By: Lani Wean, West Virginia Field Organizer
Date: April 6, 2026
About: Docket #EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0068-0001
To: Environmental Protection Agency
My name is Lani Wean, and I am the West Virginia Field Organizer for Moms Clean Air Force. I strongly oppose EPA’s misleading proposal to remove incineration and waste burning from the Other Solid Waste Incinerators (OWSI) Rule.
Removing plastics-burning facilities from this rule would allow these combustors to encase communities in dangerous amounts of dioxins and other pollutants. EPA must not allow plastics-burning incinerators to operate in any capacity without the pollution controls that help safeguard the health of our children and communities.
There are several “chemical recycling,” or plastic-burning facilities proposed in my home state of West Virginia. The one closest to me is currently being built right across the street from a high school, local library, outdoor sports facilities, health center, and down the road from another chemical plant in the area. Pyrolysis plastic waste incinerators like these release vast amounts of dioxins, benzene, formaldehyde, soot pollution, and heavy metals, such as mercury and arsenic, into surrounding communities. Exposure to these pollutants, even at fractional levels, increases the risk of cancer, birth defects, respiratory impairment, neurological problems, and other harms, especially for at-risk groups such as children and older individuals, whose lungs are developing or compromised.
Families in this area already face generations of harm from petrochemical pollution. “My child already has severe asthma; we can’t stay if this will make it worse.” “How am I supposed to ever sell my house when it’s near a plant like this?” “I don’t drink the water or go outside when the air is bad.” These are all things I have heard from community members regarding pyrolysis plastic-burning facility proposals—and I know firsthand that they are not uncommon. Soon after moving to the Kanawha Valley, I was diagnosed with asthma—something my pulmonologist said is, and I quote “unfortunately very normal” in this state.
My heart breaks for the kids experiencing the same thing while they are simply trying to live, learn, play, and grow. We do NOT need to exacerbate these risks by allowing these pyrolysis incinerators to burn plastic trash without any pollution controls, monitoring, or reporting requirements.
There is no other way to regulate pyrolysis incinerators under the Clean Air Act if you remove them from Section 129. This EPA proposal would give the plastic industry a free pass to pollute without repercussions. For the plastics industry, this proposal offers exactly what they want: a cheap way to make plastic waste vanish from the public eye only to be spewed into our air as toxic pollution—and breathed into our lungs. There is no justification for EPA to prioritize industry profits over the health and survival of children and families in the U.S.
Parents, local lawmakers, and community members are not buying the plastic industry’s greenwashing of waste incineration as “chemical recycling.” This is not recycling but a way to make plastic pollution visibly disappear as the plastics industry tries to justify industry plans to triple plastics production by midcentury. The pyrolysis incinerators in this proposed rule are exactly that—incinerators—and they must be governed by the pollution protections in the Clean Air Act. Once again, I strongly oppose EPA’s misleading proposal to remove plastics pyrolysis incineration from the Other Solid Waste Incinerators (OWSI) Rule.