22-05-2025
MAHA targets environmental chemicals
A new report from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s MAHA Commission says toxic chemicals are a significant factor driving childhood chronic diseases — and blames 'corporate influence' for the exposures, according to a copy viewed by POLITICO's E&E News.
'Unlike other administrations, we will not be silenced or intimidated by the corporate lobbyists and special interests, and I want this group to do what they have to do,' President Donald Trump said during a press conference Thursday afternoon. 'In some cases it won't be nice or it won't be pretty, but we have to do it.'
Chemical exposures are listed second among the 'four potential drivers behind the rise in childhood chronic disease that present the clearest opportunities for progress,' behind 'poor diet' and ahead of 'lack of activity and chronic stress' and 'overmedication.'
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The report is sure to come under fire from public health groups for doubling down on widely debunked claims linking vaccines to autism and comes at a time when Kennedy has faced criticism for not forcefully recommending vaccination during an ongoing measles epidemic.
It also highlights the schism between Kennedy's stated interest in chemical regulation and actual actions by EPA during the current Trump administration and his previous term to deregulate some of the very chemicals the report describes as harmful.
Dr. Phil Landrigan, an environmental epidemiologist and pediatrician who leads Boston College's global public health program, said that the report's section on vaccines is 'simply not true' but that its section on environmental chemical exposures 'presents a brilliant diagnosis of the problem.'
The report singles out seven chemical groups where it says continued studies are needed: PFAS, aka 'forever chemicals'; microplastics; fluoride; electromagnetic radiation; phthalates; bisphenols; and crop protection tools, which include pesticides, herbicides and insecticides.
'The current regulatory framework should be continually evaluated to ensure that chemicals and other exposures do not interact together to pose a threat to the health of our children,' the report says, echoing a sentiment Landrigan and other public health experts have been repeating for decades.
The specifics on how the administration plans to achieve these goals will come in a later report, due in August.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, one of the commission's 14 members, signaled stricter regulations won't necessarily be part of the solution.
'America's childhood chronic disease crisis will be solved through innovation,' Zeldin said in a statement Thursday. 'This report shows America will continue to be the energy, industrial, and agricultural power of the world — and we can continue this while ensuring we have the healthiest children.'
Kennedy echoed that at the White House Thursday: 'This administration has the bravery to tell the truth and solve problems through innovation and not nanny state regulation,' Kennedy said.
Zeldin so far has delivered on promises to act with industry's interests in mind, by launching the process for rolling back dozens of regulations, rehiring business-friendly political leaders from Trump's first administration, and initiating an agency-wide reorganization that has dissolved key research and climate programs.
The MAHA report highlights work done by a 25-year-old EPA program tracking childhood disease in children, called America's Children and the Environment. But EPA's new organizational structure no longer includes the stand-alone Office of Children's Health, which housed the tracking program. It's unclear if the program's functions will be transferred elsewhere.
The structure of the pesticides office will remain the same under the proposal, but the chemicals office's top political leaders have built reputations defending the very substances the MAHA report singles out.
While the Department of Health and Human Services has considerable influence over the nation's health priorities, EPA is the agency with regulatory authority over industrial and farm chemicals.
The report cites statistics on the chemical industry spending nearly $80 million on lobbying activities last year, as well as quoting an analysis that found 60 percent of chemical-sector lobbyists in 2023 previously held agency positions.
'As a result of this influence, the regulatory environment surrounding the chemical industry may reflect a consideration of its interests,' the report says.
Kennedy, a former environmental attorney, built a reputation going after some of the biggest chemical companies in court, including the manufacturers of popular pesticides atrazine and glyphosate, better known as Roundup, both of which were singled out in the report.
Atrazine is an endocrine-disrupting chemical that harms the body's hormone systems and how they function. It is widely used as an herbicide in industrial farming and corn production, and has been hotly contested over its environmental impacts.
Though European regulators have banned it, EPA increased the amount of atrazine it considered safe for frogs and other aquatic organisms during Trump's previous term. The Biden-era EPA later criticized that move as politically motivated rather than science-based.
Atrazine has been a favorite target of Kennedy, who has repeatedly made false claims that the herbicide causes 'gender confusion' among kids, 'destroying them.' His claims echoed ones famously made by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who in 2017 went viral for saying there were 'chemicals in the water that turn the friggin' frogs gay.'
Lori Ann Burd, the Center for Biological Diversity's environmental health director, said she believed the report would include more direct scrutiny on atrazine.
'The report's acknowledgment of pesticides' risks to our children's health is a small step forward,' Burd said in a statement. 'But it's clear that Big Ag was successful in strong-arming EPA Administrator Zeldin, Agriculture Secretary Rollins and their puppets in Congress to make sure this administration's focus will continue to be on protecting not American's health, but industry profits.'
Reach the reporters on Signal at eborst.64 and Awitt.40.
