Trump Admin Cancels Programs to Protect Children From Toxic Chemicals

Forever chemicals: those tricky buggers we get to breathe, drink, and eat after years of chemical industry deregulation. In the latest sweeping move against government spending, the Trump administration has decided it's time for kids fend for themselves. Leaked emails from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published by the New York Times reveal an intention to cancel thousands of grants for environmental research in rural areas. Among the research areas affected: hazards affecting rural kids. This includes exposure to noxious pesticides, wildfire smoke, and forever chemicals. Forever chemicals, also known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), are a broad classification for […]

Apr 27, 2025 - 20:06

Trump Admin Cancels Programs to Protect Children From Toxic Chemicals

Leaked EPA emails reveal an intention to cancel thousands of grants for environmental research in rural areas.

In the latest sweeping move against government spending, the Trump administration has decided it's time for kids fend for themselves.

Leaked emails from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published by the New York Times reveal an intention to cancel thousands of grants for environmental research. Among the research areas affected: hazards affecting rural kids. This includes exposure to noxious pesticides, wildfire smoke, and forever chemicals released by industrial polluters.

Forever chemicals, also known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), are a broad classification for thousands of chemicals that take a very long time to break down. PFAS are widely used in consumer and industrial products, and are found all throughout the world — from the bottom of the ocean to the icy waters of the Arctic.

Troublingly, it's estimated that 97 percent of Americans have some level of forever chemicals in their blood. Many PFAS are carcinogenic in nature, and have been linked to numerous types of cancer, including childhood leukemia.

People in rural and low-income areas are particularly susceptible to forever chemicals, which leach out from pesticides used in agriculture, as byproducts of industrial production, and in small-town water systems that have long been overlooked by state and federal EPA testing.

Many of these communities likewise face limited access to quality health care, making rural environmental research all the more critical for uncovering — and ideally, helping prevent — the effects of corporate waste. Unfortunately, the federal government under Trump is being rapidly stripped of its ability to wage that battle.

Recently, The Lever reported that the EPA's public tool for tracking chemical disasters and high-risk chemical facilities had been taken offline. That's set to have a major impact on communities throughout the US, as massive chemical accidents are all but guaranteed to occur. Between January 2021 and October 2023, for example, the US petrochemical industry logged 825 hazardous chemical incidents, officially impacting at least 291 communities and likely many more from chemical runoff and downwind exposure.

That move follows after two major chemical industry lobbyists implored Trump to give them broad exemptions on the amount of toxins they're allowed to spew into the environment.

Taken together, the moves paint a pretty obvious picture: it's a good time to be in the toxic chemical business — and a bad time for the rest of us.

More on toxic chemicals: We Talked to the Inventors of the "Tamagotchi" Vape That Dies If You Stop Puffing

The post Trump Admin Cancels Programs to Protect Children From Toxic Chemicals appeared first on Futurism.