Earthjustice sues EPA over approval of chemicals it found pose 'unreasonable risk'

Earthjustice argues approval violates Toxic Substances Control Act

Earthjustice filed a federal lawsuit on August 26 challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of two semiconductor-industry chemicals that the agency itself says can cause “sudden death” and other serious health effects. The two compounds at issue are photoacid generators — chemicals used in the photolithography step of chipmaking, where ultraviolet light filtered through the compounds imprints circuit patterns onto wafers. The EPA approved them for import and immediate use, according to consent orders reviewed by The Guardian.

In those orders, the EPA identified “acute toxicity, genetic toxicity, skin and respiratory irritation, eye corrosion, skin photosensitization, and systemic, reproductive, and developmental toxicity effects as potential risks to workers,” and acknowledged that exposure could also cause “acute lethality,” or sudden death, though it had “insufficient data” to assess that risk. For the general population, the agency identified “acute toxicity, genetic toxicity, and systemic, reproductive, and developmental effects as potential risks … if exposed via drinking water, ingestion of groundwater impacted by landfill leachate, and/or inhalation from stack air releases.” The agency added: “The risks for these endpoints were not quantified due to insufficient information on hazard.”

Earthjustice attorney Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz said the EPA’s own admissions establish that the approval violates the Toxic Substances Control Act, which requires the agency to “prohibit or limit the manufacture, processing, distribution in commerce, use, or disposal of such substance or to prohibit or limit any combination of such activities to the extent necessary to protect against an unreasonable risk.”

“This is turning the new chemical review process on its head,” Kalmuss-Katz said. “You have a situation where the EPA has failed at its most fundamental obligation when it comes to new chemicals, and that is to protect the public from unreasonable risk.” He added that “EPA found that both chemicals pose potentially severe risks to public health, admitted that it lacked the information needed to calculate those risks, and still approved both chemicals for immediate use.”

Among the restrictions the EPA imposed are limits on the size of the container in which a chemical can be imported, but not the volume — a measure Kalmuss-Katz said does little to protect anyone. The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The compounds may also be PFAS — “forever chemicals” that do not naturally break down and accumulate in the human body and environment — though the EPA documents reviewed by The Guardian are heavily redacted and the company that produces the chemicals is not named. Redactions also make it unclear whether the compounds were fast-tracked under a late 2025 executive order aimed at speeding up the approval of datacenter chemicals. Public health advocates at the time said the order appeared to suggest the administration intended to ignore chemical safety review laws.

PFAS are essential in semiconductor manufacturing, used in as many as 1,000 steps at the nanometric level, including photolithography and plasma processing. Most of the chemicals used in photolithography do not remain on the chip but are discharged in wastewater or otherwise disposed of. Industry documents provided to The Guardian in 2024 stated that finding safer alternatives is “impossible in some instances” and would require “stepping back decades in technological advancement.”

Testing data from 2022 from one U.S. semiconductor fabrication plant, previously reviewed by The Guardian, showed as much as 78,000 parts per trillion of PFAS in wastewater from some samples. The EPA’s legal limit for several common PFAS compounds in drinking water is 4 parts per trillion.

Disposal of the two newly approved chemicals also remains uncertain. The EPA recommends incineration, but the process does not fully destroy many chemicals and would create unknown health risks for largely low-income communities around incinerators, according to the lawsuit and the agency’s consent orders.

Lenny Siegel, executive director of the Center of Public Environmental Oversight, which advocates for stronger regulations around the industry’s chemicals, said: “The EPA should not approve any new photoacid generators, even on a temporary basis, until there is enforceable assurance that there will be zero discharge of such chemicals.”

Kalmuss-Katz framed the approval as part of a broader pattern in the administration’s regulation of datacenters. “Unfortunately what we’ve seen time and time again in this administration especially is the EPA putting the pursuit of AI and increased computing capacity over its obligation to protect public health and the environment,” he said. He added that environmental groups were not calling for the elimination of domestic chip production, but “we need to do it in a way that isn’t exposing workers and communities to these unstudied risks.”