Concerns around HF have endured for years. In early 2019, CSB similarly appealed to EPA to scrutinize the chemical following repeated incidents at refineries (Greenwire, April 24, 2019).
That same year, months after the PES incident, EPA rejected a petition from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility calling for the agency to target the compound under TSCA. Regulators argued at the time that PEER’s petition did not “make the threshold determinations necessary to substantively assess and grant” the request.