A Generation of Chemical Safety Progress, Undone in 15 Months

By the time most Americans noticed, the rules protecting them from some of the most dangerous substances on earth were already being dismantled

Welcome to the The Environmental Health Brief—by Lindsay Dahl—a nationally awarded activist and author of Cleaning House (HarperCollins). This newsletter gets into complex topics through a lens of credible peer-reviewed science (no pseudoscience folks), my experience as a lobbyist (I’ve helped pass over 30 laws on toxic chemical pollution), and today’s wild, weird, wellness culture (“clean wars” and beyond).

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If you consider yourself a left leaning lifelong environmentalist or a food-dye hating MAHA mom, this article is for you. The pesticide liability shield debate is just the tip of the iceberg.

Since January 2025, the Trump administration has moved with extraordinary speed to roll back a sweeping range of federal protections against toxic chemicals—targeting everything from the “forever chemicals” contaminating the drinking water of more than 100 million Americans, to the mercury pouring from coal-fired power plants into the air breathed by children near those facilities.

The rollbacks span nearly every major category of chemical regulation: drinking water standards, air toxics, chemical disaster prevention, pesticide approvals, industrial solvents, and the scientific infrastructure the EPA relies on to protect the public in the first place.

In the span of fifteen months, the administration has proposed, initiated, or finalized more than a dozen rollbacks to toxic chemical regulations—reversing rules that, in many cases, took decades of advocacy, litigation, and scientific research to achieve.

Taken together, the roll backs on toxic chemical safety represent the most significant retreat from chemical safety in a generation.

A pre-emptive word about “MAHA”

In today’s politically fragile social media fueled ecosystem, I have to pre-emptively share context I find essential to keep readers with me for the eye opening reading ahead. My work has been non-partisan for 20+ years and I have criticized all political parties, every agency and each President. By taking aim at President Trump and his chemical industry lobbyist run EPA, I’m sharing with you the facts so we can mobilize together to hold this administration accountable.

Are we going to let ourselves fall prey to online fist fights or are we going to give our members of Congress and this administration hell for these egregious roll backs? My hope is the later.

For a deep dive on how past administrations stack up on toxic chemical policies, check out this great piece by Lara Adler.

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By The Numbers

For the readers who skim, this is the highest level read on the impacts of the rollbacks.

• 4 PFAS limits rolled back from drinking water, impacting 100 million American families

• $1.5 billion annual health care costs savings from the PFAS drinking water regulations, now back on taxpayers shoulders

• $15 million cancelled in research grants on the health effects of PFAS

• 10 new PFAS approved for use as pesticides

• $234 million in givebacks to the chemical industry for no longer needing to comply with onsite safety work where chemicals are made here in the U.S.

• Every two days an unwanted release of hazardous materials happens at chemical plants across the U.S., mostly located in low income or communities of color

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Rollbacks Across Every Part of a Toxic Chemicals Lifecycle

1. Weakened Protections from Four PFAS in Drinking Water

In April 2024, after decades of advocacy and scientific documentation of serious health harms, the EPA established the first-ever federal limits on PFAS in drinking water. The rule covered six PFAS chemicals and was expected to reduce exposure for approximately 100 million Americans, prevent thousands of deaths, and reduce tens of thousands of serious illnesses per year.

On May 14, 2025, the Trump EPA announced it would rescind drinking water limits for four of those six chemicals: PFNA, PFHxS, PFBS, and HFFPO-DA (commonly known as GenX). For the remaining two, PFOA and PFOS, the agency extended the compliance deadline by two years, from 2029 to 2031. More than 73 million Americans are served by water systems that have detected PFAS levels above the limits the EPA now seeks to rescind or delay.

Then, on September 11, 2025, the EPA filed a motion in federal court to formally vacate the four standards it had already announced it would rescind.

PFAS—which are found in a vast array of consumer products and industrial processes—have been linked to kidney and testicular cancer, liver and kidney damage, endocrine disruption, immune system suppression, and developmental harm to infants and children.

The EPA’s own analysis had found that the 2024 rule would save $1.5 billion annually in healthcare costs.

2. PFAS Research Funding Cancelled and Superfund Enforcement Delayed

The EPA terminated more than $15 million in PFAS research grants—including a grant to Michigan State University cancelled on April 29, 2025, the day after the agency issued a press release claiming it was committed to “strengthening the science” on PFAS.

The agency also requested three successive delays in the court case challenging the Superfund designation of PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances—the legal mechanism that holds polluters financially responsible for contamination cleanup.

3. 10 New PFAS-Containing Pesticides Approved & Liability Shield

In November 2025, the EPA approved ten new pesticide products containing isocycloseram—an active ingredient classified as a type of PFAS—for use on food crops, turf, and in indoor pest control, along with a second PFAS-related compound, cyclobutrifluram. Scientists and environmental groups raised alarms over the approvals, warning that PFAS compounds build up in soil and water over time and have been linked to cancer, birth defects, and liver damage, among other harms.

By now you have likely heard about the move to prevent pesticide companies from taking any future liability for the harm from their products and efforts to thwart state policies that further regulate toxic pesticides. A bipartisan bill was introduced (go Rep. Pingree!) as an amendment to the Farm Bill, which could stop this horrible precedent.

4. Program to Increase Safety of the Most Hazardous Chemical Plants, Gutted

The Biden administration’s 2024 Safer Communities by Chemical Accident Prevention (SCCAP) rule had strengthened requirements for the nation’s most hazardous chemical facilities—requiring third-party safety audits, analysis of safer chemical alternatives, stronger incident investigations, and greater public access to information about nearby chemical hazards. It had taken years of advocacy and regulatory process to finalize, and is aimed at protecting communities that are the highest exposed.

On March 12, 2025, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency was reconsidering the rule. Industry trade groups, including the American Chemistry Council and the American Petroleum Institute, had lobbied for the reversal from the moment Zeldin was sworn in.

By mid-April 2025, the EPA had removed from its website the public data tool that had allowed communities to look up chemical hazards at nearby facilities.

In February 2026, the EPA published a sweeping proposed rollback—whaty they ironically call the “Common Sense“ RMP rule—that would rescind or modify nearly all of the 2024 rule’s major provisions: third-party audits, safer technology assessments, employee protections, and public information requirements. If finalized, the agency estimates annualized cost savings to industry of more than $234 million per year.

Environmental and social justice organizations note that an accidental chemical release occurs on average every two days in the United States, and that weakening these rules will cost lives.

5. Review to Ensure Chemicals Are Safe Before Entering the Market, Removed

In September 2025, the EPA proposed to gut key provisions of the Biden administration’s 2024 overhaul of the TSCA risk evaluation process—the framework that determines whether chemicals already in commercial use pose an “unreasonable risk” to human health or the environment.

TSCA covers some of the most dangerous industrial chemicals in everyday use, including asbestos, formaldehyde, mercury, and lead. And you can read more about the sweeping rollbacks proposed to this important law here.

The proposed changes would reverse the 2024 requirement that a single comprehensive risk determination be made for a chemical as a whole—capturing all combined exposures across all its uses—and return to making separate, narrower decisions for each individual use. Critics warn this approach will allow dangerous chemicals to evade a finding of unreasonable risk by obscuring the cumulative burden of exposure.

The proposal would also reinstate the assumption that workers handling toxic chemicals always use proper protective equipment—an assumption the 2024 rule had specifically removed because it was leading to a systematic underestimation of risk to workers. It would additionally narrow which populations count as “potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulations,” removing the phrase “overburdened communities” from the definition—effectively reducing protections for environmental justice communities located near chemical facilities.

The EPA’s own Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, which oversees TSCA implementation, is now led by former executives and lobbyists from the American Chemistry Council—the primary trade group for the chemical manufacturing industry. (The ACC is heavily featured in my book, especially chapter two titled: The Opposition.)

6. Asbestos Testing for Cosmetics, Removed

In the spring of 2025, the Trump administration moved to delay and potentially reopen the Biden EPA’s 2024 ban on chrysotile asbestos, the last form of asbestos still commercially used in the U.S. This form of asbestos is found in products like brake pads and industrial gaskets, as well as in chlorine production facilities and the ban was able to be passed due to updates to TSCA passed back in 2016 (you can see how all of these important laws are connected). Asbestos is a well-established human carcinogen, linked to mesothelioma, lung cancer, ovarian cancer, and laryngeal cancer. Public health advocacy powerhouse the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization worked for decades to pass the asbestos ban and in June 2025, the EPA filed a court motion to pause litigation on the ban while it reevaluated the rule—a process expected to take up to 30 months.

Following significant public criticism, the administration reversed course in July 2025 and announced it would allow the existing ban to remain in place.

The Trump administration officially withdrew a proposed rule that would have required cosmetics manufacturers and talc suppliers to test their products for asbestos contamination—eliminating a consumer safety protection that had not yet taken effect. I helped pass this provision under the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act (MoCRA), a nine year fight. The administration tried PR spin citing the repeal isn’t a set back for public health, but take it from someone (me) who has formulated cosmetics and extensively tested talc, this is a major loss for public health. More on the repeal of asbestos testing in cosmetics here.

7. Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, Repealed

This rollback is perhaps the starkest symbol of the administration’s approach to chemical regulation. The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, first established in 2012, had produced extraordinary public health results:

By 2017, mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants had dropped 86 percent, acid gas pollutants were down 96 percent and the rule was saving an estimated 11,000 lives per year.

In 2024, the EPA strengthened the standards further—tightening limits on filterable particulate matter (a surrogate for toxic metals like nickel, arsenic, and lead), requiring continuous emissions monitoring systems at coal plants, and lowering the mercury limit for lignite-fired facilities. Most plants had already met or were on track to meet the new standards.

On April 8, 2025, President Trump signed a proclamation exempting 68 coal-fired electric generating units from the 2024 standards, citing national energy security. On June 11, 2025, EPA Administrator Zeldin proposed to fully repeal the 2024 rule. On February 19, 2026, the repeal was finalized.

Coal-fired power plants are the largest domestic source of airborne mercury emissions in the United States. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that causes brain damage in developing children, particularly in infants exposed in utero. Arsenic and other heavy metals released by these plants are linked to cancer, cardiovascular disease, and birth defects.

The EPA estimates the repeal will save the power sector approximately $120 million per year. It did not publish an estimate of the public health costs.

8. Delays for Bans on Trichloroethylene (TCE) and Methylene Chloride

TCE is a powerful industrial solvent and a known human carcinogen, linked to kidney cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and neurological harm. Methylene chloride, widely used in paint strippers and degreasers, is linked to liver cancer and can cause rapid death through cardiac arrest. Both chemicals were subject to major Biden-era crack down another huge win for public and environmental health (the risk management rules under TSCA for the nerds out there).

In 2025, Trump’s EPA extended methylene chloride compliance deadlines by 18 months and postponed key TCE exemption requirements. The TCE page on EPA.gov notes that enforcement actions related to contested provisions now require prior approval from the Assistant Administrator—effectively suspending enforcement in practice given the deep chemical industry infiltration of the EPA.

9. Delay of Ban on Dry Cleaning Chemical “Perc” and Agricultural Compound, Carbon Tetrachloride

In July 2025, the EPA opened reconsideration of the Biden-era rule on perchloroethylene (PCE), a solvent widely used in dry cleaning and associated with cancer risks, slowing or stopping the proposed restrictions. In October 2025, the agency opened similar reconsideration proceedings for carbon tetrachloride, used in the production of refrigerants and agricultural chemicals. The EPA has indicated it expects to propose amendments to the PCE rule in summer 2026 and finalize them in 2027.

10. Air Emissions Exemptions for Ethylene Oxide & Chloroprene

In 2025, the administration granted temporary exemptions from Clean Air Act emissions standards for ethylene oxide and chloroprene—chemicals linked to cancer and other severe health harms—at petrochemical facilities operated by companies including BASF, Chevron Phillips, Formosa Plastics, Shell, and Westlake. An analysis by the Center for International Environmental Law found that several companies receiving exemptions are simultaneously planning expansions of their petrochemical operations at or near the same facilities.

11. Removed PFAS Reporting Requirements, Large Loophole for Companies Using PFAS

In November 2025, the EPA proposed to exempt PFAS-containing products from mandatory reporting requirements under TSCA when PFAS concentrations fall below 0.1% by weight — and indicated it is considering raising that threshold to 1%. The agency’s own analysis estimated the carve-out would save industry over $700 million in reporting costs.

These exemptions would leave large gaps in our knowledge of where PFAS are being released into the environment and the impacts of PFAS as contaminants, which is a large issue for anyone who cares about “clean” products.

12. Elimination of the EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) and IRIS Program, Designed to Advance Understanding of Toxic Chemical Risks

In July 2025, the EPA officially eliminated its Office of Research and Development — the agency’s internal scientific research arm, which for more than fifty years had provided the independent scientific basis for the EPA’s standards on air pollutants, water contaminants, toxic chemicals, and pesticides.

ORD’s approximately 1,115 scientists, engineers, and researchers had underpinned regulations on PFAS in drinking water, fine particulate matter, carbon dioxide, lead, asbestos, and a broad range of other hazardous substances. It also was home to IRIS, which is one of the nation’s premiere and most credible organizations dedicated to advancing scientific literacy around the health risks from toxic chemicals.

“Without a research arm, it will be very difficult for EPA to issue new standards for air or water pollutants, toxic chemicals, pesticides, or other hazards,” said Michael Gerrard, faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.

The elimination of ORD does not simply roll back existing protections—it removes our ability to understand and learn more about toxic chemicals impacts to our health.

What Comes Next

Many of these rollbacks are already final. The MATS repeal took effect in February 2026, the PFAS research grants are gone, the ORD has been dissolved. The chemical hazard data tool has been erased from EPA’s website and coal plants are emitting more mercury into communities that had, for years, been breathing cleaner air.

Other rollbacks remain in motion that if we are loud enough can help slow down or delay, many proposed rules are awaiting finalization, court challenges, or reconsideration proceedings are grinding forward. Environmental groups, former EPA officials, and state attorneys general have vowed legal challenges across multiple fronts.

What is already clear is the scale and speed of what has happened.

Rules that took the better part of a decade to develop—rules grounded in peer-reviewed science, public comment processes, and bipartisan legislative authority—have been paused, reopened, weakened, or repealed in fifteen months.

Laws on toxic chemical pollution that the environmental community spent 60 years passing, obliterated in 15 months.

The chemicals these agencies regulated did not become less dangerous, the communities living near chemical plants and contaminated water systems did not move away, and the science has only gotten stronger showing us we need to ban these compounds before they make their way into our products, homes and bodies.

What did change? The rules. Shaped first hand by chemical industry lobbyists now running the EPA under President Trump.

Are other administrations off the hook? Does this erase a longstanding failure by both parties in not proactively taking on chemical safety with more gusto? Clearly not, but it should wake us all up and call us to act.

Take Action

1. Share this article with anyone you know who cares about getting toxic chemicals out of our products, air, food, water, communities.

2. Sign this email action asking Congress to STOP any rollbacks to TSCA, the primary law overseeing chemical safety

3. Follow the following organizations working on the front lines of these roll backs: Toxic Free Future, Earthjustice, NRDC

4. If you’re interested in reading a first hand account of what it was like to pass these laws, check out my book Cleaning House: The Fight to Rid our Homes of Toxic Chemicals