Well being Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Wholesome Once more agenda proposes to eliminate toxins within the setting and meals provide. However the Trump administration is chopping again sources and rules wanted to realize that.
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Nathan Posner/Anadolu through Getty Photographs
It was a surreal second for Susanne Brander.
She was sitting within the viewers at a convention in April as Well being Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke concerning the well being results of publicity to dangerous chemical compounds in our meals, air and water.
As she listened, Kennedy cited latest analysis on microplastics from researchers in Oregon, discovering these tiny particles had proven up in 99% of the seafood they sampled.
“It was positively our research,” says Brander, an ecotoxicologist at Oregon State College who co-authored the analysis together with a staff at Portland State College.
The issue was, simply an hour earlier whereas in line for breakfast, an electronic mail had popped into her inbox notifying her {that a} federal grant she’d relied on to fund her analysis for years — from the Environmental Safety Company — was being terminated.
Her analysis, the letter defined, not aligned with the company’s priorities. And now right here was the standard-bearer of the Trump administration’s Make America Wholesome Once more, or MAHA, agenda elevating her work.
“I used to be baffled and extremely annoyed,” she recollects. “It appears like they’re selling the sector whereas ripping out the muse.”
Kennedy and the MAHA motion’s rise to energy is disorienting for scientists and advocates in environmental well being who’re targeted on human publicity to poisonous chemical compounds and environmental pollution.
The analysis neighborhood has lengthy warned of troubling hyperlinks to persistent illness, particularly for youngsters, and have referred to as for extra authorities oversight of the plastic, fossil gasoline and chemical industries. Kennedy is bringing consideration to the difficulty as well being secretary.
And but within the first 5 months, the Trump administration has made strikes that run counter to those very objectives.
Well being Secretary Kennedy speaks on the Chemical compounds of Concern coverage summit in Charlotte, N.C., in April.
HHS/screenshot by NPR
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HHS/screenshot by NPR
“It is an infinite contradiction in actions,” says Thomas Burke, a former EPA official who directs the Johns Hopkins Danger Sciences and Public Coverage Institute.
The firings and downsizing of the federal workforce have disrupted groups that examine poisonous substances and pollution. Broad cuts to federally funded analysis have imperiled related scientific work. And regulators are weakening safeguards that restrict air pollution and different poisonous chemical compounds.
Dr. Philip Landrigan, a number one determine in environmental well being analysis, says the disconnect was underscored when the administration launched the MAHA Report final month, overseen by Kennedy and different Cupboard members, together with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.
That doc, which has come below scrutiny for inaccurate or nonexistent citations, positions the difficulty of environmental toxins and chemical compounds as a key precedence for tackling persistent illness in youngsters, together with food plan, bodily exercise, know-how use and what it phrases “overmedicalization.”
Studying it, Landrigan says he could not assist however take into consideration the widespread harm the Trump administration is inflicting on the very companies and scientific neighborhood with the “experience, expertise and know-how to guard youngsters towards these hazards.”
“You’ll be able to’t say one factor and do one other,” says Sue Fenton, who directs the Heart for Human Well being and the Setting at NC State College, contrasting the administration’s rhetoric about clear water and air with its actions.
Yanked grants, cuts to employees
Examples of the contradictions are usually not exhausting to seek out.
Cuts to the federal workforce below Kennedy’s watch have hobbled NIOSH, the Nationwide Institute for Occupational Security and Well being, which responds to poisonous chemical compounds and pollution within the office.
Throughout a spherical of layoffs, the administration eradicated most of a division on the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention that investigated environmental hazards like heavy metals, air air pollution and carcinogens. Although many of those staff had been reinstated simply final week, President Trump’s proposed funds requires axing the CDC middle the place the division is housed.
President Trump, Well being Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Training Secretary Linda McMahon at an occasion saying the discharge of a Make America Wholesome Once more Fee report within the East Room of the White Home on Could 22. A number of different members of Trump’s Cupboard who served on the fee, together with EPA head Lee Zeldin, additionally attended.
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The Nationwide Institutes of Well being, which is below Kennedy’s command, has stopped accepting submissions for its flagship journal on environmental well being and yanked analysis grants. As an illustration, Ami Zota, an environmental well being scientist at Columbia College, had all 4 of her NIH grants canceled, although she was taking a look at chemical publicity in client merchandise and monitoring how PFAS chemical compounds have an effect on girls’s well being, throughout being pregnant and midlife.
No less than eight members of Venture TENDR, which research the hurt of poisonous chemical compounds on mind growth and its hyperlink to neurodevelopmental issues, have misplaced federal grants, says Maureen Swanson, who co-leads the group.
She says one other 4 to 5 members are nonetheless ready to listen to about “pending cuts, together with to multimillion-dollar grants that fund their universities’ environmental well being analysis facilities.”
In a press release, the Division of Well being and Human Companies mentioned Kennedy “is dedicated to discovering the basis causes of the persistent illness epidemic, together with the toxins in the environment and our meals.” And the company has mentioned that it plans to consolidate and streamline work on environmental well being at CDC and elsewhere into the soon-to-be-formed Administration for a Wholesome America, or AHA.
Rules on maintain
On the EPA, which might play a vital function in any substantive efforts to cut back dangerous chemical compounds and air pollution, the company’s administrator Zeldin is prioritizing deregulation and chopping employees.
The company has delayed implementing nationwide ingesting water requirements on PFAS, or “without end chemical compounds,” and proposed lifting rules to cut back emissions of mercury and poisonous pollution from energy vegetation. It has pushed again the deadline for business to submit security research on greater than a dozen chemical compounds together with benzene, vinyl chloride and Bisphenol A.
The administration appointed a scientist who spent years working for the American Chemistry Council, Nancy Beck, to a outstanding function on the EPA, regardless of the MAHA report’s emphasis on eliminating conflicts of curiosity.
Zeldin has even touted EPA’s success in gutting analysis grants. The cuts have affected scientists who’re making an attempt to know the poisonous results of chemical compounds, together with a researcher at Wayne State College, Christopher Kassotis, whose work on chemical mixtures was cited within the MAHA fee report.
Rebecca Fry, chair of the division of environmental well being at UNC Gillings Faculty of World Public Well being, says all of her school with EPA grants had them canceled.
“Their focus is precisely what’s in MAHA,” she says. “They’re making an attempt to know these advanced associations between chemical compounds within the setting and human well being and illness.”
And Zota worries concerning the lack of grants across the nation to coach scientists on the poisonous results of environmental chemical compounds. “It is simply so devastating,” she says. “In case you speak about the best way to kill a area, you actually assault the up-and-coming era.”
The EPA mentioned in a press release to NPR that the administration is “working to resolve huge issues and having sturdy conversations throughout authorities about the best way to drive financial development whereas defending human well being and the setting as a part of the Make America Wholesome Once more Fee.”
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, accompanied by Training Secretary Linda McMahon (R), speaks throughout a Cupboard assembly on the White Home on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.
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A rising concern amongst scientists
As Kennedy’s MAHA push brings new visibility to her area, Tracey Woodruff, who leads the us Heart on Reproductive Well being and the Setting, says she and lots of of her colleagues are attempting to navigate a fragile train in science communication.
Kennedy has a historical past of constructing false or deceptive claims on this subject, whether or not it is about chemtrails, or the impact of sure herbicides on gender. His rhetoric concerning the “mass poisoning of kids” can veer into sweeping claims concerning the impacts of environmental toxins, with out ample scientific proof. And his actions on vaccines have provoked alarm throughout public well being.
Extra broadly, MAHA’s concentrate on environmental toxins generally displays a pressure of thought on this planet of different medication and wellness that inaccurately frames any “pure” substance pretty much as good and man-made or artificial chemical compounds as unhealthy.
Nevertheless it’s additionally true that relating to many well-studied chemical compounds, together with some that Kennedy cites, “we now have sufficient knowledge to take motion,” she says. “If we do not speak concerning the issues that he is saying which might be actual points the federal government must be addressing, I am frightened it’ll delegitimize all our work.”
Woodruff and others in her area have outlined their main areas of concern in consensus statements and different peer-reviewed papers on the proof tying artificial chemical compounds and different substances to weight problems, most cancers, heart problems, fertility, neurodevelopmental issues and extra.
Phthalates, without end chemical compounds, flame retardants, bisphenols, formaldehyde-releasing preservatives and sure pesticides are a number of the culprits, however there are hundreds in use which have by no means been fastidiously evaluated for his or her well being results, particularly on infants and youngsters.
“There are big gaps in the best way that we regulate or shield individuals from these harms,” says Burke of Johns Hopkins.
It is enormously difficult to pinpoint the impression of particular substances as a result of individuals encounter so a lot of them over the course of their lives. The proof of hurt usually comes from lab work and long-running observational research that may search for relationships with illness and well being issues within the inhabitants.
More and more, researchers emphasize it is the cumulative publicity that’s most regarding right here.
“Many of those chemical compounds of concern assault the identical mechanism within the human physique and might have additive or exponential results,” says Dr. Leonardo Trasande, who directs NYU Langone’s Heart for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards and research the well being impacts of endocrine-disrupting chemical compounds in on a regular basis merchandise.
Linda Birnbaum, the now-retired director of the Nationwide Institute of Environmental Well being Sciences, was additionally within the viewers with Susanne Brander when Kennedy spoke on the coverage summit on chemical compounds and plastics earlier this 12 months.
She says about “80% to 90%” of what she heard throughout that speech was “actually good” concerning the want for main reform. “However there aren’t any easy options. We’re not going to remedy persistent illness in a 12 months or three years or 5 years,” she says.
Questions on a daring agenda
In public appearances, Kennedy has outlined what consultants describe as an formidable agenda to overtake how the U.S. evaluates chemical compounds, notably within the realm of meals and a few client merchandise.
“It will do what many people have been asking for for a very long time,” says Trasande at NYU. “I am not making an attempt to place rose-colored glasses on. I simply assume we now have to name it pretty,” he provides.
This contains wanting on the cumulative and combination results of chemical compounds within the meals provide and revising a regulatory pathway that permits corporations to self-declare whether or not a meals additive is protected.
In a press release to NPR, HHS additionally pointed to its announcement of a brand new evaluate program to “reassess beforehand authorised chemical compounds in meals and food-contact materials and broaden security assessments to check endocrine and neurobehavioral results.” In accordance with the FDA, a public web site will share details about chemical compounds below evaluate.
However lecturers and advocacy teams which have pushed for such modifications are skeptical concerning the Trump administration’s dedication.
Even on eliminating petroleum-based meals dyes, an space that Kennedy has touted as a serious achievement, Woodruff factors out that the administration made this a voluntary determination for producers, not an outright ban.
“We’re not seeing any significant motion,” says Katherine O’Brien, a senior lawyer on the nonprofit advocacy group Earthjustice.
“What we have seen is splashy press releases, handshake agreements with business, and mainly plans to make plans,” she says, “however what reduces the incidence of persistent ailments from chemical contamination is utilizing the federal authorities’s precise regulatory authority.”
She and different advocates say there’s quite a bit the Trump administration may do shortly — actions like prohibiting phthalates in meals packaging, which teams like hers have wished the FDA to do for years.
And the truth is that any complete effort to crack down on dangerous chemical compounds requires the EPA to additionally wield its regulatory powers as a result of the substances additionally present up in our water and the setting.
Maria Doa, a former EPA scientist now on the Environmental Protection Fund, says it is a evident inconsistency within the Trump administration’s MAHA platform.
“You should take a holistic method,” she says. “You should not be pulling again efforts to control our publicity to chemical compounds in a single space and say you are going to be extra protecting in one other.”
As a self-described pragmatist, Linda Birnbaum says she hopes to salvage one thing from the “mess” that has disrupted a lot of her area, however principally she’s doubtful.
“Very actually, my concern with Kennedy, amongst others, is that as quickly as he begins really making an attempt to control some of these items, business goes to go to Trump and so they’ll kick him out,” she says.
