Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters

National coalition · USA · preventchemicaldisasters.org

Overview

The Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters is a multi-organization national alliance of health, labor, environmental justice, public health, and public interest organizations united around a single federal regulatory demand: that the Environmental Protection Agency implement and enforce strong chemical safety rules that prevent chemical disasters before they occur. The coalition's primary legislative and regulatory target is the EPA's Risk Management Program (RMP) rule — the federal regulation created under the Clean Air Act that governs the approximately 12,000 US facilities that store, manufacture, or use large quantities of toxic and flammable chemicals, requiring them to develop and file accident prevention plans and emergency response procedures.

The stakes of that regulatory fight are substantial. Roughly 39% of the US population — approximately 124 million people — lives within three miles of an RMP-regulated facility. The vulnerability zones of some facilities extend up to 25 miles. Chemical incidents are not rare: the Coalition's own tracking data documents more than 900 chemical fires, explosions, and toxic releases across the United States in the period from January 2021 through late 2023 alone, resulting in nearly 200 community evacuations. These incidents are not evenly distributed: research published by the Coalition's member organizations — including the report "Who's in Danger? Race, Poverty, and Chemical Disasters" — has consistently documented that Black, Latino, and low-income communities are disproportionately located in the vulnerability zones of the highest-risk facilities.

The Bhopal Origin and the RMP Rule

The regulatory framework the Coalition seeks to strengthen was itself a product of disaster. On December 2–3, 1984, water contamination of a methyl isocyanate tank at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, triggered a catastrophic toxic release that killed more than 20,000 people — one of the worst industrial accidents in history. The shock of Bhopal produced, in the United States, Section 112(r) of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990: the "general duty clause" requiring facility operators to identify hazards and prevent accidental releases, and the specific authority under which EPA developed the Risk Management Program rule. The RMP rule was finalized in 1996 and has been the primary federal mechanism for chemical disaster prevention at covered facilities since.

For decades, members of what became the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters called on EPA to strengthen the rule — particularly to require facilities to assess and adopt inherently safer technologies (IST), which substitute less hazardous chemicals or processes for more dangerous ones where feasible. Hundreds of facilities have voluntarily made such switches since 2001, eliminating chemical disaster risks for an estimated 40 million people in 47 states — demonstrating the technical and economic feasibility of safer substitution at scale. The Coalition argues that EPA has the authority under the Clean Air Act's general duty clause to require such switches at the highest-risk facilities and has advocated persistently for EPA to use it.

The RMP Rule Battles: Obama, Biden, and Trump

The regulatory history of the RMP rule is a multi-administration story of partial reforms, industry rollbacks, and reinstatement. Following the 2013 West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion — which killed 15 people and injured more than 160 — President Obama issued an executive order directing federal agencies to improve chemical facility safety and security. The Coalition mobilized its member organizations to participate in the subsequent EPA rulemaking process, submitting comments and organizing frontline community testimony. The Obama administration's 2017 final RMP rule strengthened accident prevention requirements, including new provisions for third-party safety audits and local emergency coordination — but the rule was immediately challenged by the chemical industry and rolled back by the first Trump EPA before most of its provisions took effect.

The Biden administration's 2024 Safer Communities by Chemical Accident Prevention rule was a more modest but still consequential update: it required facilities to investigate past accidents, plan for climate-fueled disasters, gave workers expanded rights to halt unsafe operations, and in some cases required consideration of safer chemical substitutes. The Trump administration's EPA, in early 2025, proposed gutting most of these provisions before they took effect — eliminating requirements for safer technologies, climate and natural disaster planning, third-party safety audits, and strong worker participation in safety decision-making. The Coalition organized a Capitol Hill press event in March 2025, featuring Rep. Paul Tonko and members of labor and environmental justice organizations, in direct opposition to the proposed rollbacks.

The Chemical Incident Tracker

The Coalition's most widely used public resource is the Chemical Incident Tracker — an open-access interactive map and database that documents chemical fires, explosions, and toxic releases in the United States, updated weekly with incidents reported in media sources. The tracker allows any user to search by location, facility type, and incident type, and shows proximity to their own address from high-risk facilities covered by the RMP. As of 2025, it has documented more than 900 incidents since January 2021. It has been updated with features allowing users to see how close they live to RMP-regulated facilities, contextualizing the tracker data within the broader picture of who is at risk from chemical disaster.

For accountability journalists covering the chemical industry, the EPA, or environmental health, the Chemical Incident Tracker is a primary data resource. It provides the incident-level documentation that official EPA reporting frequently does not surface in accessible form — specific facilities, specific dates, specific incident types, and specific community impacts — alongside a proximity-to-facility layer that enables localized accountability reporting. The Coming Clean analysis "Disaster Déjà Vu," co-authored with EJHA and T.e.j.a.s. in 2025, drew on tracker data and RMP facility records to map the real-world impacts of the proposed Trump EPA rollbacks at specific facilities with documented incident histories.

Coalition Members

Coming Clean

National hub for environmental health and justice. Provides annual support for the Chemical Incident Tracker and co-produces research reports on RMP facilities and disaster chemical preparedness.

Environmental Justice Health Alliance (EJHA)

National network of grassroots EJ organizations in frontline communities. EJHA co-coordinators and affiliates provide frontline testimony and organize community participation in EPA rulemaking hearings.

Greenpeace USA

Environmental advocacy organization. Has campaigned on chemical disaster prevention since before the coalition's formal founding; produces public communications and online advocacy tools supporting the coalition's federal demands.

Earthjustice

Environmental law organization. Provides legal analysis and advocacy on RMP rulemaking and has issued press statements alongside coalition members at key regulatory junctures, including the final Biden-era RMP rule.

BlueGreen Alliance

Labor-environmental coalition bringing together unions and environmental groups. Issued joint press releases with coalition members on RMP reform, representing the labor perspective on worker safety at chemical facilities.

Union of Concerned Scientists

Science-based advocacy organization. Provides technical analysis of RMP rule provisions and contributes to coalition's public comments on EPA rulemakings.

New Jersey Work Environment Council

New Jersey labor and environmental coalition. Represents worker and community perspectives in a state with significant concentration of chemical manufacturing and refinery facilities.

T.e.j.a.s. (Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services)

Houston-based environmental justice organization serving frontline communities in the Houston Ship Channel and Gulf Coast petrochemical corridor. Co-authored the 2025 "Disaster Déjà Vu" report with Coming Clean and EJHA.

Access and Data Resources

The Coalition's website at preventchemicaldisasters.org hosts the Chemical Incident Tracker, the Coalition's history and policy demands, reports, and advocacy resources. The Chemical Incident Tracker is freely accessible without registration at preventchemicaldisasters.org/chemical-incident-tracker. Contact for the Coalition is through the About Us page. Research reports and public comments submitted by coalition members in EPA rulemaking proceedings are publicly available through EPA's online comment database (regulations.gov) as well as through the websites of individual member organizations including Coming Clean (comingcleaninc.org) and EJHA (ej4all.org).