Two advocacy groups are suing EPA over claims it withheld data regarding the risks of “forever chemicals” in millions of fluorinated plastic barrels.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accuses the agency of illegally protecting extensive testing results as confidential business information.
lawsuit, filed Wednesday
At issue is Houston-based plastics company Inhance Technologies’ fluorination process, which coats the insides of plastic containers to make them more durable. As an unintended byproduct, the process also creates cancer-causing PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which leach from the coating into the substance the container holds.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Center for Environmental Health, the two groups that brought the lawsuit, traced instances of PFAS contamination back to Inhance’s fluorination process in 2020, a discovery EPA later confirmed.
traced instances
