The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is quietly fast-tracking approval of new PFAS “forever chemicals” for use by the semiconductor industry at the same time the agency is publicly touting increased scrutiny of new PFAS and other chemicals.
As US semiconductor production ramps up, the hastened reviews could sharply increase pollution containing little-studied PFAS that are likely toxic, accumulative in the environment and contribute to climate change.
Despite the risks, the EPA is “bending over backwards” for the semiconductor industry, said Mike Belliveau, the founder of the Bend The Curve non-profit who has lobbied on toxic chemical legislation.
“We’re going to see more and more [PFAS pollution],” he said. “No one is happy that PFAS is in their drinking water or raining down from the air, and EPA’s permitting runs counter to rising scientific and public concern … so tension is mounting.”
PFAS are a class of about 15,000 chemicals often used to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, and are linked to cancer, liver problems, thyroid issues, birth defects, kidney disease, decreased immunity and other serious health problems.
Semiconductors are essential to electronics used in defense, medical devices, smart phones, clean energy and more, and the Biden administration has spurred the industry’s onshoring with billions in incentives. But the industry is a prolific polluter and a major source of unregulated and unmonitored PFAS, creating tension with Biden’s sweeping plan to rein in PFAS pollution.
The controversy represents a confluence of what environmental advocates have said are major deficiencies in PFAS regulation. It’s generating debate over the definition of PFAS, political meddling in EPA decisions, the rapid accumulation of little-studied PFAS and regulators’ black box decision making around chemical safety and approvals.
The EPA in early December announced it would strengthen its review of new chemicals as part of the 2016 rewrite of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which are the laws governing the nation’s use of toxic substances.
Previously, industry could begin selling a chemical if the EPA didn’t review it within 90 days, resulting in thousands of substances being sold with virtually no review.
The law also included a “low volume exemption” that allows chemicals to be sent to market in fewer than 30 days with little scrutiny if they’re used in small amounts and do not put workers’ health at riskl over 600 PFAS were given low volume exemptions in recent decades, including those that were “lethal if inhaled” and “corrosive to the skin”.
The 2016 TSCA rewrite eliminated those problems, but the first Trump EPA never implemented the law. The Biden EPA published it in early December, stating the agency “should encourage innovation, while also making sure that new chemistries can be used safely before they are allowed to enter commerce”.
“Today, we’ve modernized our chemical reviews and continued to protect people from unsafe new PFAS,” said Michal Freedhoff, an EPA chemical safety administrator.
But 40 pages into the rule are two paragraphs that advocates say contradicts the rule’s intent. It points to PFAS’s “critical role” in semiconductor production, and states that the agency “prioritizes” those PFAS and “now reviews these new chemicals in a third of the time compared to other sectors” – or as little as 90 days.
The EPA further claims it put in place a “framework” to ensure the chemicals are safe, but the details are unclear. It also justifies the decision in part by claiming that semiconductor PFAS are used in a “closed loop”, meaning they are contained in the facility, do not put workers at risk and are properly disposed of.
But advocates say that is untrue. While industry uses robots in many chip making processes, the facilities pump an enormous volume of PFAS waste into water or air. Some capture waste and send it to incinerators that are technologically incapable of fully destroying PFAS, and instead send toxic waste into the air around those facilities.
The Biden administration has acknowledged the PFAS waste problem, but still claims the process is “closed loop”.
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“There is no closed system for PFAS,” Belliveau said.
It’s also unclear exactly how the EPA is weighing chemicals’ risks. The agency generally relies on industry science, and in other situations in which it has fast-tracked approval of new chemicals, it uses standardized formulas to assess health and environmental risks that seem “designed to get them to [say] ‘yes’,” said Tosh Sagar, an attorney with Earthjustice, which litigates on PFAS issues.
If there is health and safety data on the new chemicals, it was developed by industry and largely is legally hidden from the public under confidential business information claims.
“It’s innocent until proven guilty and that’s a fundamental problem,” said Lenny Siegel, with Chips Communities United, a group working with industry and the administration to improve environmental safeguards. “If there are safety reports, then show me – the chemicals are going to be in our environment and blood for a long, long time.”
While the industry has tried to evade environmental oversight, it is looking for alternatives to PFAS, but development is slow and difficult. Producing semiconductors is a highly complex process and PFAS are essential ingredients used in as many as 1,000 steps at the nanometric level.
Recent testing data showed 78,000 parts per trillion (ppt) of PFAS in wastewater from one facility; the EPA legal limit for several common PFAS compounds is 4 ppt.
The process also demands the use of fluorinated gases, or PFAS gas, in a range of processes, and their toxicological risks remain largely unknown. But they often turn into TFA, a toxic greenhouse gas that can stay in the atmosphere for 1,000 years. TFA is often found at higher levels than any other PFAS compound in the air, water and human blood, but independent researchers are only beginning to study it.
Meanwhile, the EPA has altered the definition of PFAS in the rule to exclude many gases that are considered PFAS by most public health agencies worldwide, Sagar said. The exclusion has been a priority for the chemical industry and military.
Chip makers and the Biden administration have argued that the benefits of unhindering the semiconductor industry outweighs the risks. That may be a point of debate, Siegel said, but he added: “That’s not what the EPA is saying – they’re saying they’re protecting us.
“The EPA is not doing their job,” Siegel added.
