Making America Poisoned Again

In May, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched a new program in response to the Trump administration’s decision to terminate research into the health effects of toxic chemicals: employees were invited to “save a life” by adopting rats and fish from the North Carolina laboratory where they had been used to test chemicals for risks of cancer, developmental disorders, and reproductive harms. EPA Press Secretary Brigit Hirsch denied that budget cuts were responsible, claiming that the adoptions were motivated simply by a desire to improve animal welfare by resettling them in “loving homes.”

No amount of happy talk can hide the dangers of rolling back policies to protect the public from toxic pollution. The shutdown is only one in a blizzard of policies that will Make America Poisoned Again.

In a move that former EPA attorney Kyla Bennett denounced as “not just stupid, it’s evil,” the administration cancelled funding for studies on how PFAS “forever chemicals” accumulate in crops and livestock.

The administration also withdrew a proposal that would have required transportation fuels made from recycled plastic waste to be free of hazardous contaminants. One of these is a jet fuel so toxic that one in four people exposed to it over a lifetime could get cancer—a risk that Linda Birnbaum, former head of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, called “obscene.”

In a step that puts workers especially at risk, the White House plans to zero-out funding for the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, the agency charged with investigating industrial chemical disasters. Rick Engler, a former board member, likened this to failing to investigate airplane crashes. 

Among the 31 actions unveiled in early March on what EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin trumpeted as the “greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen” were the gutting of emission standards for hazardous air pollutants, mercury standards for coal-burning plants, air quality standards for particulate matter, and wastewater rules for the oil and gas industry.

In a “declaration of dissent” addressed to Zeldin, hundreds of EPA employees—many of whom signed anonymously for fear of retaliation—charged that his actions “endanger public health and erode scientific progress not only in America but around the world.” In response, Zeldin put those who went public with their names on administrative leave. A spokesperson explained that the agency has “a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration’s agenda.” Evidently there is no comparable zero-tolerance policy for discharging toxic chemicals into the air Americans breathe and the water we drink.

The administration’s assault on chemicals regulation is an ironic counterpoint to the “Make American Healthy Again” banner under which Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pushing to remove artificial food colorings from the American diet. It’s odd to rein in suspected carcinogens with one hand while unleashing known carcinogens with the other. And it’s perverse to slash research designed to tell which is which.

The stated rationale for jettisoning environmental protections is that they are inefficient and have “suffocated” the economy. But as every economics student learns, in the presence of “externalities,” like pollution, efficiency is not just a matter of maximizing corporate profits: Economic benefits must be weighed against costs, including impacts on human health. Moreover, when Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, it mandated the EPA to set standards “for the protection of public health and welfare,” period, not to protect human lives only if they are deemed worth saving by a cost-benefit test. And while dirty air really does suffocate people, clean air does not suffocate the economy.

Environmental protection is just one casualty of the red-herring rift between those who see government as a solution and those who believe, in Ronald Reagan’s phrase, that “government is the problem.” In truth, government can both solve problems and create them: The real issue is good government versus bad government. Making America Poisoned Again is bad economics—and bad government.