A second Donald Trump presidency would represent a serious threat to dealing with the toxic impact of PFAS “forever chemicals”, as well as other toxins, and could be a danger to the health of millions of Americans, experts and environmental campaigners warn.
For example, over the last year, the Environmental Protection Agency developed groundbreaking drinking water limits for highly toxic PFAS compounds, and designated several of the “forever chemicals” as hazardous substances, a move that will force industry to clean up its pollution. The steps represent a major win for the water quality and taxpayers, but a new Trump administration would likely shred the rules.
Statements from former Trump EPA officials, the far-right Project 2025 plan, and the Trump-allied American Chemistry Council (ACC) target those rules, but also suggest industry and a second administration’s aims are much deeper. They are proposing administrative changes designed to cripple the EPA’s ability to protect public health from chemicals like PFAS.
Project 2025’s assault on the EPA is coordinated with the recent conservative wins in the judiciary that undermine the agency’s ability to make rules, and the proposals’ broad aims are to consolidate as much decision-making about toxic chemicals at the EPA into the hands of a small group of Trump appointees instead of scientists. Project 2025 is being run by the rightwing Heritage Foundation as a blueprint for a Trump administration.
“Basically the entire infrastructure of how EPA considers science and develops rules is very much under attack,” said Erik Olson, legislative director with the Natural Resource Defense Council. “The Trump administration learned some lessons and would be much more surgical and effective at affixation next time.”
PFAS are a class of about 15,000 compounds typically used to make products that resist water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down and accumulate, and are linked to cancer, kidney disease, liver problems, immune disorders, birth defects and other serious health problems.
The Biden administration in 2021 rolled out the PFAS Strategic Roadmap, a sweeping, government-wide plan designed to rein in pollution in water, air, food, soil and across the economy.
At the top of industry’s target list are the drinking water limits, which the American Chemistry Council and its allies have sued to attempt to block. A revolving door exists between the ACC, which is the fourth largest lobbying group in the US, and the Trump administration.
Though Project 2025 doesn’t mention the limits explicitly, it calls for Trump to “revise groundwater cleanup regulations and policies to reflect the challenges of omnipresent contaminants like PFAS”.
That conveys an industry talking point – PFAS contamination is everywhere, so regulatory agencies should not force industry to do too much.
Project 2025 also calls for the elimination of the EPA system and office that assesses chemicals’ toxicity and dangers. The office’s findings are used by the agency’s regulatory arms to set protective standards, and it is doing multiple reviews of PFAS.
Industry has long sought to hobble the office because it makes it more difficult to set business-friendly rules, and the office is deep in the EPA, insulated from political appointee pressure, an agency employee who requested anonymity said.
“They would rather not have part of the agency saying: ‘Oh, these chemicals are toxic,’ when they’re trying to make the case that the chemicals are fine and we can all eat and drink them,” the employee said.
The ACC and Project 2025 aim to narrow the definition of PFAS to exclude some from regulation, and language in the plan calls for the reclassification of some dangerous substances so they’re no longer considered a threat. That trick has been used to claim dangerously polluted sites have been addressed, when they have not, the EPA employee said. Or it could be used to thwart PFAS regulation.
The EPA is in the process of developing regulations for subclasses of PFAS. This is important because so many PFAS exist that it is impossible to regulate them one by one. No data exists for most PFAS, so scientists rely on “chemical analogs” that are similar in structure to fill in gaps and determine chemicals’ dangers.
Project 2025 effectively calls for the elimination of that mechanism.
“They want us to have less information to use so we have to say: ‘Well, we have no information to go off of so we cannot restrict it,’” the EPA employee said. “Just because you don’t have any information on a chemical does not mean it’s safe.”
The plan also points toward making it impossible for the agency to ban dangerous chemicals.
Former Trump administration officials have regularly derided concern over PFAS as “scare tactics” and Project 2025 claims regulations around toxic chemicals should be eliminated because they are “based on fear as a result of mischaracterized or incomplete science”.
That’s a “rhetorical trick” because science is never complete, the EPA official said.
More broadly, there’s evidence to steal the EPA’s rule-making ability and concentrate power among political appointees.
On day one, the “EPA will not conduct any ongoing or planned science activity for which there is not clear and current congressional authorization,” Project 2025 states. It would grant the White House control over decisions when “science is being manipulated at the agencies to support separate political and institutional agendas”, as industry has suggested is the case with PFAS.
Meanwhile, the entire Office of Research and Development might be eliminated because there is no law that states that the EPA has to do research, the EPA employee said.
“That’s part of this pattern of ‘If we don’t like what the EPA is doing, then we will take it out of their hands,’” the employee said. “They want a small group of 20 people making the rules, and the rest of the agency can go to hell as far as they care.”