EPA requirement for analyzing safer technologies and chemicals under fire

The Donald J. Trump administration is likely to target a requirement that chemical-handling facilities analyze the use of safer technologies or substances. This anticipated move is part of the government’s plan, announced in a court filing last week, to reshape a 2024 risk management regulation.

For years, chemical manufacturers and other industries have opposed what the US Environmental Protection Agency calls safer technologies and alternatives analysis. In a March 2024 regulation, the Joe Biden EPA incorporated requirements for companies to conduct such assessments—and if facilities don’t adopt the safer measures, to justify why they don’t.

That sweeping rule is aimed at reducing the frequency and severity of accidents at nearly 11,740 US chemical plants, warehouses, storage sites, and other facilities. According to the EPA, about 131 million people live within 3 mi (4.8 km) of these facilities.

In a Jan. 30 letter, a coalition of industry lobbying groups, including those representing chemical manufacturers, asks EPA administrator Lee Zeldin to revamp the Risk Management Program (RMP) rule. At the top of the industry groups’ list of issues for the EPA to “correct” in the rule is the requirement for facilities to conduct safer technologies and alternatives assessments.

This requirement “is unwarranted and unduly burdensome” as well as expensive, the chemical industry group American Chemistry Council (ACC) said in a statement last year, after the regulation was finalized. The ACC is one of the 16 signatory groups on the January letter to the EPA chief.

The EPA intends to rework the safety rule “in light of the new Administration’s policy priorities,” says a March 6 motion by the Trump administration to a federal appeals court. In the motion, the US Department of Justice asks the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to put a case challenging the regulation on hold because of the EPA’s plan. The case was filed by 14 states last year and alleges that the EPA lacked the legal authority to issue the regulation.

The EPA plans to finalize a revision of the regulation in late 2026, the motion says.

“The Biden EPA’s costly Risk Management Plan rule ignored recommendations from national security experts on how their rule makes chemical and other sensitive facilities in America more vulnerable to attack,” the EPA's Zeldin says in a March 12 statement announcing the agency's reconsideration of the rule.

Community and health groups strongly back the RMP rule’s requirement of assessing safer technologies and chemical alternatives, says Adam Kron, an attorney for Earthjustice, a nonprofit law group. Earthjustice represents community and health groups backing the regulation in court.

This requirement “encourages best practices by these facilities to prevent disasters,” Kron tells C&EN.

In addition to eliminating the provision for the safer technologies and alternatives assessment, the 16 industry groups ask the EPA administrator to change the rule’s requirement that facilities share information about specific chemical hazards. According to the ACC’s statement, this provision creates risks to national security by “creating opportunities for bad actors to use sensitive information to target a facility or disrupt responses to emergencies.”

The industry groups also ask the EPA chief to remove from the agency’s website a tool launched in 2024 that allows the public to search for facilities and their risk management details. This includes information about the identities of hazardous chemicals used at a facility and the history of accidents there.

Community and health groups defend the tool. “Under federal law the public has a right to know the chemicals handled in their vicinity,” Earthjustice says in a statement.

Despite industry’s opposition to the provision on the safer technologies assessment, companies back parts of the chemical safety regulation. For instance, last year, the ACC said it supported the rule’s approach to analyzing the root causes of chemical process safety incidents.

An ACC spokesperson tells C&EN that the chemical makers’ association intends to provide more detailed comments for “a more durable solution for moving RMP forward” after the EPA proposes changes.

The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, which also signed the letter to the EPA administrator, did not respond to a request for comment.

The regulation has a complicated history that reaches back more than a decade. In 2013, a deadly explosion and fire destroyed an ammonium nitrate fertilizer depot in the city of West, Texas, killing 15 people, mainly firefighters. In the wake of the incident, the Barack Obama administration conducted a multiagency review of industrial safety regulations for chemicals. In January 2017, during the last days of that administration, the EPA initially issued the rule, which the first Trump administration rescinded in 2019.