Well being Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Wholesome Once more agenda proposes to eliminate toxins within the surroundings and meals provide. However the Trump administration is reducing again assets and laws wanted to realize that.
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Nathan Posner/Anadolu by way of 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 in regards to the well being results of publicity to dangerous chemical substances 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 undoubtedly our research,” says Brander, an ecotoxicologist at Oregon State College who co-authored the analysis together with a workforce at Portland State College.
The issue was, simply an hour earlier whereas in line for breakfast, an e-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, now 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 remembers. “It looks like they’re selling the sector whereas ripping out the inspiration.”
Kennedy and the MAHA motion’s rise to energy is disorienting for scientists and advocates in environmental well being who’re centered on human publicity to poisonous chemical substances and environmental pollution.
The analysis neighborhood has lengthy warned of troubling hyperlinks to continual illness, particularly for kids, and have referred to as for extra authorities oversight of the plastic, fossil gas and chemical industries. Kennedy is bringing consideration to the problem as well being secretary.
And but within the first 5 months, the Trump administration has made strikes that run counter to those very targets.
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 unlimited contradiction in actions,” says Thomas Burke, a former EPA official who directs the Johns Hopkins Threat 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 substances.
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 underneath scrutiny for inaccurate or nonexistent citations, positions the problem of environmental toxins and chemical substances as a key precedence for tackling continual illness in youngsters, together with eating regimen, bodily exercise, expertise 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 businesses and scientific neighborhood with the “experience, expertise and know-how to guard youngsters in opposition to these hazards.”
“You’ll be able to’t say one factor and do one other,” says Sue Fenton, who directs the Middle for Human Well being and the Atmosphere 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 will not be onerous to seek out.
Cuts to the federal workforce underneath Kennedy’s watch have hobbled NIOSH, the Nationwide Institute for Occupational Security and Well being, which responds to poisonous chemical substances 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 price range requires axing the CDC heart the place the division is housed.
President Trump, Well being Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Training Secretary Linda McMahon at an occasion asserting 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 underneath Kennedy’s command, has stopped accepting submissions for its flagship journal on environmental well being and yanked analysis grants. As an example, 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 shopper merchandise and monitoring how PFAS chemical substances have an effect on girls’s well being, throughout being pregnant and midlife.
Not less than eight members of Mission TENDR, which research the hurt of poisonous chemical substances on mind improvement and its hyperlink to neurodevelopmental problems, 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 an announcement, the Division of Well being and Human Providers stated Kennedy “is dedicated to discovering the basis causes of the continual illness epidemic, together with the toxins in the environment and our meals.” And the company has stated 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.
Laws on maintain
On the EPA, which might play a crucial position in any substantive efforts to scale back dangerous chemical substances and air pollution, the company’s administrator Zeldin is prioritizing deregulation and reducing employees.
The company has delayed implementing nationwide ingesting water requirements on PFAS, or “endlessly chemical substances,” and proposed lifting laws to scale back emissions of mercury and poisonous pollution from energy vegetation. It has pushed again the deadline for trade to submit security research on greater than a dozen chemical substances 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 position 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 attempting to grasp the poisonous results of chemical substances, 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 College of World Public Well being, says all of her college with EPA grants had them canceled.
“Their focus is strictly what’s in MAHA,” she says. “They’re attempting to grasp these advanced associations between chemical substances within the surroundings and human well being and illness.”
And Zota worries in regards to the lack of grants across the nation to coach scientists on the poisonous results of environmental chemical substances. “It is simply so devastating,” she says. “If you happen to speak about tips on how to kill a discipline, you actually assault the up-and-coming technology.”
The EPA stated in an announcement to NPR that the administration is “working to resolve huge issues and having sturdy conversations throughout authorities about tips on how to drive financial progress whereas defending human well being and the surroundings 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 discipline, Tracey Woodruff, who leads the us Middle on Reproductive Well being and the Atmosphere, says she and lots of of her colleagues try to navigate a fragile train in science communication.
Kennedy has a historical past of creating false or deceptive claims on this matter, whether or not it is about chemtrails, or the impact of sure herbicides on gender. His rhetoric in regards to the “mass poisoning of youngsters” can veer into sweeping claims in regards to the impacts of environmental toxins, with out enough scientific proof. And his actions on vaccines have provoked alarm throughout public well being.
Extra broadly, MAHA’s give attention to environmental toxins generally displays a pressure of thought on the planet of other drugs and wellness that inaccurately frames any “pure” substance pretty much as good and man-made or artificial chemical substances as unhealthy.
But it surely’s additionally true that on the subject of many well-studied chemical substances, together with some that Kennedy cites, “now we have sufficient knowledge to take motion,” she says. “If we do not speak in regards to the issues that he is saying which are actual points the federal government needs to be addressing, I am anxious it is going to delegitimize all our work.”
Woodruff and others in her discipline have outlined their main areas of concern in consensus statements and different peer-reviewed papers on the proof tying artificial chemical substances and different substances to weight problems, most cancers, heart problems, fertility, neurodevelopmental problems and extra.
Phthalates, endlessly chemical substances, flame retardants, bisphenols, formaldehyde-releasing preservatives and sure pesticides are a number of the culprits, however there are 1000’s 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 typically 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 substances 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 Middle for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards and research the well being impacts of endocrine-disrupting chemical substances 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 substances and plastics earlier this yr.
She says about “80% to 90%” of what she heard throughout that speech was “actually good” in regards to the want for main reform. “However there are not any easy options. We’re not going to treatment continual illness in a yr or three years or 5 years,” she says.
Questions on a daring agenda
In public appearances, Kennedy has outlined what specialists describe as an formidable agenda to overtake how the U.S. evaluates chemical substances, notably within the realm of meals and a few shopper merchandise.
“It might do what many people have been asking for for a very long time,” says Trasande at NYU. “I am not attempting to place rose-colored glasses on. I simply suppose now we have to name it pretty,” he provides.
This consists of wanting on the cumulative and combination results of chemical substances within the meals provide and revising a regulatory pathway that enables firms to self-declare whether or not a meals additive is protected.
In an announcement to NPR, HHS additionally pointed to its announcement of a brand new evaluate program to “reassess beforehand permitted chemical substances in meals and food-contact materials and develop security assessments to review endocrine and neurobehavioral results.” In accordance with the FDA, a public web site will share details about chemical substances underneath evaluate.
However teachers and advocacy teams which have pushed for such modifications are skeptical in regards to the Trump administration’s dedication.
Even on eliminating petroleum-based meals dyes, an space that Kennedy has touted as a significant 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 legal professional on the nonprofit advocacy group Earthjustice.
“What we have seen is splashy press releases, handshake agreements with trade, and principally plans to make plans,” she says, “however what reduces the incidence of continual illnesses from chemical contamination is utilizing the federal authorities’s precise regulatory authority.”
She and different advocates say there’s loads the Trump administration might do shortly — actions like prohibiting phthalates in meals packaging, which teams like hers have needed the FDA to do for years.
And the fact is that any complete effort to crack down on dangerous chemical substances requires the EPA to additionally wield its regulatory powers as a result of the substances additionally present up in our water and the surroundings.
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.
“It’s essential to take a holistic strategy,” she says. “You should not be pulling again efforts to control our publicity to chemical substances 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 discipline, however principally she’s doubtful.
“Very actually, my concern with Kennedy, amongst others, is that as quickly as he begins really attempting to control some of these things, trade goes to go to Trump and so they’ll kick him out,” she says.