Only a week after the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to weaken limits on some of the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS in drinking water, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again Commission released a much-anticipated report Thursday outlining what it sees as a health crisis among American children. And it pointed to environmental chemicals – including PFAS – as a likely cause of today’s children being what it calls “the sickest generation in American history.”
The inconsistency did not surprise many environmental and health advocates. Indeed, over the past few months, as Health Secretary Kennedy’s followers have advocated for a healthier, more chemical-free food system and environment, the Trump administration has rolled back a slew of regulations that had been designed to promote just that.
The president gave coal-powered plants more time to comply with restrictions on mercury – an element the MAHA world sees as a particularly damaging toxin. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that he would ease environmental protections such as soot limits and wastewater regulations. And mass firings at both the EPA and Mr. Kennedy’s Health and Human Services Department have removed experts on everything from protecting children from lead poisoning to monitoring pesticides.
Why We Wrote This
A striking clash is playing out between the Make America Healthy Again movement and anti-regulation Republicans who still hold much power in Washington. A much-anticipated MAHA report released Thursday blamed environmental toxins for health problems but did not make recommendations.
“The Trump administration is just riddled with contradictions in terms of who is running key agencies and what values they have,” says Matt Motta, assistant professor of health law, policy, and management at the Boston University School of Public Health. “There are contradictions within the same people, within the same department, and with what they want to do and what they actually do. It’s kind of like trying to read patterns into ink blots.”
Mr. Trump has been reshaping his party’s stances on core issues for a decade now, moving away from long-held establishment positions on everything from foreign policy to budget deficits. But a particularly striking clash is now playing out between the populist and growing MAHA movement and the more traditionally anti-regulation, big business Republicans who still hold much power in Washington.
A coalition unified by skepticism of industry
MAHA followers are, in many ways, a scrambled political group. A mix of former Democrats, longtime Republicans, and committed independents, they coalesce around what they see as a common sense, hands-on approach to staying healthy – as well as a belief that the government and medical profession are too often captured by industry. They advocate reducing the amount of ultra processed foods Americans eat – more than half of their average daily calories – as well as additives. Last month, for instance, Mr. Kennedy announced new efforts to remove petroleum-based food dyes from the U.S. food system.
Many MAHA supporters, like Brendan Finnegan, a Massachusetts father who owns a natural holistic healing store and is also a medical device engineer, say environmental health is important to them – along with reforms to the food system, and freedom to make medical choices.
Mr. Finnegan hadn’t heard about the Trump EPA’s regulatory rollbacks on clean air and PFAS (which stands for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances). He calls the recent changes “quite concerning.”
“That doesn’t seem like [the EPA is] protecting the environment like they’re supposed to do,” he says.
The issue of pesticides has put many MAHA influencers in alliance with left-leaning environmentalists, health influencers, and everyday people who are worried about the toxic impact of the 1 billion pounds of weed and pest killers sprayed on U.S. crops every year. The Environmental Protection Agency has determined that neither glyphosate, the main ingredient in the weed killer Roundup, nor atrazine, another common herbicide used in industrial agriculture, are dangerous to human health.
But part of the MAHA movement is a skepticism about these sorts of institutional findings. The commission report, for instance, outlined how corporate influence can taint scientific findings, pointing out that 50% of non-industry research found a common pesticide harmful, compared to 18% of industry-funded studies. And when it comes to pesticides, many groups share the skepticism. Atrazine, for instance, is banned in Europe. The World Health Organization has linked glyphosate to health risks.
“There are many, many different groups of people very concerned about pesticides in this country,” says Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “I think the real story is the different ways the entrenched interests on the chemical industry side are gearing up to fight this.”
Indeed, over the past week, lobbyists and big ag groups were scrambling amid rumors that the much-anticipated MAHA Commission report would take aim at pesticides.
Republican lawmakers warned Mr. Kennedy that linking pesticides to health issues would threaten the food system. The National Corn Growers Association released a sharply worded statements saying, “Should the MAHA Commission report baselessly attack, and, worse yet, make claims that are simply untrue against the hardworking men and women who feed our nation, it will make further cooperation on this initiative very difficult and potentially put American food production at risk.”
In the end, there was only scant mention of pesticides in the report, which was presented as an analysis of what it called the country’s child health crisis – not a set of policy recommendations.
The report’s four factors for health
The report listed four drivers of what it described as a rise in childhood chronic disease: a poor diet with too many ultra processed foods, the aggregation of environmental chemicals, chronic stress and lack of physical activity, and overmedicalization.
Although the report took aim at corporate influence in both the food and health care systems, it also emphasized the need for “pro growth strategies.”
When it came to chemicals, the report was quiet on recent rollback efforts and praised the Trump EPA for regulating two “forever chemicals” – although, in reality, the administration had eased the country’s PFAS regulations. It did not mention the looser clean-air standards.
“Most people in this country are exposed to toxic chemicals from air pollution,” says Judith Enck, the president of the environmental group Beyond Plastics and a regional administrator with the EPA under President Barack Obama. “The decision of this administration not to enforce the Clean Air Act is very significant, and it will result in much more chemical exposure than almost anything else.”
Caitlin Babcock reported from Washington and Stephanie Hanes from Northampton, Massachusetts.
