The Trump administration might be set to make America toxic again. This month, the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled plans to loosen its regulations on certain pollutants, starting with formaldehyde.
Last week, the EPA announced it would be revising its assessment of the health risks posed by formaldehyde, a cancer-causing chemical commonly found in building materials and other ubiquitous sources. The revision is expected to almost double the inhalation exposure threshold for formaldehyde finalized by the Biden administration early this year. The revision is scheduled to be implemented by February 2026, following a 60-day period of public comment.
On Monday, ProPublica reported that this change was carried out with the help of former employees of the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s trade group.
“The science on formaldehyde hasn’t changed; these are the same arguments that the chemical industry’s been peddling for the last decade,” Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, an attorney at Earthjustice, told ProPublica. “The only difference is that they’ve finally found an administration willing to ignore the findings of its own scientists.”
The EPA about-face
In early January 2025, the EPA issued its final risk evaluation of formaldehyde as part of a multi-year process. The agency ruled that the chemical posed an “unreasonable risk of injury to human health” and that these risks expanded beyond causing cancer. Under the requirements of the Toxic Substances Control Act, the agency further stated that it would be taking action to rein in people’s exposure to formaldehyde, particularly workers in industries where it’s commonly used or produced.
The current EPA’s revision still maintains that formaldehyde can be dangerous to people’s health but will undermine attempts to curb its exposure. The previous EPA identified 58 situations where the chemical caused an unreasonable risk of injury to workers or consumers, for instance, while Trump’s EPA has removed five from this list, including the manufacturing of wood products, ProPublica noted.
The agency is also set to use different criteria for determining an unsafe exposure from the chemical. It will adopt a “threshold” model, where exposures are only flagged as a problem past a certain level, as opposed to the “linear” model used for many carcinogens, where even small levels of exposure are recognized as a potential health risk that can build up over time.
The current EPA claims that it is simply fixing the mistakes of the previous era.
“Through a rigorous peer review process, we determined the Biden Administration used flawed analyses in its risk assessment of formaldehyde,” an EPA spokesperson told ProPublica. “We are correcting the record to reflect the best available science and our core statutory obligations.”
What has clearly changed is the leadership of the agency. Lynn Dekleva and Nancy Beck are scientists who formerly worked for the American Chemistry Council. Dekleva, who once petitioned the EPA to adopt a threshold model for formaldehyde, is now the deputy assistant administrator of the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP), the division that carried out the formaldehyde assessment. And Beck is a principal deputy assistant administrator at OCSPP, whose name is signed at the bottom of the official agency memo outlining the new revisions.
Unsurprisingly, the ACC praised the EPA’s about-face on formaldehyde.
A sign of things to come
As ProPublica notes, this is likely only the first of many similar changes to come. The Trump administration has already signaled that it hopes to adopt a similar “threshold” approach to radiation exposure, for instance.
And just last month, the EPA approved the use of two pesticides that critics say can break down into so-called forever chemicals, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The EPA has argued that these pesticides do not meet the criteria for PFAS-causing chemicals, as established by the previous administration in 2023. But critics have argued back that many states and outside environmental groups have not agreed with the federal government’s ruling.
In any case, it appears unlikely that the Trump White House will be doing much to further limit people’s risk to dangerous chemicals.
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