Coming Clean

05/27/2026

Imagine spending Memorial Day weekend evacuated from your home due to the threat of chemical explosion. This happened to tens of thousands of families this last weekend. And as of today, over 16,000 people in Orange County still can't return home & are staying in tents and cars.

You might live closer to a hazardous chemical facility than you think. And the Trump Administration has recently proposed gutting regulations for hazardous facilities.

Thousands of people who live near a damaged hazardous chemical tank in Southern California still can't return home, even as officials say the risk of a catastrophic explosion had largely passed.

05/07/2026

One in three Americans live near hazardous chemicals. Now it’s harder to tell if you’re one of them.

Until last year, one of the best ways to find out if you live near one of the roughly 12,000 facilities that store hazardous, cancer-causing chemicals used in manufacturing products like pesticides or medical devices was to go to an EPA webpage for the Risk Management Program (RMP). There you could type in your zip code in a search tool, and see if any of these chemical factories are nearby. (Latino, Black and low-income people are more likely to bear the brunt of chemical pollution; they disproportionately live closer to chemical plants than other groups.)

But last April, the Trump administration took down this tool. Now the only way to get this information is to drive to one of several dozen EPA reading rooms across the country to examine paper records.

“Another layer of protection for environmental justice communities was taken down when they took away the RMP tool,” said Nalleli Hidalgo, community outreach and education liaison for Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Service, a Houston environmental justice advocacy group.

Much of Tejas’s organizing is based around the Houston Ship Channel, a roughly 50-mile waterway that’s home to more than 600 petrochemical facilities. In 2021, about 100,000lbs of toxic acid was released during a chemical leak along the ship channel that left two people dead and injured 30.

Having the RMP tool allowed residents who live near the ship channel to use their phones to look up facilities near their schools and homes.

“You have a right to know what’s in your back yard,” said Maya Nye, federal policy director for Coming Clean, a non-profit environmental health collaborative. She said the removal of the tool is particularly concerning because “we haven’t figured out how to prevent chemical disasters and people are still experiencing them”.

The deletion of the RMP tool comes as the Trump administration proposes further dismantling accident-prevention regulations at chemical plants, even though the US continues to average one chemical accident every two days, a rate that will only accelerate amid the climate crisis.

This information was used to understand the problems Americans face. The consequences of its erasure, experts warn, could affect generations to come

05/05/2026

This will result in weaker protections against toxic chemicals, and more industry science.

Internal memo shows Trump appointee targeting EPA program that assesses toxic chemicals.

05/01/2026

Pesticides are making us sick - not just where they applied, but where they are manufactured and processed.

SipCam Agro in Wayne County, Mississippi, processes the toxic herbicide paraquat, which has been linked to Parkinson's disease and other life threatening health conditions. In 2024, the plant emitted 47,000 pounds of paraquat: enough paraquat to treat a tract of land larger than the city of Atlanta.

Wayne County also sees high rates of Parkinson’s disease deaths, in the top 7% of all U.S. counties that reported Parkinson’s deaths between 2018 and 2024.

Little research has been done on paraquat production’s effects on surrounding communities.But research has been done on communities close to paraquat use and it suggests that far lower levels of exposure have negative effects.

A recent study found that people who live within 1,600 feet of a paraquat application site have 91% higher odds of developing Parkinson’s.

Wayne County, Mississippi faces high Parkinson’s death rates as a nearby plant emits thousands of pounds of paraquat, a toxic herbicide linked to neurological disease and banned in dozens of countries.

04/17/2026

Nearly nine in ten adults shopped at dollar stores last year. That’s a remarkable number, and it reflects a real economic reality for millions of families. Inflation has pushed people toward any deal they can find.

Still, not everything on those shelves is worth picking up. From a food science standpoint, certain categories carry risks that simply aren’t obvious from the price tag. Here are six items that anyone with a working knowledge of food safety and chemistry should think twice about before tossing in their cart.

By Chris Divay
https://www.newsbreak.com/24-7-food-recipes-318752653/4595738707151-i-m-a-food-scientist-6-items-i-refuse-to-buy-at-the-dollar-store

04/14/2026

Grandison stared in disbelief at what looked like a nuclear mushroom cloud approaching the Houston home she shared with her mother, who ran outside to see what was wrong. They were still watching the giant black cloud hurtling toward their neighborhood from the Houston Ship Channel when the shelter-in-place alerts started blaring.

“It was just terrifying because when you shelter in place, you’ve got a cloud over you, you can’t leave, you can’t go anywhere and nobody can come in,”

Close to 180 million Americans live near one of the country’s 12,000 facilities capable of producing a “worst-case scenario” chemical disaster. A third of these facilities operate in areas where natural hazards like wildfires, hurricanes and sea level rise could disrupt power supplies or damage infrastructure to trigger a catastrophic accident.

But President Donald Trump, whose 2024 campaign received more than $25 million in donations from the oil and gas industry, is trying to keep fenceline communities in the dark about these risks.

Climate change is making the risk of disastrous chemical accidents more likely. But the EPA wants to gut recently enhanced safety requirements for hazardous facilities.

04/07/2026

New policy papers call for an urgent transformation of our approach to hazardous chemicals if we are to prevent further harm to people and the environment.

The papers delve into two core principles of the Louisville Charter for Safer Chemicals :

"Use Scientific Data to Support Health-Protective Policies and Practices," and
"Act with Foresight to Protect Health and Prevent Pollution."

Together they set clear recommendations for taking swift, health protective action on toxic chemicals using the data we ALREADY have, BEFORE people are harmed.

04/07/2026

New policy papers call for an urgent transformation of our approach to hazardous chemicals if we are to prevent further harm to people and the environment.

The papers delve into two core principles of the Louisville Charter for Safer Chemicals :

"Use Scientific Data to Support Health-Protective Policies and Practices," and
"Act with Foresight to Protect Health and Prevent Pollution."

Together they set clear recommendations for taking swift, health protective action on toxic chemicals using the data we ALREADY have, BEFORE people are harmed.

https://comingcleaninc.org/latest-news/in-the-news/u.s.-chemical-management-system-must-be-transformed-to-prevent-harm-argue-new-policy-papers

03/24/2026

The Trump Administration wants to weaken regulations for facilities like this one, while explosions, fires and toxic chemical releases continue to happen every other day.

The comment period is open.

https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2026/03/24/smoke-pouring-out-of-port-arthur-refinery-after-reported-explosion/

Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Service

Jefferson County Sheriff Zena Stephens has issued a shelter-in-place order for residents on the west side of Port Arthur following reports of an explosion at the Valero refinery.

03/17/2026

Pesticides are making us sick.

“It is compelling that many of the counties that use the most glyphosate are also ‘hot spots’ for non-Hodgkin lymphoma — a cancer associated with glyphosate exposure,” according to new research from Food & Water Watch

A new analysis links high use of the w**d killer glyphosate to elevated rates of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), particularly in the Upper Midwest, reinforcing years of research linking cancer to the w**d killer made popular by Monsanto.