Policy Watch: Chemical tank rupture kills at least 8 paper mill workers

8 dead, 3 missing in Washington State chemical rupture; all clear in California leak

A Tuesday implosion at a Longview, Washington, paper mill has left eight people confirmed dead and three people missing and presumed dead, while a chemical leak that began last week in California ended without major incident.

At a press conference Wednesday, Cowlitz 2 Fire and Rescue chief Scott Goldstein announced that response to the Washington incident has transitioned from rescue to recovery, meaning the nine individuals missing at the time were presumed dead.

“We’re bracing ourselves for this being the deadliest industrial tragedy in modern Washington State history,” Gov. Bob Ferguson (D) said at the press conference.

The Washington implosion occurred at Nippon Dynawave Packaging when a tank ruptured and released nearly 3.4 million L of white liquor, a caustic chemical mixture of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide used to break down wood chips into a pulp.

A spokesperson for the company confirmed at the press conference that contamination from the rupture reached the Columbia River, adding that the company is working with the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington State Department of Ecology to address environmental concerns.

The US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board announced that an investigation into the incident began Wednesday.

In California, 50,000 residents have been cleared to return to the vicinity of a Garden Grove aerospace facility that last week began leaking methyl methacrylate, an explosive chemical used to make aircraft windows, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The Orange County Fire Authority (OCFA) had originally expected the incident to result in either an explosion or a 25,000-L leak of the chemical into the parking lot surrounding the facility. After a 6-day evacuation order, OCFA announced Wednesday on X that the situation had been stabilized and residents could return home.

The EPA has stated that it is providing air quality monitoring support for the incident and is “working closely with state and local authorities,” including OCFA.

The Union of Concerned Scientists says both West Coast incidents reflect the need for “robust safeguards” and condemns the Donald J. Trump administration’s proposed rollbacks of chemical worker protections and third-party audit requirements.

—Alex Music, special to C&EN

Lawmakers push for Trump admin to review National Academies’ federal funding

Earlier this month, 11 Republican lawmakers wrote a letter to US Department of Transportation secretary Sean Duffy and US Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought, calling for them to investigate whether the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) should be suspended or debarred from receiving federal funding.

“The letter raises concerns that taxpayer-funded research is being used to advance political agendas and shape policy and litigation, rather than provide independent scientific analysis,” says Representative Eric Burlison (R-MO), who led the letter, in a press release.

In particular, Burlison and 10 other Republican House representatives call into question the NASEM’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, a resource created in collaboration with the Federal Judicial Center (FJC) to help judges better understand complex scientific testimony presented during cases. The lawmakers write in the letter that the manual contains a “highly politicized chapter” on climate science “that is clearly intended to sway judges deciding major climate lawsuits.” They also write that peer review process was flawed because it did not include scientists “with differing views on climate science.”

The NASEM did not respond to C&EN’s request for comment by publication time.

This isn’t the first time the climate science chapter of the NASEM reference manual has been criticized since the fourth edition was released in Dec. 2025. In January, 27 state attorneys general wrote to the FJC (PDF), calling for it to remove the chapter.

The FJC complied with the request. NASEM president Marcia McNutt, on the other hand, opted to keep the chapter available on the National Academies’ website.

In response to McNutt’s decision, the attorneys general reached out to members of the Donald J. Trump administration in March (PDF), asking for federal agencies to investigate whether the NASEM should be precluded from receiving federal funding. Two months later, the 11 republican lawmakers are now recommending the same investigation.

The administration appears to be taking the requests under consideration. After former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows referenced the lawmakers’ letter in a May 6 post on X and added “it’s time to end [the National Academies’] contracts,” OMB director Vought replied May 10, “On it.”

—Krystal Vasquez

Vermont becomes the first state to ban paraquat

Vermont this week became the first US state to ban paraquat dichloride, a widely used herbicide that faces growing scrutiny over its acute toxicity and alleged links to Parkinson’s disease. The legislation, signed into law May 26, phases out use of the pesticide beginning in July (PDF). The move places new pressure on regulators to follow suit and on agrochemical manufacturers to find alternatives.

Paraquat is used to control weeds in crops including soybeans, cotton, orchards, and vineyards. The herbicide is banned in more than 70 countries, including China and members of the European Union, largely because of its poisoning hazards. In the US, it has been classified by the US Environmental Protection Agency since 1978 as a restricted-use pesticide because of its high toxicity.

The chemical has been increasingly scrutinized in recent decades because of its alleged links to Parkinson’s disease, which are vigorously debated. Syngenta, the primary producer of paraquat-based herbicides, disputes claims that the chemical causes Parkinson’s disease.

Citing “significant competition from generic producers,” Syngenta said March 3 that it plans to shut down its UK paraquat production plant and thus discontinue global production of the chemical by the end of June.

Although paraquat use is restricted to commercial applicators in the US, concerns about pesticide drift affecting nearby residents, workers, and schools—coupled with the availability of alternative weed-control products for Vermont farmers—helped drive public support for the ban, with a recent poll finding that 77% of Vermonters favored eliminating the herbicide’s use after learning basic facts about it. Meanwhile, some farmer and crop-protection groups such as CropLife America have argued that paraquat remains an indispensable weed-management tool for growers (PDF).

Other states may follow Vermont’s lead. According to the Environmental Working Group, at least 13 states are considering bills to ban or restrict use of paraquat. Earlier this year, for example, Minnesota lawmakers debated legislation that would prohibit paraquat sales beginning in 2027 (PDF), and New York legislators introduced a bill that cited “overwhelming scientific evidence” linking paraquat to Parkinson’s disease.

—Joe Beeton, special to C&EN

Open-access publication fees could cost federal agencies $1 billion by 2030, GAO says

Federal agencies are not prepared to cover the costs of making their research freely available to the public, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found in a report published May 21.

In 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) gave agencies until the end of 2025 to make all publications and data resulting from federally funded research accessible to the public for free, regardless of where it is published. At the time, most academic journals made their publications available only to subscribers. Partly in response to the OSTP mandate, many journals began offering an open-access option, which is supported by a fee paid by the researchers, or in this case the federal agencies, submitting their work.

In the new report, the GAO investigated whether nine agencies that fund research and development had complied with the order, and it found that only the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has produced a plan to manage publication fees. In July 2025, the NIH announced that it would cap publication costs and issued a request for comments later that month.

The GAO report makes recommendations for the other agencies and calls for the OSTP to analyze the effects of the open-access requirement.

In 2024, the nine agencies collectively spent $295 million on publishing charges, the GAO estimates, which could balloon to $1 billion annually by 2030 because of changes in publisher business models. The top 100 journals that publish federally funded research charge an average $3,025 per open-access article, the report states.

The new report falters in its assumption that covering publisher fees is the only way to make research publicly accessible, according to a statement from the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), a nonprofit group of libraries and academic organizations that advocates open-access research. The government could instead use the funds to build an alternative publishing structure, SPARC says.

“The government does not have an obligation to promote policies that ensure commercial publishers maintain a specific business model in the process,” the statement says.

Eight US open-access publishers made more than $5 billion in revenue from publication fees from 2015 to 2023, a 2024 analysis found.

—Laura Dattaro, special to C&EN