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Trump administration already at war with itself over toxic chemicals

Chemical Pollution

Trump administration already at war with itself over toxic chemicals

One part of Donald Trump’s new government wants to reduce the use of toxic chemicals, but another will try to slash the laws and agencies that make this possible. The health of millions depends on how this tension plays out.

Published on 20 Jan 2025

Donald Trump says the US will have the “cleanest air and water on the planet”. His pick for secretary of health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has vowed to “Make America Healthy Again” by, among other things, cleaning up the country’s diet.

Americans have been “mass poisoned by big pharma and big food”, Kennedy Jr. says, and federal agencies have failed to stop it. He promises to “get the chemicals out” of America’s food supply. Kennedy Jr. is an environmental attorney who spent decades working on water pollution.

The record of the first Trump administration on toxic chemicals does not inspire confidence. Between 2016 and 2020, the president packed the Environmental Protection Agency with industry representatives who blocked, rolled back or reversed controls.

Today, there are clear signs that Trump wants a renewed assault on regulation. He has appointed Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”. Musk and Ramaswamy have already promised “mass headcount reductions” across the federal bureaucracy.

The litmus test will be how the new administration handles planned legislative initiatives on PFAS “forever chemicals”.

Americans have been mass poisoned by big pharma and big food

Robert Kennedy Jr.

The battle over PFAS

In 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency announced the first nationwide, legally enforceable drinking water standards for six kinds of PFAS. It also designated two PFAS chemicals “hazardous substances” to ensure that polluters, not taxpayers, pay for the cleanup.

This legislation startled the chemical industry in general and the PFAS producers in particular. They have fought these standards tooth and nail, and have even sued the EPA. Their antagonism is hardly surprising, given that the final bill for cleaning PFAS from drinking water in the US is estimated to exceed $100 billion.

Project 2025, a radical reform programme developed by the Heritage Foundation for a second Trump term, argues explicitly that the designation of PFAS as hazardous needs to be “revisited”, as do certain clean-up regulations. Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, but its authors are now getting key roles in his cabinet and the White House.

At the same time, Trump has picked Lee Zeldin, a former congressional representative from New York, to lead the EPA. Zeldin was one of the 23 Republicans who voted for creating drinking water standards for some PFAS.

Zeldin appears to have stronger environmental credentials than Trump’s previous appointment to run the EPA, Scott Pruitt, who was a climate change denier who worked closely with the chemicals industry. After barely a year, Pruitt was forced to resign amid multiple corruption allegations.

No regulation without regulators

To counter the chemical lobby and develop and enforce regulations on PFAS and other harmful substances that poison the food supply, the USA needs strong, independent and well-resourced regulatory agencies. In practice, this will means scaling up – not scaling down – government bodies such as the EPA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and so on. Self-regulation does not work.

If Kennedy Jr. is serious about removing poisons from the environment, he will find himself on a collision course with Musk and Ramaswamy. Since Trump first came to power eight years ago, awareness of the PFAS danger has increased exponentially among millions of Americans. So we can look forward to an explosive confrontation between the two factions on this issue.

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