EPA dropped a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against a plastics company unintentionally making “forever chemicals,” seemingly accepting defeat after a federal appellate court blocked the agency’s attempt to pause production altogether. The federal government filed a notice Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to voluntarily dismiss its complaint against Inhance Technologies, a Houston-based company in the business of fluorination, a process that coats the insides of plastic containers to make them more durable but also creates PFAS as a byproduct.
The Pennsylvania district court doesn’t need to follow the 5th Circuit’s precedent because the two courts are in different jurisdictions, said Bob Sussman, an attorney and former deputy administrator at EPA.
Sussman represents the two advocacy groups — the Center for Environmental Health and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility — that first traced PFAS contamination back to Inhance’s fluorination process in 2020 and have been applying pressure on EPA to act ever since. CEH and PEER intervened in EPA’s lawsuit against Inhance after their own complaint got tossed out of court.