Toxic Gas-Emitting Plants Get Pollution Reprieve Under Trump

After teacher Janet Rau learned that a carcinogenic gas was being released from an industrial plant near her school in 2019, she started a campaign for more oversight. Five years later, the Environmental Protection Agency issued rules requiring facilities that use the gas to better monitor and cut their emissions of it.

Those rules were set to take effect starting this month. But the Trump administration has granted dozens of temporary exemptions, including to the Atlanta-area facility near Rau.

Now, as part of a sweeping deregulatory push, the EPA wants to ease the new regulations for the gas — ethylene oxide, or EtO — permanently. ...