Trump Would Let Industry Sway PFAS Rules and Endanger Public Health, Experts Warn

A second Trump administration would cripple the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ability to protect the public from toxic "forever chemicals," The Guardianreported Sunday, citing experts inside and outside the agency.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a class of about 16,000 synthetic compounds that break down only very slowly, have been linked to a wide array of serious medical conditions including cancer. The EPA under the Biden administration has instituted limits on PFAS levels in drinking water and other PFAS regulations that industry groups oppose.

Experts warn that allies of Republican nominee Donald Trump aim not just to roll back Biden-era regulations but fundamentally reshape the agency.

"Basically the entire infrastructure of how [the] EPA considers science and develops rules is very much under attack," Erik Olson, legislative director at the Natural Resource Defense Council, told The Guardian.

An unnamed EPA employee told the newspaper that a second Trump administration would seek to disempower agency experts and let political appointees make key regulatory decisions.

"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," said the EPA employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Project 2025, a roadmap for Republican governance produced by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, proposes deregulation of PFAS, narrowing the definition of the class of toxic compounds, and elimination of the EPA office that assesses chemicals' toxicity.

Project 2025, to the extent that it's known about, has proven unpopular with the American public, and Trump has tried to distance himself from the plan, but has close links to its authors, at least 140 of whom worked in the former president's administration.

Project 2025's proposals on forever chemicals are aligned with the aims of the American Chemistry Council, the fourth largest lobbying group in the country. During his first term, Trump appointed ACC leaders to key positions in the EPA, and critics of the former president argue that his second administration would be even more unabashedly pro-industry.

"The Trump administration learned some lessons and would be much more surgical and effective at affixation next time," the NRDC's Olson said.

The unnamed EPA employee said a Trump victory might even mean the abolishment of the EPA's entire Office of Research and Development.

ACC members 3M and DuPont developed PFAS in the mid-20th century and used them in a wide range of products, even with knowledge of their toxicity and the way that the accumulate in the human body, according to a series of exposés in recent years, notably by the journalist Sharon Lerner in her work at ProPublica and The Intercept. A recent article of Lerner's in The New Yorker showed that 3M long concealed the dangers of PFAS.