The EPA gets blamed every time anyone has an issue with kind of environmental regulation by any agency.
New-fangled toilet takes three tries to get a load down? Blame the EPA.
Dishwasher detergent no longer works? Blame the EPA.
Can’t buy a real light bulb? Blame the EPA.
Government effectively seized your property without compensation as you can’t build on it now that some rare bug was discovered? Blame the EPA.
It’s not an analogy. This is a thread about EPA.
There are errors of fact in the quoted bits.
PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl) WAS used as transformer oil, due to improved heat transfer capacity over mineral oil. Some capacitors also used it. PCB has never been used as a propellant or refrigerant…it is an oily liquid that doesn’t evaporate readily.
I think you are conflating PCB with R-12. R-12 was pretty heavily used, but it is a CFC (chlorofluorocarbon) rather than PCB. They basically have nothing in common, other than they have both been regulated by the EPA. The two chemicals have chlorine in common, I suppose, as does table salt…so what?
PCBs have been banned due to direct health effects on humans.
CFCs have been regulated due to ozone destruction. CFCs eventually do break down over time, and indeed the ozone reduction is part of that breakdown sequence.
I deliberately referred to it as R-12 above, rather than Freon.There is much confusion over “Freon”. Freon was a trademark of Dupont, which they applied to several different chemicals…most could be used as refrigerants or propellants, but at least one (1-1-1 Trichloroethane) was a popular dry-cleaning fluid and industrial solvent, and yes you could buy that in paint stores and even grocery stores (as a stain lifter) for many years.
The name Freon was never applied to PCB.
Or Denver. The first round of EPA regs actually made things worse though…All the carburetor adjustments were sealed so you couldn’t make cars run right at altitude. They were rich enough to blow soot when new, and would usually carbon up to the point of dieseling by 100 Kmiles…and maybe 1/10 of the automatic chokes worked right. I recall walking to school in the winter, and many of the cars struggling to stay running.
But it was EPA regulations that made electronic fuel injection and catalytic converters ubiquitous, and that eventually that made a huge difference. When I go back, Denver now has about 5X the traffic and about 1/10 the pollution compared to what I remember of the 70s. I really don’t think it would have happened without the EPA cracking down…there would always be a smog belching alternative new car available cheaper.
I work for a government regulatory agency (though not the EPA). Creating new regulations isn’t essential for an agency’s existence. Enforcing those regulations is justification enough for its continuance. It’s not like the EPA can say, “We did it boys, everyone stopped polluting, let’s close up and all go home.”
Even if you’ve managed to reduce the general usage of existing hazardous substances to safe levels (and maintaining that will only happen through enforcement anyway), who knows what new chemical by-product is going to come about as a result of new technologies. Maybe the next generation of batteries or solar panels or clean-burning petroleum results in some new kind of toxic sludge that isn’t regulated by existing rules. Somebody needs to be vigilant about those kinds of things.