Despite saying he would protect Americans from “harmful chemicals” like pesticides, President Donald Trump and his administration seem to be embracing their use and have sought to bring in new pesticides that have sparked significant concern among environmentalists and experts.
The EPA told Newsweek: “Comments from EPA critics are just another example of partisan organizations pedaling mistruths to the American public to drum up fear and distrust. Sadly, some organizations are only interested in advancing political attacks rather than in engaging with the facts about EPA’s work or science-based decision-making.”
Newsweek also reached out to the White House and the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) PAC for comment via email. The Department of Health and Human Services referred Newsweek to the EPA and the White House for comment.
Why It Matters
During Trump’s campaign rallies, he spoke about the importance of reducing Americans’ exposure to toxic chemicals, such as pesticides, and said his administration, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. leading the investigation, would find a way to address the “decades-long increase in chronic health problems.”
Kennedy, now HHS secretary, also vowed to ban the “worst agricultural chemicals already banned in other countries,” with Trump backing him up, saying that together they would ensure everybody “will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming health crisis in this country.”
A MAHA report also mentioned the widespread human exposure to pesticides and the presence of their traces in human blood and breast milk samples, as well as in homes.
The EPA’s Actions Regarding Pesticides
Despite the vows and promises made in the lead-up to the 2024 election and at the start of Trump’s presidency, the current administration’s promised crackdown on pesticides appears to have fallen short.
The EPA has already sought to approve five pesticides containing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a class of chemicals that was twice banned by federal courts for their harm, and does not appear to be reducing or altering their widespread use across the country.
While many have voiced concern about the types of pesticides being proposed for approval, the EPA told Newsweek that its regulatory process is “robust, transparent, and consistent with gold standard science to ensure—above all else—that human health and the environment are protected from pesticide use.”
In order to get a pesticide over the line, there are “extensive data requirements” needed, such as studies that “evaluate product chemistry, toxicity, efficacy, environmental fate, residue chemistry, and exposure,” the agency said.
The EPA added it was working to make “new, safer tools available to the farmers and other pesticide users,” so that they can “protect our food supply, combat pests and respond to other human health and environmental issues, all while protecting human health and the environment.”
Allan Felsot, a professor in entomology and environmental toxicology at Washington State University, told Newsweek that he thought the EPA “is on about the same pace as always in approving new pesticides.”
Christopher Higgins, chair in civil and environmental engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, also told Newsweek that pesticides are “probably some of the better studied groups of chemicals out there in terms of what they, in the U.S., have to go through to get approved.“
While there has been particular concern about the use of PFAS pesticides due to their health risks, Higgins said that the approval of this type of pesticide is “actually not something new.”
“We are just recognizing them as a separate kind of grouping of pesticides because of the attention that’s being paid now on PFAS, but there have been similar PFAS pesticides for a long time,” he said.
He said that a lot of concern has been raised about trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), which is widely found in drinking water sources, but that there needs to be a “different conversation” about long-chain PFAS compounds like PFOS and PFOA, rather than TFA.
Higgins said it is “not that concerning there are new pesticides being approved,” and that some pharmaceuticals even contain TFA, like Paxlovid, which is used to treat COVID.
He added that as much as he would “love” for it to be possible to produce healthy food in a “purely organic way,” it’s “probably not possible,” so “how we do this in a way that tries to make things as safe as possible, I think, is the key thing.”
Who Does This Benefit?
The EPA told Newsweek that pesticides play a “crucial role” for farmers, in “ensuring an affordable food supply by protecting crops from pests and diseases, thereby preventing yield losses and keeping food prices stable.”
The agency said that pesticides are “vital” in controlling mosquito populations and helping to prevent diseases like West Nile and Zika viruses, as well as bedbug, termite, and rodent infestations, and that they can “protect endangered species by managing invasive species that can transmit disease and compete for habitat.”
The EPA also said pesticides are “important in hospitals, where antimicrobial agents help prevent infections, ensuring patient safety and maintaining high healthcare standards.”
Kayla Nichols, communications director at the Pesticide Action and Agroecology Network, told Newsweek that “farmers would be better off now and in the long run” if the Trump administration had “gone forward with their promises to enact stronger pesticide regulations,” while providing pathways for farmers to transition to “agroecological pest control methods that do not rely on synthetic agrichemicals.”
When asked whether she thought approving more pesticides for use was a positive for farmers, Nichols said, “not at all.”
“Research shows that industrial farms consistently have to turn to using more toxic formulations of pesticides at higher rates in order to keep up with pests and weeds that become resistant to different chemicals,” she said.
She added that “getting trapped in this cycle of relying on stronger and stronger pesticides creates worsening conditions for farmworkers and communities surrounding these farms.”
Nichols also said there is “growing concern among farmers, farmworkers, and surrounding communities regarding the safety of pesticides,” as different pesticides can have acute and long-term health impacts.
Even low-level exposure to the herbicide paraquat “carries an increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease,” she said, and many pesticides are known or possible carcinogens. Farmers in Iowa are now “grappling with rising rates of cancer.”
She added that the administration “should prioritize building a strong, resilient food system founded on principles that safeguard the health of people and the planet,” but that approving more toxic pesticides “will only further trap American farmers on a cycle of increased harm, worsened health outcomes, and dependence on agrichemicals.”
Jeannie Economos, Pesticide Safety and Environmental Health Project coordinator for the Farmworker Association of Florida, told Newsweek that the association is “really concerned” that the EPA is “fast tracking a lot of pesticide registrations” and that “they’re not doing a proper review and analysis.”
She added that farmworkers not only get exposed to one kind of pesticide, but to multiple, for much longer and daily. These pesticides can then leave residues on their clothes, hair and face, which they can take home and that can affect their children, she said.
“It’s one thing to talk about it in the abstract; it’s another thing to see the effects of pesticides on women, children, and families: kids with ADHD, learning disabilities, neurodevelopmental problems, women with health problems, babies with birth defects, long-term chronic health defects like lupus and Parkinson’s disease. It is gut-wrenching,” she said.
What Are the Concerns?
While the EPA has said that approving pesticides helps farmers protect the country’s food supply, experts have widely expressed concern about the health impacts of PFAS pesticides in particular.
Courtney Carignan, a professor of food science and human nutrition, and of pharmacology and toxicology at Michigan State University, told Newsweek that the approval of PFAS pesticides is “surprising” given their “well documented hazards.”
This includes “extreme persistence and mobility, which allow them to easily contaminate drinking water and food,” she said, and many PFAS are known to be carcinogenic and can “interfere with hormone production, reproduction, and the immune system.”
“While many types of PFAS are used in certain products, scientists around the world recommend they be used only as essential with strict monitoring and control to prevent and mitigate discharge,” she said.
Although not all experts agree. Felsot said that these pesticides “behave nothing like the regulated PFAS chemicals.”
He said that PFOA and PFOS have body half-lives of years, but that, for example, the newly registered herbicide epyrifenacil “has a body half-life of less than a day in the rat body with nearly all radiolabeled dose eliminated from the body within 72 hours.”
He also said “most of the radiolabel was in the feces not in the urine,” which suggests “poor absorption efficiency from the small intestine.” He added that the chemicals would have to get into the blood to “have any physiological effect.”