey. No mean tweets.
Ban fossil fools
Methylene Chloride is indeed a very handy solvent that breaks carbon bonds and prevents long chain polymerization. Without it and the efforts of Max Gergel of Columbia Organic Chemical Company of Columbia, SC the Manhattan Project would not have been successful. Max made 55 gallons of Isopropyl Bromide by using Methyl Chloride in a solvent extraction process followed by distillation.
Peace through Chemistry!
[Quote]. Methylene chloride also is used in processing spices, creating hops extract for beer and other flavorings for the food and beverage industries.[/Quote]
Beer? BEER?
Don’t screw with the production of beer.
To paraphrase Ben Franklyn: “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us happy.”
Hic . . . ‘scuse me . . . hic . . .
Did Biden tell the brewery he just visited he was going to screw up their business? I would guess not.
“We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana as of a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.”
The same applies to water that enters the roots of barley, to be changed eventually into beer.
I worked with it for years. Great organic solvent. If they stop its use, many more additional problems will arise.
[Quote] If they stop its use, many more additional problems will arise.[/Quote]
That’s a feature, not a bug.
It will probably be replaced by something that damages the environment.
Remember, margarine was supposed to be healthier than butter, and eggs were supposed to be bad for you. I also wonder if the sun causes skin cancer, why don’t read about the skin cancer epidemic among farmers?
i was just introduced to “Naked at Noon,” a paean to the enormous health benefits of natural Vitamin D. The author recommends maximizing exposure area rather than exposure time, to forestall sunburn/cancer issues.
I don’t even buy any of these BS government numbers, to start with, but … less than 100 people over almost 40 years!!! More people have laughed themselves to death in that time.
Well, that explains why liberals have sucked the humor out of everything.
How do the deaths even get counted. Is it deaths directly attributable to methlyene chloride exposure per the death certificaate or of people who have had exposure and coincidentally died around the same time? I have used it many times in the past as the very best paint stripper of old painted wood. If it is supposedly this dangerous, where are the plaintiffs’ attorneys? They never miss a trick.
The 40-year number is so low that perhaps it was ENTIRELY compiled from wrongful-death lawsuit claims.
These retarded, nihilist agencies need to be roped in (and many of their principals and political bosses imprisoned) before they actually get their way and the US is left nothing but a smoldering heap of ash.
Most if not all of the Administrative Branch needs to be eliminated. Or at least needs to be neutered so that they cannot unilaterally propose these “regulations” that have such a huge impact on the country and economy without direct approval from Congress for each and every regulation proposed.
We don’t even have to guess what the Founders thought of this.
My personal hero, Jefferson:
“Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”
“When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”
Hop extract? I can’t think of any reason for homebrewers or microbreweries to be using hop extracts. I can understand homebrewers using wort extracts for a host of reasons, but not hop extracts. If you don’t like straining hops then make a teabag and boil that, or dry hop.
Will the EPA ban alcohol given it is so much more toxic than meth something chloride? 🙂
No problem…the elites will move production to a vacant site in Bhopal, India.
It’s like they pull this stuff out of thin air. Then some Hedley LaMar shoved it under LePetomaine’s (Biden’s) nose and steers the pen over the signature line.
Did we get a hurrumph?
Typical of the pedophile in chief, anything to harm the country
So, EPA wants to ban a critical industrial chemical used in synthesis of thousands of pharmaceuticals just because? SMH….
By that deadbrained reckoning, because thousands of people drowned in the same time period, we should ban Dihydrogen Monoxide too.
For the chemistry impaired, “Dihydrogen monoxide” is water.
Ban dihydrogen monoxide, before it kills us all!
Or at the very least, ban bathtubs and buckets, both of which kill way more kids than this new “scare statistic.”
Or maybe just reduce their basin capacity. Nobody needs to wash with that much water. Weapons of mass tsunami!
Don’t get me started on them gas-heated bathtubs.
The only purpose of the EPA was to destroy the American Economy. What was left of that then became targeted by the CDC.
I don’t believe that was its original purpose. It was harmful from its inception, one more think we have Richard Milhous (note spelling) Nixon to thank for, but it didn’t originally set out to deliberately destroy the economy.
People were making poor waste disposal and chemical emission choices before the EPA. Some regulation was warranted. And many of the original programs were a success. However, now the EPA is out-of-control and run by environmental extremists.
More like corporate bosses looking to save a buck v acting responsibly to dispose of contaminants in a safe manner.
I do agree it was necessary evil but like all bureaucrats they seek to expand their brief and justify their existence. Then the next generation of activist oriented bureaucrats joined up and went even further out of control.
Almost all of which could have been reined in by a state government, should they have cared to — like California chose to. California is way more stringent in most areas than the EPA. But now, thanks to the existence of the EPA and their control over the auto industry, every other state has to live involuntary by the rules promulgated by idiotic California voters instead of their own.
Not really. As people got richer, and could afford luxuries like a nice environment, industry was already cleaning up. The Cuyahoga River fire in 1969, which was what caused the EPA to be established, was actually proof of this — the fact that it made headlines proved that such fires had become rare; before the 1960s river fires were so common they didn’t make any headlines outside the local area. And that fire was so small and insignificant, and so quickly put out, that nobody managed to get any photos of it, so the news industry ran with photos from a massive fire nearly 20 years earlier. And all of that happened with no federal laws; the laws Congress made as a result of the hysteria about this tiny fire did not achieve anything.
The best grift is when you get in front of something that’s already happening anyway: pocket all the support, point to the results, and keep the game going because you are just so good.
See also Extinction Rebellion and other population & impact reduction
agitatorsadvocates, and especially the Climate Change grift.How many at the EPA or the Biden WH for that matter have ever used this product? IMO that’s a big part of the problem with the regulatory scheme of this Admin. These folks don’t understand the importance of the products they ban or restrict. If they do understand they don’t care b/c ‘their’ sort of folks, urban dwelling, highly credentialed knowledge workers don’t rely on the products. It seems to be a series of assaults upon liberty directed at those in non urban areas.
“How many at the EPA or the Biden WH for that matter have ever used this product?”
I’m confident that a good portion of DEA employees successfully evade this criticism.
Those 85 people should not have participated in such a drinking game.
“”Supplies, my (sic) default, would then need to come from China and other foreign manufacturers.””
Ahaaa. I sense a connection.
Dichloromethane is nasty stuff, but the problem is that there is just nothing that works as well or as fast – at least for stripping paint. I have done lots of this and there are basically 2 products worth using: PeelAway1, which is a caustic (pH = 14), but it takes a day for it to eat through a multitude of layers of paint. I like to use it when dissolving paint off of metal or a surface with lots of topography. And then there are methelene chloride strippers like RockMiracle. Amazing stuff. Sometimes after applying it, you can watch the paint shrivel in front of your eyes and you can even hear the old paint cracking. I love it. You use it with care and common sense. If something safer is invented that works as well or better, I’m for it but no one has been successful. Perhaps that is a feather in the cap of the coatings industry.