In April 2024, Tish Taylor and her father Robert stood behind the head of the Environmental Protection Agency while he signed a rule they had spent years asking for. They live in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana — in the 85-mile stretch between New Orleans and Baton Rouge that people call Cancer Alley. The parish has the highest risk of cancer from air pollution of anywhere in the country: nearly 50 times the national average.

The rule they were watching get signed was designed to fix exactly that. Two years later, most of it is being taken apart.

What the rule actually did

It's called the HON rule, and here is what it does.

The rule covered about 220 large petrochemical plants, which make the ingredients for plastics, paint, antifreeze, detergent and shampoo. In making them, those plants release six chemicals that Tracey Woodruff — a Stanford epidemiology professor who used to do toxic assessments for the EPA — calls "the classic bad guys": ethylene oxide, chloroprene, benzene, ethylene dichloride, vinyl chloride and 1,3-butadiene. They raise the risk of breast cancer, liver cancer, leukemia, lymphoma and reproductive problems. "We've known about their toxicity for decades," Woodruff said.

The rule made those plants do three things:

• Upgrade their pollution controls to cut ethylene oxide and chloroprene emissions by almost 80 percent.
• Put air monitors on the fence line so the people living next door could see what was actually coming over it — and fix leaks when readings went over the limit.
• Stop dumping during startups and shutdowns. Plants had long been let off the emissions rules while powering down for maintenance or ahead of a storm. With storms getting worse, that loophole has "a massive impact on what is actually getting released," said Shiv Srivastava of the Houston group Fenceline Watch.

The EPA's own estimate was that the rule would prevent 6,200 tons of toxic air pollution a year and cut the cancer risk from air toxics in nearby communities by 96 percent.

Nearly 60 percent of the covered plants are in Texas and Louisiana. The rest are in Alabama, Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia and elsewhere.

How it is being undone

Weeks into Trump's second term, the EPA invited chemical companies to email the agency and ask to be let out.

Last year, Trump granted two-year exemptions to more than 50 petrochemical facilities. This July he issued 20 more. The EPA has said it will propose a rewrite of the rule this fall, and nobody expects the new version to be stronger.

The HON rule was one of nine air-toxics rules the Biden EPA issued, covering everything from steelmaking to copper smelting to tire manufacturing to coal plants. As Yale E360 reports, all nine have been or are now being rescinded, revised, or reconsidered.

To grant the exemptions, Trump used a provision of the Clean Air Act that environmental lawyers say has never been used before — one that lets a president waive a standard for two years if the technology to comply is not available and he determines that granting the exemption is "in the national security interests of the United States." His proclamations asserted that the rule "imposes substantial burdens on chemical manufacturers already operating under stringent regulations" and that "maintaining a robust domestic chemical industry is vital to safeguarding the supply chains that underpin our economy."

The orders offered no evidence for any of it. "That's not how this works," said Annie Fox, a staff attorney at the Clean Air Council. The law requires a president to lay out specifics behind each claim, "not just state it." She added: "These are supposed to be rare exceptions that are well-grounded in research and facts."

Last October, a coalition including the Taylors' group, Concerned Citizens of St. John, sued Trump and the EPA in federal court in Washington, arguing the national-security claim is a pretext to spare polluters while the administration dismantles the rule.

It is not only this rule

The EPA has also proposed undoing Biden-era strengthening of the Risk Management Program — the safety rule that let workers handling hazardous substances stop operations they believed were dangerous, required chemical plants to prepare for natural disasters, made them undergo independent audits after accidents, and required them to share information with the public.

There were 131 accidents involving reportable chemical releases nationally last year. For people living near the nearly 700 chemical plants around Houston, Srivastava said, "there are constant explosions, there are constant fires, there are constant black, dark plumes that linger over our communities." Easing the safety rules, he said, "makes us extremely, extremely vulnerable to having a massive, catastrophic disaster."

The administration also took down the online tool that let people near a petrochemical plant look up its accident history, its emergency response plan, and which chemicals it handles. Srivastava says that without it, neighbors cannot find out even the names and locations of the plants around them.

And in March, the EPA proposed weakening a separate 2024 rule limiting ethylene oxide at facilities that use it to sterilize medical equipment — arguing that the Clean Air Act gives regulators very little room to update rules when the science on health risks changes.

Who wanted this

The American Chemistry Council, the petrochemical industry's trade group, called the HON rule "overly stringent" and said it "exceeds the EPA's statutory authority." The exemptions, it said, "offer a pathway for relief for some sources from some of the unrealistic timelines" in the rule.

That trade group does not only write statements. In January, the House committee chaired by Kentucky's Brett Guthrie released a draft rewrite of the nation's toxic chemicals law and the American Chemistry Council cheered it; in May, the ACC filed an $80,276 independent expenditure for TV ads running in Guthrie's district. Kentucky is one of the states where HON-covered plants sit.

The EPA's own answer, in a statement, was that its air-toxics proposals aim to "protect American industry and supply chains, while still minimizing Americans' unnecessary exposure to hazardous air pollutants."

Woodruff, who watched the agency from the inside, reads the record differently. Former fossil fuel and petrochemical industry representatives now hold top jobs across the EPA, she noted, and the message to industry has been that "whatever the industry wants to do, that's what we want to do." The policy changes, she said, "will lead to people getting sicker and dying."

Who is living with it

A disproportionate share of the people breathing the highest concentrations of these chemicals in Cancer Alley are Black. Hillcrest, the predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood in Corpus Christi, Texas, is ringed by petrochemical plants — one of which was granted a two-year exemption from the rule.

Sharon Lavigne, who founded RISE St. James Louisiana, still has the pen the EPA administrator handed her after he signed the rule in 2024. Her group is a plaintiff in the lawsuit. She said she thinks the president's disregard for the rule reflects a belief that "we are nothing."

Tish Taylor put it more simply. Everything the Biden administration did to protect her community, she said in July, was "pretty much just thrown in the garbage" and replaced with "a death sentence."

What the record shows

The EPA finalized a rule in April 2024 requiring about 220 petrochemical plants to cut emissions of six cancer-causing chemicals, monitor their fence lines, and stop venting during shutdowns — protections the agency estimated would prevent 6,200 tons of toxic pollution a year and cut nearby communities' air-toxics cancer risk by 96 percent. The Trump administration has since exempted more than 70 of those plants, using a Clean Air Act provision lawyers say has never been invoked before and offering no supporting evidence, and has said it will propose a rewrite this fall that is all but certain to scale the rule back. All nine of the Biden EPA's air-toxics rules have been or are now being rescinded, revised, or reconsidered. The parish the Taylors live in has the highest air-pollution cancer risk in the country, nearly 50 times the national average.

Source

Trump Is Unraveling a Hard-Won Rule to Reduce Toxic Pollution From Chemical Plants — Beth Gardiner, originally published by Yale E360 and reproduced by Mother Jones as part of the Climate Desk collaboration, August 2026. Photo: petrochemical plants in Ascension Parish, Louisiana (Gerald Herbert/AP).