Despite MAHA promises to reduce chemical exposures, experts warn the Trump administration is approving a wave of ‘frightening’ pesticides.

EPA Approves Four New Pesticides That Qualify as PFAS

By Lisa Held for Civil Eats

Video clip from Bobby Jr.'s 2024 Prez campaign before
he dropped out to endorse Trump

In April, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went to Texas to tour farms and agriculture research facilities and learn “how America’s farmers are working to Make America Healthy Again,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) press release.

During a press conference at Sawyer Farms, a local news reporter told the duo that Texas ranchers are worried about “forever chemical” contamination caused by biosolids used for fertilizer and asked what the Trump administration was doing about it. Because they do not break down, the chemicals accumulate in the environment and can cause serious health harms.

Both Rollins and Kennedy said they were concerned about farm soils being contaminated with the chemicals, called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS—commonly referred to as forever chemicals. “We want to end the production of PFAS,” Kennedy said. “Ultimately, I think that’s what we have to do. There’s a lot of pressure on the industry now to stop using it.”

It wasn’t clear which industry Kennedy was referring to, but the pesticide industry, in fact, is moving in the opposite direction—with the help of the Trump administration that Kennedy serves in. Between April and June of this year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed the approval of four new pesticides that qualify as PFAS based on a definition that is commonly used around the world and supported by experts.

“What we’re seeing right now is the new generation of pesticides, and it’s genuinely frightening,” said Nathan Donley, the environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, who published a paper last year showing pesticides are increasingly fluorinated. Fluorination is the process that creates PFAS. “At a time when most industries are transitioning away from PFAS, the pesticide industry is doubling down. They’re firmly in the business of selling PFAS.”

Because the EPA uses a different, narrower definition of PFAS, the agency does not categorize the new pesticides as falling into that category. And based on their chemical structure, they are likely not as persistent or harmful as the widely used PFOS and PFOA that have wreaked havoc on farms to date. But they still are likely to persist for decades or even centuries, and Americans are already being widely exposed to them. And experts say the approvals come at a time when the administration is also rolling back other policies that were beginning to address all forever chemical contamination in the food supply.

On August 13, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a federal environmental policy watchdog organization, sent Kennedy a petition asking the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission to take several concrete actions on forever chemicals.

PEER recommends that the EPA adopt the broader, widely recognized definition of PFAS, and then ban the use of pesticides that contain them. The organization also wants the Trump administration to stop the application of fertilizers that are often contaminated with PFAS. While Biden’s EPA released an initial assessment of PFAS in fertilizer made from biosolids in January, Republicans in Congress recently tried to stop that assessment from being finalized or used to create future regulations.

PEER also wants the agency to reinstate the limits on PFAS in drinking water that it rolled back in May. While many of the actions don’t fall under Kennedy’s purview, Rollins and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin are also members of the MAHA commission, and they could make headway on these changes.

“This administration is incredibly hypocritical, and we wanted to point that out to them,” said Kyla Bennett, the science policy director at PEER. “The MAHA Commission is claiming that PFAS is dangerous, and we’re just pointing out to them three very simple things that they could do to get PFAS out of our food.”

An EPA spokesperson ignored a detailed list of questions from Civil Eats related to the proposed pesticide approvals and instead sent a broad statement that included a link to a list of actions Zeldin announced in April to “combat PFAS contamination.” The spokesperson said that the administration’s decision to overturn the drinking water standards for four PFAS was based on a “regulatory error” during the Biden administration and that the current EPA is starting a new review to reconsider the limits.

HHS did not respond to a request for comment.

Four New Forever Pesticides

In May, Zeldin announced structural changes at the EPA. In addition to cutting some offices and establishing new departments, he shifted more than 130 staff members to the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP) “to work directly on the backlog of over 504 new chemicals in review,” an action high on the pesticide industry’s wish lists.

Under the Trump administration, the OCSPP is being run by three industry insiders. Nancy Beck, formerly an executive at the American Chemistry Council, who previously pushed the EPA to weaken rules on PFAS in consumer products; Lynn Ann Dekleva, a former DuPont executive; and Kyle Kunkler, who has lobbied against pesticide regulations for the American Soybean Association.

Over the past several months, decisions on new chemicals have picked up speed, including on those with potential PFAS characteristics.
Back in April, the agency proposed approving a Syngenta chemical that targets pests called nematodes for crops including Romaine lettuce and soybeans.

Then, in June, it proposed three more approvals in rapid succession: an herbicide made by Bayer for corn and soybeans; a Syngenta field-crop insecticide that can be applied as a seed treatment; and an herbicide from BASF for oranges, apples, peanuts, and other crops.

At the Center for Biological Diversity, Donley and his team analyzed all four and determined that, based on their chemical structure, all are PFAS, according to the definition created by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

That worries Donley because, he said, the definition was based on “the chemical components that make something incredibly persistent.” While the new pesticides are shorter-chain molecules compared to the other longer-chain molecules, they could still stick around in the environment for decades or even centuries due to their durable carbon-fluorine bonds and can break down into other chemicals like trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) that also persist.

“All PFAS are persistent. That is one of the things that they all have in common,” PEER’s Bennett said.

Syngenta and BASF did not respond to questions about the new chemicals qualifying as PFAS and whether that should prompt concerns around persistence or potential human health impacts. A Bayer spokesperson sent an emailed statement that pointed to the fact that its new herbicide, called diflufenican, is “not a PFAS substance” according to the EPA.

“We stand behind the safety of our products, which have been tested extensively and thoroughly reviewed by regulators,” the statement read. “Diflufenican will be an important weed-control tool for farmers and has been thoroughly reviewed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ensure the product can be used safely for people and the environment when they are used according to label instructions.”

In January, industry trade associations CropLife America and Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment (which operate under the same federally registered nonprofit) also submitted comments that provide insight into the industry’s broader perspective on the issue.

In a letter regarding new rules Maine is implementing that will ban products containing PFAS, executives argued against the use of the broader OECD definition of PFAS currently adopted by the state. That definition “disregards the remarkably different physical, chemical, and biological properties that shape the potential human and ecological risk profiles of chemistries that meet that definition.”

They also emphasized that when the EPA approves a new product, it must determine the pesticide will not cause “unreasonable adverse effects” to the environment or human health when used according to the label. Finally, the executives wrote, “the use of PFAS in certain pesticides is essential to their function.”

Demands for More Research and a Common Definition

Experts say that these new short-chain PFAS are unlikely to be as dangerous to human health as the longer-chain chemicals. The shorter the chain, the shorter the time they likely stay in the human body.

But new chemicals do not have as much scientific data on them, Donley said. “We have a little bit here and there that says maybe they’re safe,” he said. “But eventually, more science is going to come out.” Studies have shown the shorter-chain PFAS are already prevalent inside homes and bodies in the U.S. And because of their potential to persist in the environment, by the time we learn about their dangers, it may be too late.

“If you’ve got something that sticks around for generations, then any new science that comes out in the next two years or five years or 10 years saying this stuff is more dangerous than we thought, it’s irreversible,” he said. “We estimate we’re releasing about 30 million pounds of short- and ultra-short-chain pesticide PFAS right now each year in the U.S., and we still have very little idea of what is happening to them in the environment and what their true toxicities are.”

To make a similar point, Bennett gave the example of GenX, a PFAS that DuPont introduced in 2009 as a safer replacement for PFOA in commercial products.

DuPont dumped the chemical into North Carolina’s Cape Fear River, leading to devastating contamination that affected millions of people. It is now clear that GenX requires long periods of time to break down, and the chemical is associated with serious health effects, including liver problems and cancer. In May, the EPA eliminated its first limits on GenX in drinking water, set during the Biden administration, and is currently re-reviewing them.

“One thing that EPA keeps forgetting is that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence,” Bennett said. “In other words, just because we don’t have the studies and the data doesn’t mean it’s safe. It means we just don’t know yet.”

Given there is evidence pointing to potential health risks and environmental persistence, she said, the EPA should err on the side of caution.

But this “precautionary principle,” much touted by MAHA supporters, doesn’t square with the Trump administration’s broader deregulatory push.

Truly addressing PFAS in the food system, Bennett said, would involve the EPA first adopting the broader definition set by the OECD and regulating those chemicals as a class. That kind of policy would end the registration of persistent, harmful pesticides and even lead to safer drinking-water standards.

Hearing Kennedy, a member of the administration, acknowledging the chemicals’ harms made her angry, she said. “You know it’s dangerous to people, especially children,” she said. “If they’re spraying it on our food, it’s in our water. What are you doing to stop it? The answer is nothing. They’re doing nothing to stop it.”