“You can’t undo this:” Grieving mom urges lawmakers not to overturn ban on cancer-causing chemical TCE
Emma Grace Findley should be turning 24 this year. But 10 years ago, her family lost her to a rare brain cancer.
Her mother, Kari Rhinehart, blames her daughter’s death on exposure to trichloroethylene (TCE), a known carcinogen that contaminated the groundwater in Franklin, Indiana, where the family lived for 20 years.
“When I go back to Franklin now, the only thing I see is all the different places where we were poisoned,” Rhinehart says.
A hidden danger
Franklin’s TCE contamination was first discovered in 1984. An EPA investigation determined that a manufacturer of electrical parts in the Indiana town had released chemicals, including TCE, into the sewers, which then transported them into the surrounding neighborhood.
The plant had been using TCE as a degreaser. Aside from its industrial uses, TCE is also used as a dry-cleaning solvent and can be found in some household products like carpet cleaners and stain removers.
The contamination in Franklin turned out to be widespread, a toxic plume spreading silently underground, sending vapors into homes. “Our environmental engineer even found it in the soil along the creek bed where I used to take my kids out to play,” Rhinehart says.
In 2014, 13-year-old Emma was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a deadly brain cancer that’s almost never found in children. She was one of many children in Franklin who were getting sick.
“Within two years, there were three girls and Emma within a two-block radius who were all diagnosed with brain cancer,” Rhinehart says. “All of them had really rare tumors.”
Experts have found that TCE not only causes cancer, it’s also toxic to the nervous system, kidneys, liver, immune system and to developing fetuses. “TCE has harmed or cut short the lives of so many,” says Maria Doa, Environmental Defense Fund’s senior director for chemicals policy and a former EPA chemical risk expert.
EDF has been working for more than 10 years to get TCE off the market, providing scientific expertise to regulators and working with impacted families to educate policymakers on the dangers of the chemical.
“TCE is a chemical that simply should not be used,” says Doa.
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A short-lived victory
At the end of 2024, the EPA banned most uses of TCE, citing extensive evidence of its toxicity.
Dr. Michal Freedhoff, America’s top chemicals regulator during the Biden administration, even called Rhinehart personally to tell her about the ban, given her relentless work to prevent TCE from harming other families.
But within weeks, that victory began unraveling.
“A group that calls itself ‘The Alliance,’ implying that it represents multiple companies, petitioned to stop the ban,” says EDF attorney Samantha Liskow. “In fact, they represent just one Oregon company that makes lead battery parts, but they incorporated in Texas — probably so they could file their case in the Fifth Circuit.” (The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has a track record of being friendly to industry arguments.)
The strategy worked with stunning efficiency. “Before the Biden EPA could even respond, just two hours after the motion was filed, a judge gave them a stay,” Liskow says. That stay, so far, has blocked the ban from taking effect.
Those involved in the litigation are claiming devastating business impacts, but Liskow points out that one industrial petitioner already has an exception that gives it 20 years to phase out TCE. Plus, safer alternatives are available.
And now, there’s an even bigger hurdle brewing in Congress.
Just two days after Donald Trump’s inauguration, U.S. Representative Diana Harshbarger introduced a resolution expressing congressional disapproval of the EPA’s final TCE rule. One of the petitioners in the lawsuit, Microporous, LLC., is located in Harshbarger’s Tennessee district.
In February, U.S. Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana also introduced a resolution to overturn the TCE ban. If either of these resolutions pass both the House and Senate, and President Trump signs off, this life-saving regulation comes to a halt.
"If Congress votes to overturn this TCE ban, the prospect of any future regulation gets very uncertain," Liskow says.
A race against time
With a potential vote looming, advocates are working to educate lawmakers on the dangers of the cancer-causing chemical.
Rhinehart’s voice grows desperate when the topic of overturning the TCE ban comes up. Over the years, she’s seen grown men cry with her over the loss of Emma, while at the same time opposing environmental regulations that would protect people from TCE.
To members of Congress considering overturning the ban, Rhinehart has this message:
“You would literally be saying that my daughter’s life didn’t matter. That all the kids who got sick in Franklin, Indiana, didn’t matter,” she says. “If in 10 years, they find TCE at your kid’s school, you are going to be pissed that you signed this. You can’t undo this.”
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