The Natural Resources Defense Council on Tuesday published a report identifying hazardous chemicals stored on-site at five "chemical" or "advanced" recycling facilities, as EPA considers loosening air regulations for the sector.

The report draws on public records requests for right-to-know data in four states: Indiana, Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio. It marks one of the first systematic attempts to inventory what pyrolysis and related conversion operators actually hold on-site — information that has been scarce in a fast-growing industry now operating across more than a dozen states.

"Many of the chemicals stored on-site at 'chemical recycling' facilities are flammable, corrosive, or explosive, raising risks of fires, spills, and explosions," the report states.

What does the inventory show?

The NRDC findings focus on the hazardous substance profile of five facilities. Among the chemicals reported at high quantities is sulfuric acid — a deadly substance whose health risks range from skin burns to permanent lung damage.

The report groups the documented hazards into the risk categories its authors say define the sector's chemical footprint:

• Flammable materials that raise fire risk at storage and processing stages
• Corrosive substances, including sulfuric acid at high reported volumes
• Explosive chemicals with spill and detonation potential

Environmental groups want the inventory to serve as evidence for stronger regulation of chemical recycling, rather than the lighter-touch framework the industry has pursued.

Why does this land now?

The timing is deliberate. EPA is weighing whether to loosen air regulations covering these facilities, a move that would determine whether pyrolysis and other conversion technologies are regulated as waste incineration units or treated more like manufacturing operations.

That distinction carries direct compliance costs for operators such as Alterra Energy, whose Akron, Ohio, facility receives ground-up plastics from recycling facilities and converts the material into a liquid feedstock used in plastic manufacturing. How cleanly that liquid stream and its associated emissions are regulated depends on the pending EPA decision.

For the material stream itself, the stakes are straightforward. Chemical recycling handles mixed and degraded plastics that mechanical recycling cannot process — flimsy films, multi-layer packaging, contaminated bales. The NRDC report argues that handling those difficult volumes with hazardous inputs on site creates risks the current regulatory debate has not fully accounted for.

Built capacity versus the regulatory gap

The five facilities covered by the report operate today; they are not announced projects. The inventory comes from existing right-to-know filings, meaning the chemicals documented are already in storage and use at operating plants in the four states examined.

That distinction matters for policymakers. The NRDC is effectively arguing that built chemical recycling capacity has outpaced the air and chemical-safety rules governing it, and that EPA's regulatory review should close that gap rather than widen it.

Industry backers, meanwhile, have pushed for the opposite outcome — treating chemical recycling as manufacturing to accelerate permitting and capacity growth for hard-to-recycle plastics.

What happens next

The decision point is EPA's pending move on air regulations for the sector. If the agency loosens the rules, operators gain a cheaper compliance path while the NRDC's findings become the evidentiary backbone for likely litigation or legislative challenges. If EPA holds or tightens the standards, the sulfuric acid volumes and flammable-chemical inventories documented in this report will anchor enforcement expectations at chemical recycling sites nationwide.