Cancer risk to those exposed to new boat fuel ingredient isn't 1:4 or 1:2, it's 1.3:1

[prfesser]

Published jointly by Propublica and The Guardian. All-caps are my emphasis.

"The Environmental Protection Agency approved a component of boat fuel made from discarded plastic that the agency’s own risk formula determined was so hazardous, EVERYONE EXPOSED TO THE SUBSTANCE CONTINUALLY OVER A LIFETIME WOULD BE EXPECTED TO DEVELOP CANCER. Current and former EPA scientists said that threat level is unheard of. It is a million times higher than what the agency usually considers acceptable for new chemicals and six times worse than the risk of lung cancer from a lifetime of smoking."

"...the EPA decided its scientists were overstating the risks and gave Chevron the go-ahead to make the new boat fuel ingredient at its refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Though the substance can poison air and contaminate water, EPA officials mandated no remedies other than requiring workers to wear gloves, records show."

Apparently the new material is processed in the same way as crude-oil feedstock, but uses recycled plastic as the starter material. That new feedstock has widely variable properties. The product is a complex mixture that contains extreme nasties that aren't found when petroleum is the starting material.

Engineers should make engineering decisions (that are supported by upper management). Physicians should make health decisions. Jeez, hobby rocketeers should make decisions about hobby rocketry, otherwise you might get people wanting to fly steel rockets with concrete nose cones...

Instead, political appointees are making/overriding decisions that should be left to scientists, engineers, doctors, etc.; in other words, to people with the relevant knowledge. And this is where the US is right now.

 

[Antares JS]

Another day, another alphabet agency doing something stupid. I wish I could say I was surprised but I am not in the slightest.

 

[Hobie1dog]

so sad to see where society is heading

 

[cls]

The original article never names the poison chemical. Disappointing.

The real disappointment is the industry captured the federal agency so it can't do its job. Just like FCC, FAA, FTC, SEC, IRS, etc...

 

[Alan15578]

The article does not name the additive, but it is for both boat and airplane fuel. What is different from marine fuel and ordinary vehicle fuel? What is the additive suposed to do?

 

[dhbarr]

Eleven NCSs (P-21-
0144, P-21-0145, P-21-0146, P-21-0149, P-21-0152, P-21-0153, P-21-0154, P-21-0155, P-21-
0156, P-21-0157, and P-21-0158) were classified as a high environmental hazard.

So don't worry! These could only affect kids and grownups if they somehow got into the air or water or fish or on the skin or eyes or lungs.... oh wait.

 

[cerving]

Ooh, let's start a new conspiracy theory... the Green people are doing it so everyone will be forced to go EV. (I'm surprised this hasn't already hit X...)

 

[ep29030]

Another win for the large law firms who will profit from the victims.

 

[prfesser]

Apparently it is a mixture of a large number of chemicals ("substance" is incorrect, that would indicate a single compound or element).

So don't worry! These could only affect kids and grownups if they somehow got into the air or water or fish or on the skin or eyes or lungs.... oh wait.

Page 21 of this document lists ingredients of the "substance". Each ingredient itself is a mixture of more than one compound; "distillates" and "oils" mean more than one substance, and "naphtha" generally means a mix of liquid hydrocarbons.
------
Clarified oils, catalytic cracked P-21-0152), Distillates,
hydroteated heavy (P-21-0153), Gas Oils hydrotreated vacuum (P-21-0154), Distillates, light
catalytic cracked (P-21-0155), Distillates, clay-treated middle (P21-0156), Distillates,
hydrotreated middle (P-21-157), Distillates, hydrotreated light P-21-0158), Gases, C4-rich (P-21-
0160), Gases, catalytic cracking (P-21-0161), Residues, butane splitter bottoms P-21-0162), and
Tail gas, saturate gas plant mixed stream, C4-rich (P-21-0163)
------
Some (most?) are going to have multiple compounds. So my SWAG is that there are hundreds (even thousands) of different compounds here. And since the @$$wipe powers-that-be have decided "Everything is fine", it'll take a bunch of lawsuits and testing to find out which of the compounds is/are the baddies.

It is quite possible that there is a synergistic effect, where a combination of compounds does more than the collective individual compounds. That's another SWAG.

 

[Charles_McG]

That looks like any given refinery output to me. Or the hazard assessment portion of about half the lab plants I work with.

 

[Tech 68]

Our tax dollars at work...

 

[SolarYellow]

Because they didn't do enough harm requiring MTBE.

 

[jqavins]

That looks like any given refinery output to me.

That was my thought as well, though Professor OP would know better about that. And none of that clearly states that there will be any halogen compounds, even though a mixed stream of used plastics will contain lots of chlorine (e.g. in PVC) and probably other halogens (e.g. in PTFE).

On the surface, using a plastics waste stream as raw material to produce petro products sounds like a better idea than using new petroleum, right? Well, if you properly handle the byproducts (assuming that's possible) then it's still not altogether clear. Burying those solids in landfills is a (dirty, nasty) for of carbon sequestration, while converting it into fuel and burning it releases the carbon as CO₂. But then, it's not making CO₂ out of oil freshly mined. So is not putting it in the ground any better or worse than taking new out of the ground?

 

[Charles_McG]

That was my thought as well, though Professor OP would know better about that.

I've got 28 years in refinery research, so don't count me out entirely. Admittedly, I know more about paraffin isomerization and aromatics than I know about reforming and hydrocracking. https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-mcgonegal-4791674

On the surface, using a plastics waste stream as raw material to produce petro products sounds like a better idea than using new petroleum, right?

My off-the-cuff reaction is that using waste plastic for specialty chemicals would be better than for fuel. There are details in the economics of specific stream-plant-government-product combinations that play silly-buggers with any general trends, though.

'Freshly mined oil' isn't exactly clean. It did just come out of the ground after eons of contact with different minerals. And every field is different. Refineries handle S, N, and Cl as a matter of course to manage catalyst life. Sometimes various transition metals, too. Many are tuned to specific fields - most world refineries can't process crude from Venezuela, for example. It's not quite the interchangeable commodity that it might look like from 50,000 feet.

 

[jqavins]

I've got 28 years in refinery research, so don't count me out entirely. Admittedly, I know more about paraffin isomerization and aromatics than I know about reforming and hydrocracking. https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-mcgonegal-4791674

I did not know that about you. A refinery chemist opened a distillery? Who'd'a thunk it?

'Freshly mined oil' isn't exactly clean...

Most of that I did know, except I didn't stop to think about the non-CHON parts until I was reading and realized that, of course, there'd be chlorine from salt. And I didn't know that there is a special problem with Venezuelan crude in particular, but at 50,000 feet I certainly wouldn't.

 

[Charles_McG]

My BS was biochem - and I still call myself a biologist. Partly self-disparagingly. Bit me in the butt once, too. At the beginning of covid, a group that included my grand-boss looked to see if we could leverage our expertise in catalyst nanoparticles into viracidal filter media. The initial screening used a harmless bacteria as a surrogate, and they quickly tired of making plates and counting colonies. As PhDs will. So they looked around (at me) and said, 'Oh, if only we knew a biologist...' I immediately automated the colony counting.

Tar sands and oil shales are so loaded with things like vanadium and manganese that there have been multiple serious proposals to either set fire to them under ground, or nuke them from below, and let the minerals do part of the refining in situ. And not just from Russians, either.

 

[jqavins]

Ah, so you're a biologist and refinery researcher who opened a distillery. I see.