A federal district court judge dismissed a lawsuit from two environmental health groups that asked for a court-ordered EPA rule banning “forever chemicals” found to be leaching from large plastic containers.
Chief Judge James Boasberg, an Obama appointee to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, sided with EPA’s argument “that they have fulfilled any nondiscretionary duties under the TSCA [Toxic Substances Control Act]” by agreeing to initiate the rulemaking process to collect more data on three per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, according to an opinion filed Wednesday.
At issue is one company’s practice of fluorination, a process that coats the inner walls of plastic containers and barrels to make them more durable, which also inadvertently creates three of the riskiest PFAS as byproducts. Inhance, a Texas-based, plastics-focused company with 11 U.S. facilities, annually fluorinates approximately 200 million containers, which commonly hold pesticides, gas or cleaning products.
The two groups helming litigation and advocacy efforts — Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Center for Environmental Health — were the first to trace widespread PFAS contamination back to Inhance’s fluorination process back in 2020.
