Harmful soot unchecked as Big Oil battles EPA over testing
(Reuters) - A deadly form of soot pollution from U.S. refineries has gone unregulated for decades because of a dispute between the U.S. oil industry and federal environmental officials over how to measure it, according to documents from the Environmental Protection Agency reviewed by Reuters.
The delay in addressing so-called condensable fine particulate matter emissions means this pollutant is being released by scores of facilities across the country unchecked, adding to a slew of other contaminants from oil refineries that researchers say take a disproportionately large toll on the health of poor and minority communities living nearby.
The absence of a federal standard has led at least one regional air quality regulator in California to attempt a crack-down on these emissions, an effort that has sparked litigation from oil refiners located there.
Condensable fine particulate matter is a form of soot that leaves the smokestack as a gas before solidifying into particles when it cools. The EPA first proposed a method to measure it in 1991 amid evidence that it was at least as damaging to human lungs as normal soot, which is solid when emitted.
The agency says even short-term exposure to fine soot particles can lead to heart attacks, lung cancer, asthma attacks and premature death. Scientific research cited by the EPA estimates that, combined, condensable and solid soot cause more than 50,000 premature deaths a year in the United States, findings that are disputed by the industry.
But the EPA has declined to impose limits on the condensable form of the pollutant. The oil industry and its main lobbying group, the American Petroleum Institute (API), claim the agency has failed to come up with an accurate test to quantify it, according to EPA disclosures and interviews with independent testing firms, API officials and the trade group’s members.
The industry says testing employed currently can overstate the amount of condensable soot emitted by refineries under certain conditions, a flaw the EPA has acknowledged.
“Costly retrofits or new control devices should not be required based on results from a faulty method,” major U.S. oil company Chevron Corp told Reuters in a statement.
Setting a national limit on pollutant emissions without consensus on how to measure those emissions is unfeasible because it would invite legal challenges from the industry, according to regulators and stacktesting analysts.
The EPA said in a statement that it is still conducting research into how to reliably measure condensable soot, but did not comment on a timeline for finishing the effort.
The delays are dangerous, said Greg Karras, an environmental scientist who has worked for nonprofit groups seeking reduced emissions from the refining industry.
“It is inappropriate to wait more than 30 years to protect people from this form of pollution while you are trying to perfect a test,” Karras said.
If condensable soot were eventually regulated, it would force nearly all of the country’s 135 oil refineries to invest in new pollution-control equipment, based on estimates of current emissions using the EPA’s contested testing method.
Soot is comprised of particles many times smaller than a grain of sand that can penetrate the lungs and bloodstream if inhaled. The EPA regulates solid forms of soot, which are easy to measure by filtering smokestack emissions. But because condensable soot is gaseous in the smokestack, it is harder to quantify.
The EPA’s current test for condensable soot, called Method 202, uses probes and glass tubes placed inside refinery smokestacks to collect samples from the gas stream. It shows individual U.S. refineries can emit up to hundreds of tons of the pollutant per year, sometimes accounting for nearly half of a refinery’s total soot emissions, according to a Reuters review of regulatory documents filed by oil companies.