This ‘climate-friendly’ fuel comes with an astronomical cancer risk

Almost half of products cleared so far under a new US federal ‘biofuels’ program are not, in fact, biofuels

• This article is co-published with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power

The Environmental Protection Agency recently gave a Chevron refinery the green light to create fuel from discarded plastics as part of a climate-friendly initiative to boost alternatives to petroleum. But, according to agency records obtained by ProPublica and the Guardian, the production of one of the fuels could emit air pollution that is so toxic, one out of four people exposed to it over a lifetime could get cancer.

“That kind of risk is obscene,” said Linda Birnbaum, former head of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. “You can’t let that get out.”

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