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- WASHINGTON (AP-CP) - The
Clinton administration has decided to phase out MTBE as a gasoline additive
on grounds it poses a risk to public health or the environment, government
sources said today.
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- MTBE, a leading oxygenate and octane booster, reduces
emissions of smog, but it has been linked to groundwater pollution in California
and elsewhere. It is used in one-third of the gasoline sold in the United
States.
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- Carol Browner, administrator of the Environmental Protection
Agency, was announcing this afternoon that her agency will seek to "significantly
reduce or eliminate" use of MTBEs under the Toxic Substance Control
Act. That law allows EPA to ban chemicals "deemed to pose an unreasonable
risk to the public or the environment," said a government official
who spoke on condition of anonymity.
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- The agency also will ask Congress for changes in the
Clean Air Act that will encourage use of ethanol, an additive from corn,
in place of MTBE, according to a congressional source. The 1990 law requires
the use of oxygenates in gasoline.
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- The EPA previously has said it has no authority to regulate
MTBE, and Congress should act to limit its use in light of evidence the
additive is contaminating groundwater.
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- MTBE is used in all or part of 16 states, and is in much
of the gasoline sold in the Northeast. Refiners turned to the additive
after the Clean Air Act required gasoline in areas with serious air pollution
to contain at least two per cent oxygen by weight.
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- Last summer, an EPA advisory panel said that while current
levels of MTBE in water pose no health risk, its use should be dramatically
curtailed because of potential widespread water pollution problems. MTBE
has been found to be a carcinogen and poses health and environmental risks,
other critics of the additive have said.
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- The sources said the EPA action was a "backstop
measure" because Congress had not acted to eliminate use of MTBE,
or methyl tertiary butyl ether.
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- Vancouver-based Methanex Corp., the world's largest methanol
producer, says the EPA's calls to reduce use of the gasoline additive MTBE
are "unnecessary and misguided."
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- Methanex said last July that limiting MTBE in gasoline
"will likely threaten air-quality achievements and other important
environmental objectives and increase the cost of gasoline."
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- Methanol, produced primarily from natural gas, is a feedstock
used to make MTBE.
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- Methanex said the "known root cause"' of MTBE
in water is "uncontrolled and uncorrected gasoline release to the
environment. We do not support accepting or ignoring pollution."
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- California, which has more leeway than other states to
regulate air pollution, has already decided to ban the use of MTBE by the
end of 2002. State officials have asked the EPA for a waiver from the Clean
Air Act's oxygenate requirements so that the state doesn't have to switch
to ethanol, which is more expensive than MTBE.
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- Methanex is suing California under a clause in the North
American Free Trade Agreement that could result in $970 million US in compensation.
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- A coalition of Northeast states said last year said that
low levels of MTBE were found in 15 per cent of the drinking water tested
in the Northeast, in most cases in amounts less than 2 parts per billion.
Water begins to pose a health concern and tastes or smells bad at 30 to
70 parts per billion; about one per cent of water supplies tested in the
Northeast had concentrations above 35 parts per billion.
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