The Chemical Industry Has Infiltrated Trump’s EPA

Over the past year, chemical industry lobbyists in top leadership positions at the EPA have been attacking and dismantling public health structures that are crucial for protecting children’s health from toxic chemicals and dangerous pesticides.

Chemical and pesticide companies have had too much power for too long in D.C., and the industry lobbyists now in charge at EPA are making things worse than ever. Chemical industry executives and Big Ag lobbyists are in the top four posts at EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP) – the office in charge of  regulating pesticides and industrial chemicals. The EPA actually had to weaken ethics standards to clear the way for these industry lobbyists.

Industry Lobbyists Working at EPA

• Doug Troutman – a longtime chemical-industry lobbyist who pressed regulators to weaken toxic-chemical safeguards and pushed for rapid approval of a hazardous cleaning solvent – now heads OCSPP. He is the highest-ranking official with direct decision-making authority over U.S. chemical and pesticide regulation.
• Nancy Beck, now second in command at OCSPP with decision making authority over chemical regulations, came to the EPA from the American Chemistry Council, the lobby group that represents Bayer, Dow Chemical, and DuPont. Beck played a key role in weakening safety laws on asbestos, methylene chloride, PCBs and other chemicals that are known to cause harm. 
• Lynn Ann Dekleva spent over 30 years at chemical giant DuPont and lobbied for the American Chemistry Council, where she fought to keep formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, on the market. Now she helps manage and oversee the EPA’s chemical safety work.   
• Kyle Kunkler was a pro-pesticide lobbyist for the American Soybean Association. He won a “Rising Star” award from CropLife, a powerful pesticide lobby group. Now he oversees pesticide regulations. 

Under the new regime, EPA has been gutting existing protections and chemical safety rules.

EPA Policy Changes Since Trump Took Office

• Re-registered the dangerous pesticide dicamba, despite massive public opposition and even though the herbicide was twice banned by federal courts for causing widespread crop damage. Dicamba is also linked to cancer.
• Dismantled the Office of Research and Development (ORD) and laid off hundreds of scientists who provided critical expertise and guidance about how to protect human health and the environment from toxic chemicals. This change is likely to increase political interference in chemical safety assessments.
• Approved two new pesticides with PFAS active ingredients – cyclobutrifluram and isocycloseram – for use on food crops, lawns, and golf courses, and announced plans to approve three more in 2026. 
• Rolled back health standards  for PFAS “forever chemicals,” including regulations that protect people from PFAS in drinking water, and cut $15 million in funding for research into PFAS that are tied to cancer and birth defects.  
• Announced plans to weaken or roll back 31 regulations that protect people from toxic air and water pollution. Experts say this could increase Americans’ exposure to at least 13 different cancer-causing pollutants, including benzene, formaldehyde, and arsenic 
• Took steps to roll back limits on lead in drinking water. There is no safe level of lead exposure for children.
• Took down a public database that allowed Americans to get information about toxic chemical spills and disasters that have happened in their area.
• Stopped counting lives saved with air pollution regulations; the EPA will no longer assign monetary value to the health benefits of reducing fine particulate matter and ozone pollution that cause death and disease.  
• Rolled back Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), including efforts to relax mercury limits and reduce monitoring and control of toxic metals for polluting facilities. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that causes severe, often irreversible damage to developing brains, impacting cognitive function, memory, language, and motor skills in children and fetuses.
• Falsely claimed they took action on paraquat – calling that “more MAHA progress!” – but actually they did nothing to protect people from this highly hazardous herbicide linked to Parkinson’s disease. 
• Falsely promoted EPA’s safety assessment on phthalates – a toxic chemical that leaches into food from plastic – as “gold standard’ science” – but it was based on old data and ignored over 1,000 studies, including research linking phthalates to reproductive harm.