Louisville, Kentucky — Chemical giant Chemours is committed to reducing climate super pollutant emissions from its rubber town plant and has asked city officials to issue permits for new emission reduction equipment that may release chloroform and other harmful air pollutants. 

The company plans to capture the climate super pollutant hydrofluorocarbon-23 (HFC-23) and transport the gas to the Chemours plant in West Virginia for destruction.

HFC-23 is a by-product of the production of hydrochlorofluorocarbon 22, which is the chemical composition of lubricants used from Teflon to the International Space Station.

As part of the HFC-23 capture process, approximately 1,600 pounds of chloroform, hydrochloric acid, chlorine, and hydrogen fluoride each year, all harmful air pollutants, may be discharged into the communities around its Louisville facility. 

Although HFC-23 is not a local air pollutant, it is one of the most effective greenhouse gases to warm the earth. The impact of this chemical by-product on atmospheric warming is 14,600 times that of carbon dioxide, which is the main driver of climate change.

Chemours and Louisville officials stated that the net effect of the emission reduction project would be to drastically reduce the greenhouse gases that cause global warming and reduce harmful air pollutants throughout the plant-even though the proposed construction permit shows a Chloroform tanks and other new equipment may cause the release of these air pollutants.

The 30-day comment period on the proposed license, first reported by WFPL News, will end on December 14.

Environmental advocates say that any aspect of the project's increase of harmful air pollutants in the rubber town industrial zone of the city will threaten the surrounding communities, which have always had high levels of toxic air pollution and environmental justice struggles.

Chemist Wilma Subra (Wilma Subra) has long been consulting with communities in the country close to chemical and industrial hazardous areas (including the Rubber Town area). She said that Louisville officials asked Chemours to control the new equipment. , So as not to produce new air pollutants, it will be beneficial. freed. 

Any potential additional emissions of chloroform and volatile organic compounds from the new equipment "will have serious effects, including respiratory problems, rashes, headaches, nausea, vomiting, and cumulative effects after 30 years of exposure," Subra said. 

She said this increase may also "increase the burden of chronic effects such as cancer and leukemia experienced by people living in the rubber town area."

Rachel Hamilton, director of the Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District, said that the 1,600 pounds of additional emissions from the HFC-23 collection equipment included in the proposed construction permit only partially explained the situation. 

City officials said that the permit only covers part of the pollution control work that the company plans to carry out when collecting HFC-23. After adding up all of Chemours' new emission reduction measures, they expect to reduce chloroform and other harmful air pollutants throughout the plant.

She said that after Chemours completes its Louisville project, the plant will continue to comply with the city's strategic toxic air reduction plan, even if the new equipment emits some additional pollutants.

The plan was passed in 2005 and aims to reduce cancer and other health risks in industrial plants to a low level and help substantially reduce Louisville’s toxic air emissions.

"Wilma's concerns are well understood," Hamilton said. We are as worried as Wilma. However, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the entire project also reduced volatile organic compounds and harmful air pollutants.

Company spokesperson Thom Sueta said that the plant’s “emissions will not increase”.

Chemours is responding to pressure from the Biden government to reduce HFC-23 emissions.

The company emits enough HFC-23 into the atmosphere every year in Louisville, equivalent to the climate pollution of all cars and light trucks in the state's largest city.

Company officials stated that they had collected most of the HFC-23 from Louisville and shipped most of the HFC-23 by rail to the Chemours Washington plant in West Virginia for destruction. 

As part of reducing HFC production and imports by 85% and replacing them with safer alternatives over the next 15 years, EPA requires Chemours to eliminate 99.9% of climate super pollutant emissions.

The actions of the federal government are part of a global effort to avoid global warming driven by super-pollutants as high as 0.5 degrees Celsius by 2100.

But in Louisville, concerns about environmental justice have been the headlines for decades, and the city’s air pollution officials passed one of the nation’s most stringent toxic air reduction plans in 2005, and any potential increase in industrial pollution could face scrutiny. .

"You can't use one bad thing, greenhouse gas, for another bad thing, dangerous chemicals," Ebony Cochran, co-director of the Environmental Justice Organization's Rubber Town Emergency Operations, told WFPL News this week.

Air pollution district officials said that only part of the company's HFC-23 plan requires them to issue permits authorizing the installation of pressurized chloroform feed tanks, HFC-23 recovery towers and equipment for processing hydrochloric acid.

In the draft permit, “we clearly noticed the increase,” APCD’s Mattkin said, referring to a document that showed approximately 1,600 pounds of chloroform and other harmful air pollutants, including hydrochloric acid, chlorine and Hydrogen fluoride, from new collection equipment.

Subra said the air zone should be required to control these new emissions.

"They can use control technology to filter or react with it before it is released into the air," she said.

"If it is necessary to do this, we will ask for it," Hamilton retorted. "Emissions will be reduced net," she said.

She said that, for example, the company has informed the air zone that the potential limit on chloroform emissions from its entire plant will be reduced from 1.24 tons per year to 0.41 tons per year.

She said that the company's actual chloroform emissions are about 0.1 tons per year, while acknowledging that they may fluctuate from year to year.

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