![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/EPA_image_cropped.png\")
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Water quality expert Bob Bowcock tests a creek for cancer-causing PFAS \u201cforever chemicals\u201d at a property in Dalton, Ga., on June 12, 2025. Issam Ahmed\/AFP\/Getty via Inside Climate News<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tGet your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.<\/a><\/p>\n This story was originally published by\u00a0Inside Climate News<\/a> and\u00a0is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0Climate Desk<\/a>\u00a0collaboration.<\/p>\n In a new report that outlines a dozen high-risk pollutants given new life thanks to weakened, delayed or rescinded regulations, the Environmental Protection Network (EPN), a nonprofit, nonpartisan group of hundreds of former Environmental Protection Agency staff, warns that the EPA under President Donald Trump has abandoned the agency\u2019s core mission of protecting people and the environment from preventable toxic exposures.<\/p>\n Americans may not realize the scope and scale of their exposure risk from diverse industrial and agricultural sources or understand how much those risks are rising as political appointees destroy the safety net the EPA has always provided, said Marc Boom, EPN\u2019s senior director for public affairs, at a press briefing Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhile we may hear about one chemical or one EPA rule being changed,\u201d Boom said, \u201cso much is happening at once that it\u2019s very difficult to see the full picture and connect it to our everyday lives.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s why EPN developed a report,\u00a0Terrible Toxics<\/a>, to connect the dots, said Boom, who was joined by several EPN volunteers and medical experts on Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n The report details how recent EPA decisions have relaxed restrictions on harmful chemicals in food, consumer products, water and air, increasing Americans\u2019 exposure to 12 of the most dangerous and ubiquitous pollutants.\u00a0<\/p>\n Getting information from the EPA now is \u201clike pulling teeth\u2026It\u2019s probably the least transparent EPA we\u2019ve ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n The list includes brain-damaging mercury and pesticides in food; hormone-bending phthalates in consumer products and cancer-causing PFAS \u201cforever chemicals,\u201d lead, arsenic, and trichloroethylene in drinking water. Also on the list are the carcinogens benzene, formaldehyde, and vinyl chloride in the air, along with heart- and lung-damaging soot and smog. All of these pollutants cause multiple health harms.<\/p>\n The list does not cover pollutants like greenhouse gases, which also exacerbate health harms, but is meant to illustrate the escalating health costs of Trump administration policy decisions.<\/p>\n \u201cPolitical leadership is steering the agency away from its responsibility to protect human health and the environment,\u201d the report warns. \u201cMaking Americans safer is a choice and EPA\u2019s current leadership has chosen to make Americans sicker.\u201d<\/p>\n The vast majority of Americans want their government to do more to protect them from dangerous chemicals, a\u00a0new survey<\/a>\u00a0from the Pew Charitable Trusts found. More than 80 percent want the government and business to increase transparency around the use of chemicals.<\/p>\n Yet getting information from the current EPA is \u201clike pulling teeth,\u201d Boom said. \u201cIt\u2019s probably the least transparent EPA we\u2019ve ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n The EPA has abandoned its oversight duty and failed to let Americans know what chemicals are doing to their health, said Betsy Southerland, former director of EPA\u2019s Office of Science and Technology in the Office of Water.\u00a0<\/p>\n As one example, said Sutherland, who is an expert on the health effects of notoriously indestructible forever chemicals, \u201cwe\u2019re seeing fewer guardrails to prevent PFAS exposure and much less transparency about the risk.\u201d<\/p>\n PFAS contaminate nearly half of all drinking water across the country, scientists with the US Geological Survey reported in\u00a0a 2023 study<\/a>. Nearly all Americans, including\u00a0babies<\/a>, have\u00a0PFAS in their blood<\/a>.<\/p>\n Companies who handle PFAS have been given more leeway while the EPA is delaying safeguards and withholding science data, Sutherland said.\u00a0<\/p>\n EPA officials have delayed deadlines that prohibit companies from discharging PFAS into waterways and require drinking water systems to take the hormone-disrupting chemicals out of tap water, she said. They have proposed exempting importers from\u00a0PFAS reporting requirements<\/a>, leaving consumers in the dark about what\u2019s in the products they buy, and they\u2019ve buried reports on PFAS health risks, she added.<\/p>\n \u201cThat means Americans\u2019 toxic exposure is going up,\u201d Southerland said, \u201cand so are our health risks.\u201d<\/p>\n Inside Climate News asked the EPA to comment on the EPN report and explain how delaying water standards for PFAS and granting waivers to coal-fired plants, which emit mercury, lead and other pollutants, makes Americans healthier.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cReferring to EPN as nonpartisan is laughable; its staff and board is loaded with Democratic operatives,\u201d an EPA spokesperson said in a statement. \u201cWhile, unsurprisingly, EPN is engaging in dishonest fearmongering to drum up media attention and donations, the Trump EPA is taking real steps to protect human health and the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n Although the EPA is rolling back regulations on\u00a0PFAS<\/a>\u00a0and allowing\u00a0higher lead levels<\/a>\u00a0in soil, the spokesperson called the Trump EPA \u201cunmatched\u201d in fighting these contaminants. \u201cThe Trump EPA is committed to transparency and gold-standard science like never before to deliver on our core statutory responsibilities of protecting human health and the environment while Powering the Great American Comeback.\u201d<\/p>\n Hundreds of the\u00a080,000 chemicals registered<\/a>\u00a0for use under the US Toxic Substances Control Act are known to be dangerous, though just a fraction have undergone safety testing. The multiple harms associated with the chemicals listed in the EPN report are well-documented.<\/p>\n America\u2019s nurses are on the front lines of addressing the health impacts of toxic chemical exposures, said Sarah Bucic, a registered nurse and policy analyst with the nonpartisan Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the briefing, Bucic ran through the ills she expects the EPA\u2019s\u00a0deregulatory agenda<\/a>\u00a0will cause. More soot in the air will mean more children treated for asthma and lung diseases. More lead will result in more children with developmental, behavioral and attention-deficit problems. More benzene will lead to higher rates of blood cancers while more trichloroethylene will contribute to kidney and liver cancers, Parkinson\u2019s disease and fetal heart defects.<\/p>\n \u201cThe longer the destruction continues, the harder it will be to recover.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s nothing more heartbreaking than treating a patient, especially a child, who is sick because of something we could have prevented,\u201d Bucic said.<\/p>\n Afif El-Hasan, an Orange County pediatrician and board director of the American Lung Association, is most concerned about loosened rules that increase exposure to soot, or PM2.5.\u00a0<\/p>\n These tiny particles easily bypass the defenses of the lungs and enter the bloodstream, posing\u00a0outsize risks<\/a>\u00a0to children\u2019s still-developing lungs and immune system.<\/p>\n The EPA strengthened the national\u00a0PM2.5 standard<\/a>\u00a0in 2024 based on hundreds of scientific studies, El-Hasan said, a move that was projected to prevent thousands of premature deaths and millions of asthma attacks over time. \u201cNow, unfortunately, the EPA is failing to enforce these standards and is even trying to roll them back.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Donald](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Trump_image.jpg\")
President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announce the rollback of the agency\u2019s \u201cendangerment finding\u201d at the White House on February 12, 2026.Anna Moneymaker\/Getty via Inside Climate News<\/p>\n