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environmental working group
Peer-Reviewed Health Study Warns of Trump's 'Silent But Deadly Assault' on Health of Americans
“This is not just a policy shift—it’s a wholesale abandonment of government commitments to the American public," said one advocate.
Mar 31, 2026
The so-called "Make America Healthy Again" movement encapsulated a key campaign promise ahead of President Donald Trump's second term in office, with Trump telling one Pennsylvania crowd in 2024, "We’re going to get toxic chemicals out of our environment, and we’re going to get them out of our food supply."
But the Trump administration has gradually announced a slew of public health-related policies and proposals since the president took office—pushing to loosen emissions rules for the cancer-causing gas ethylene oxide; suggesting the polio vaccine should be optional; and mandating the production of carcinogenic glyphosate—and a peer-reviewed study has now cataloged the "grave threat to America's health" that Trump's policies present.
"During the first administration of President Donald Trump, nearly 100 environmental and occupational protections, including air-quality safeguards, were rescinded," reads the study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on March 25. "Although many of those rescissions were delayed by litigation or reversed by President Joe Biden, they inflicted considerable harm on Americans’ health. The second Trump administration’s actions have been even more aggressive, portending greater harm."
Weeks after the US Senate confirmed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy in February 2025—a confirmation that he secured after making the baseless claim that Americans would prefer the for-profit insurance system over universal healthcare and refusing to reject debunked claims about vaccines—the administration appeared to make clear its true views on public health when it announced 31 climate regulation rollbacks.
"Those initiatives and other administration actions are set to reverse progress on pollution, make workplaces more dangerous, and (in Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin’s words) drive 'a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion,'" reads the study.
The proposals swiftly introduced by the administration included:
- Loosening standards for particulate matter 2.5 pollution, which killed approximately 460,000 people in the US from 1999 to 2020;
- Ending subsidies for clean energy production under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act;
- Weakening tailpipe emissions standards, putting Americans at greater risk for cardiopulmonary mortality and climate crisis risks; and
- Delaying implementation of stronger silica rules for coal miners—putting them at risk for black lung disease—while also demanding that coal plants continue production.
Ken Cook, co-founder of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), said the study described "a deliberate dismantling of safeguards that protect the air, water, and health of nearly every person in this country—all in the service of polluters."
“This is not just a policy shift—it’s a wholesale abandonment of government commitments to the American public and the MAHA movement that helped propel Trump into office,” said Cook, who did not contribute to the study.
Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician and public health physician who directs the Global Observatory on Planetary Health at Boston College and is the lead author of the paper, told EWG that the “impacts of these rollbacks will fall most heavily on the most vulnerable among us—including infants—resulting in brain injury, neurodevelopmental disorders, increased preterm births, and elevated lifelong risk of chronic disease.”
Children and other vulnerable populations, including those in low-income communities situated close to petrochemical industrial areas, are likely to have increased mercury, benzene, and arsenic exposures—raising their risk of developing cancers and other diseases—due to the Trump administration's rollbacks, according to the study.
"Several proposed policies would weaken water-quality standards, reducing drinking-water safety for millions of people," reads the paper. "For example, the EPA seeks to weaken regulations governing effluent discharges from coal-fired power plants. The resulting increase in waterborne lead, mercury, and arsenic will increase the incidence of bladder cancers and adversely affect children’s cognitive function."
The study's authors emphasized that "statistics and documentation are not enough" to protect the public from the White House's harmfiul policies.
"Unless health professionals speak up, and unless we put a human face on the tragic consequences of these environmental rollbacks, the connection between these seemingly abstract policy changes and the real health harms they cause may remain invisible," reads the study. "We health professionals must call urgent attention to this silent but deadly assault on Americans’ health, work with broad coalitions to halt it, and ultimately rebuild the agencies, protections, and shared sense of trust and responsibility that have given us clean air and water and enabled us and our children to live longer, healthier lives."
Cook noted that the NEJM itself has been a target of the administration, with Kennedy calling highly respected, science-based journals "corrupt" and the Department of Justice questioning the publication's editorial integrity.
“No amount of political pressure or intimidation should silence independent science or the experts working to protect public health,” Cook said. “The NEJM and the study’s authors rightly ignore those threats and lay bare the real-world consequences of the Trump administration’s actions—and the American people deserve to hear it.”
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Trump EPA 'Hitting New Heights of Absurdity' With Plan to Reapprove Pesticide Dicamba
"This is what happens when pesticide oversight is controlled by industry lobbyists," said one campaigner.
Jul 23, 2025
Despite U.S. President Donald Trump's supposed goal to "Make America Healthy Again," his administration is moving to reregister dicamba, a pesticide twice banned by federal courts, for use on genetically engineered cotton and soybeans.
In response to legal challenges from the Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, National Family Farm Coalition, and the Pesticide Action Network, courts ruled against the herbicide's registration in 2020 and again last year.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced its latest push to allow the use of dicamba on Wednesday, detailing proposed mitigation efforts—including temperature restrictions and the use of drift reduction agents—that EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou told The Washington Post would "minimize impact to certain species and the environment."
The EPA's proposed registration is now open for public comment until August 22, but supporters and critics are already weighing in. While the pesticide companies welcomed the agency's attempt to allow dicamba products from BASF, Bayer, and Syngenta, the advocacy groups behind the court battles sharply called out the Trump administration.
"EPA has had seven long years of massive drift damage to learn that dicamba cannot be used safely with GE dicamba-resistant crops," said Bill Freese, science director at the Center for Food Safety, in a statement.
"If we allow these proposed decisions to go through, farmers and residents throughout rural America will again see their crops, trees, and home gardens decimated by dicamba drift, and natural areas like wildlife refuges will also suffer," he warned. "EPA must reverse course and withdraw its plans to reapprove this hazardous herbicide."
Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, declared that "Trump's EPA is hitting new heights of absurdity by planning to greenlight a pesticide that's caused the most extensive drift damage in U.S. agricultural history and twice been thrown out by federal courts."
"This is what happens when pesticide oversight is controlled by industry lobbyists," he charged. "Corporate fat cats get their payday and everyone else suffers the consequences."
The centers pointed out that "the decision to seek reapproval comes less than a month after Kyle Kunkler, a former lobbyist for the American Soybean Association, was installed as the deputy assistant administrator for pesticides in the EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. The ASA has been a vocal cheerleader for dicamba since its initial approval for use on soybeans in 2016, despite the fact that soybeans have been the most widely damaged crop."
The Post asked the EPA whether Kunkler's recent appointment influenced the dicamba decision. In response, Vaseliou said that the "EPA follows the federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act when registering pesticides" and any insinuation otherwise was "further 'journalism' malpractice by The Washington Post."
After Kunkler's new job was made public last month, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) also flagged his "years of advocating against restrictions on farm chemicals such as glyphosate and atrazine," and stressed that "these are the very pesticides singled out in Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s 'Make America Healthy Again' report for their potential links to chronic illness in children."
"The appointment of Kyle Kunkler sends a loud, clear message: Industry influence is back in charge at the EPA," said EWG president Ken Cook at the time. "It's a stunning reversal of the campaign promises Trump and RFK Jr. made to their MAHA followers—that they'd stand up to chemical giants and protect children from dangerous pesticides."
"To those who genuinely believed the MAHA movement would lead to meaningful change on toxic exposures: We understand the hope," he said. "But hope doesn't regulate pesticides. People with power do. And this pick all but guarantees the status quo will remain untouched."
Cook—whose group has also sounded the alarm about dicamba—concluded that Kunkler's EPA post "is but the latest example of the Trump administration's sweeping betrayal of environmental protection and public health."
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Trump EPA Guts Rules Against Toxic Forever Chemicals in Drinking Water
"Once again, the Trump administration has demonstrated that its priority is bending to corporate interests, not protecting the safety and well-being of everyday people," said one critic.
May 14, 2025
Bowing to industry pressure, the Environmental Protection Agency is planning to roll back limits on so-called "forever chemicals" in drinking water—a move that critics said belies President Donald Trump's dubious pledge to "ensure that America has among the very cleanest air and cleanest water on the planet."
In a misleading announcement, the EPA said Wednesday that it will "keep maximum contaminant levels" (MCLs) for two per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—PFOA and PFOS—as part of an effort to "provide regulatory flexibility and holistically address these contaminants in drinking water."
However, the EPA plans to scrap MCLs for four other forever chemicals: PFNA, PFHxS, GenX, and PFBS.
"These four chemicals are the ones currently in use because industry developed them to replace PFOA and PFOS, so they are the chemicals most likely to increase contamination in the future," explained former senior EPA water official Betsy Southerland in a statement issued by the Environmental Protection Network on Wednesday.
"It is incredibly inefficient to regulate them years after the treatment has been installed only for PFOA and PFOS," Southerland added. "[EPA Administrator Lee] Zeldin's announcement on PFAS drinking water standards ensures that America's children will be drinking PFAS for another decade while he slows drinking water and wastewater PFAS treatment for years."
The EPA just announced its decision on PFAS, toxic forever chemicals, that reverses course on most of a crucial public health rule from just last year. We need more action, not less, to protect Americans from PFAS.
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— NRDC (@nrdc.org) May 14, 2025 at 7:34 AM
The EPA also pushed back the deadline for compliance with a Biden administration rule finalized last year aimed at ensuring polluters pay forever chemical cleanup costs, from 2029 to 2031. Earlier this week, the EPA said it is delaying a key PFAS reporting rule by one year.
"This is a betrayal of public health at the highest level," Environmental Working Group president Ken Cook said in response to Wednesday's announcement. "You can't make America healthy while allowing toxic chemicals to flow freely from our taps. The EPA is caving to chemical industry lobbyists and pressure by the water utilities, and in doing so, it's sentencing millions of Americans to drink contaminated water for years to come."
"The cost of PFAS pollution will fall on ordinary people, who will pay in the form of polluted water and more sickness, more suffering, and more deaths from PFAS-related diseases," Cook added.
"Zeldin's announcement on PFAS drinking water standards ensures that America's children will be drinking PFAS for another decade."
Approximately half of the U.S. population is drinking PFAS-contaminated water, "including as many as 105 million whose water violates the new standards," according to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which added that "the EPA has known for decades that PFAS endangers human health, including kidney and testicular cancer, liver damage, and harm to the nervous and reproductive systems."
Forever chemicals—so called because some of them take up to 1,000 years to break down in the environment—have myriad uses, from nonstick cookware to waterproof clothing to firefighting foam. Increasing use of forever chemicals has resulted in the detection of PFAS in the blood of nearly every person in the United States and around the world.
"The PFAS contamination crisis is much larger than just two chemicals, and there is increasing evidence that other PFAS chemicals that pollute water harm health," Cook said. "Eliminating all PFAS chemicals from drinking water is an urgent public health priority."
"If this administration is serious about making America healthier, it needs to prove it by stopping PFAS from contaminating our drinking water," he added.
NRDC senior strategic director of health Erik Olson said Wednesday that "with a stroke of the pen, the EPA is making a mockery of the Trump administration's promise to deliver clean water for Americans."
"With this action, the EPA is making clear that it's willing to ignore Americans who just want to turn on their kitchen taps and have clean, safe water," Olson asserted. "The EPA's plan to retain but delay standards for two legacy forever chemicals may offer modest consolation to some, but throwing out protections against four others will be devastating."
"The law is very clear that the EPA can't repeal or weaken the drinking water standard. This action is not only harmful, it's illegal," Olson stressed. The Safe Drinking Water Act contains an "anti-backsliding" provision prohibiting the EPA from repealing or weakening the standard.
"With a stroke of the pen, the EPA is making a mockery of the Trump administration's promise to deliver clean water for Americans."
Kelly Moser, senior attorney and leader of the Water Program at the Southern Environmental Law Center—which successfully sued the industrial chemicals giant Chemours to stop PFAS contamination in North Carolina—said Wednesday that "when this administration talks about deregulation, this is what they mean—allowing toxic chemicals in drinking water at the request of polluters."
"This action also undercuts Administrator Zeldin's acknowledgment of the severe health harms of PFAS; what people need are protections from pollution, not press releases feigning concern," Moser added.
Food & Water Watch water program director Mary Grant said Wednesday that "today's decision is a shameful and dangerous capitulation to industry pressure that will allow continued contamination of our drinking water with toxic PFAS."
"Once again, the Trump administration has demonstrated that its priority is bending to corporate interests, not protecting the safety and well-being of everyday people," Grant continued. "Nothing is safe from Trump's greed-driven agenda—not even our drinking water."
"This will cost lives," she warned.
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