And then nothing happened." Months dragged by. Two days later, the EPA announced it intends to ban methylene chloride. "They weren't going to move forward, even though the ban had been proposed the research had been done." "We struggled with that," Cindy remembers. Two days after her son's memorial service, Drew's mother Cindy Wynne saw a story on the front page of the The New York Times that said the EPA was no longer pursuing bans on a handful of chemicals it had determined were hazardous or deadly - including methylene chloride.
Health and safety experts caution consumers to avoid using them - especially indoors. Today, it's still legal to sell products containing both chemicals. Barr, did not respond to interview requests. Methylene chloride manufacturers opposed it, and in public comments in the spring of 2017, the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance urged the agency to delay it, saying the regulation would have a "devastating impact on consumers and small businesses." A spokesperson for the industry group, Faye Graul, declined to comment for this story, and the major U.S. Since 1980, more than 50 deaths had been attributed to methylene chloride, according to an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and Slate.īut the proposed rule has yet to become an actual ban. In the proposed rule, the agency wrote that the chemicals posed "unreasonable risks" to consumers.
In January 2017 the agency proposed banning the use of methylene chloride and NMP in paint removers. The EPA began a risk assessment of methylene chloride in 2014. But under the Trump administration, federal regulators have repeatedly delayed a ban that has been in the works for years. In recent months, some retailers have said they will stop selling products that contain methylene chloride, also known as DCM, and a second chemical, N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone, or NMP. The 31-year-old's death is one of dozens blamed on popular paint removers sold under the brand names Goof-Off, Strypeeze, Klean Strip and Jasco among others. He had suffocated on a chemical called methylene chloride. By the time his business partner found him crumpled on the floor, Wynne was dead. In October 2017, Drew Wynne collapsed inside a walk-in refrigerator at his coffee business in North Charleston, S.C. They were trying to persuade the retailer to stop selling paint strippers containing methylene chloride.īen McCanna/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images Protestors holding pictures of people who died from use of paint removers, including Drew Wynne, protest outside a Portland, Maine, Lowe's store on May 10, 2018.