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ACC is committed to continual environmental improvements that emphasize achieving acceptable human health and environmental risk limits in the communities where we live and operate.

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Contact: Jennifer Scott
Phone: 703-741-5813

Over eleven billion dollars are spent each year by the business of chemistry to reduce emissions and protect the environment. Federal and State regulations for virtually every piece of our plant operations are in place and more rules are in the pipeline. End-of-pipe control programs have been implemented throughout the industry and the focus of environmental protection is now shifting to addressing any remaining risks that are deemed unacceptable. Continued improvement in environmental performance should focus on spending resources only on those policy decisions that will deliver the most improvement to reducing human health and environmental risks.

The chemical industry has been demonstrating for decades that our commitment to environmental improvement is the cornerstone to our operations. The results speak for themselves. By EPA’s own measures, the chemical industry has reduced toxic emissions by over 73% since the late 1980s even as our chemical production has increased. Over ninety-two percent of Superfund site clean ups are either completed or underway. Emissions of six criteria air pollutants are down over 43% nationwide even as the economy, GDP and population have expanded. Industrial discharges to the nation’s waterways are but a small fraction of the remaining problems that are now driven by urban and agricultural runoff. These advances have been achieved, in part, as a result of the development of new technologies and continued investment in new equipment, processes and procedures.

Our environmental commitment goes beyond emission reductions. Our scientists and engineers develop products and technologies that improve health, safety and the environment and we’ve made a strong commitment to health and environmental research.

Many of our products are used directly to clean and protect the environment, protect health, or provide safety. For example, activated carbon is used to filter water and clean air while medicines derived from chemistry conquers disease. The World Health Organization stated that chlorine use in water treatment has been one of the most significant advances in public health protection.

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Relevant Links:

Definition of Solid Waste
EPA should finalize proposed changes to the definition of solid waste and adhere to its schedule for proposing changes to the comparable fuels exclusion that will promote increased energy recovery from valuable, fuel-like secondary materials. ACC supports the exclusion from the definition of waste of all legitimate recycling because this would encourage recycling and reuse, allow useful products to not be characterized as waste, reduce waste in landfills, and focus waste disposal on truly discarded materials that have no productive use.

Effluent Guidelines
ACC believes that the Effluent Limitations Guidelines (ELG) process, the technology-based standard-setting process for industrial wastewater regulations, has accomplished its objectives of reducing industrial discharges to U.S. waters and is virtually complete. As EPA fulfills its statutory requirements to review existing ELGs, the Agency should carefully evaluate whether new or revised ELGs are likely to achieve real water quality gains and decreased risk to human health and the environment before beginning new ELG activities.

Multipollutant
ACC supports multi-pollutant legislation that will deliver cleaner air and maintain viability of natural gas supplies

New Source Review
ACC supports The Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to reform the New Source Review (NSR) program. The two finalized NSR reforms offer facilities greater flexibility to improve and modernize their operations in ways that will reduce energy use and air pollution and will provide incentives to install better pollution controls. We encourage EPA to finalize the remaining reform packages to further improve the NSR program.

Risk-Based Health Standards for Air Toxics
The chemistry industry has successfully reduced its emissions and resulting risks to human health and the environment. ACC supports air toxics programs that use the best available science and methods to build on this success to address any remaining unacceptable risks, taking into consideration, as appropriate, cost, feasibility, and the relative contributions of risk from other emissions sources.

Risk-Based Cleanups
ACC supports the use of risk-based, site-specific cleanup decisions to fully protect human health and the environment, allowing for the most efficient use of resources and a quicker return of remediated sites to productive use in communities.

Superfund
ACC members spend millions of dollars each year cleaning up contamination resulting from historic disposal practices and we will continue to accept responsibility for our sites.