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The Toxic Substances Control Act – the primary U.S. chemical safety law – gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the authority and responsibility to review chemicals for safety, both before and after they enter the market. The law was significantly strengthened in 2016 when Congress passed a bipartisan overhaul of the law. In managing the safety of chemicals, the Toxic Substances Control Act requires EPA to take steps to protect the people most at risk from exposure to toxic chemicals, like children, pregnant women, workers and people living near chemical facilities.
American families should be able to trust that the chemicals in their everyday products have been assessed for safety and won’t cause them serious health problems.
New polling from EDF shows overwhelming support across party lines for the Toxic Substances Control Act. The law is universally popular, with more than four-in-five (82%) favoring it. That support is consistent regardless of gender, race, age, education level or party affiliation.
Despite this popularity, this week, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a discussion draft bill that would fundamentally dismantle the core responsibility for EPA to ensure the safety of chemicals in our economy and everyday lives.
The Toxic Substances Control Act is the country’s bedrock chemical safety law, and it keeps dangerous chemicals out of our homes, workplaces and communities. Americans don’t want potentially toxic chemicals fast-tracked into their lives.
The discussion draft would make sweeping changes to the Toxic Substances Control Act that threaten the public’s health.
The proposal to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act would remove the requirement for EPA to follow an independent, scientific process to determine if a chemical can be used safely before it can come onto the market.
In addition to eliminating this requirement, the bill would proactively invite industry to participate in reviewing their own products. This would dramatically undermine EPA’s responsibility and authority to protect Americans from the most toxic chemicals and to adhere to a scientifically robust, independent process that Americans can trust.
Many dangerous chemicals, including many PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” entered the market before a bipartisan Congress strengthened the law in 2016. The current proposal would bring back this process that allowed forever chemicals into the market by flipping the safety standard on its head.
Instead of requiring EPA to prove a chemical doesn’t pose an unreasonable risk as is required under the current law, the proposal makes it EPA’s responsibility to prove that a chemical would likely pose an unreasonable risk. This small distinction would have major impacts – it would shift the burden of proof away from safety, effectively turning EPA’s safety review into a rubber stamp for any chemical the industry wants to bring to market.
In this proposal, once a chemical is rubber stamped for one use, it could more easily be used in additional unapproved ways. In practice, this could lead to a chemical that was approved for use in industrial settings – with proper worker protections in place – potentially being used in homes, schools and daycares.
Republicans’ proposal would severely weaken EPA’s ability to regulate existing chemicals that we know are toxic. The Republicans’ proposed requirement that EPA prove a chemical is likely to pose an unreasonable risk to public health is intended to set a nearly unreachable standard for addressing the risks from dangerous chemicals. The discussion draft bill also diminishes what EPA can consider harmful in the first place when evaluating toxic chemicals, requiring EPA to apply a vague and difficult standard of proof, making it harder to regulate toxic chemicals. It minimizes the estimates of the risks to those living near chemical plants, workers, children and pregnant people by failing to consider their full chemical exposure.
This proposal would also limit the tools EPA can use to eliminate unreasonable risks, putting industry profits ahead of people’s health. This would severely undermine EPA’s ability to protect Americans from the worst toxic chemicals already in use, like cancer-causing formaldehyde and vinyl chloride. These chemicals have long devastated the health of workers and communities on the fenceline of industrial facilities.
The bill also allows the chemical industry and manufacturers to delay for months or years the regulation of existing toxic chemicals by challenging in court any scientific finding by EPA that a chemical is harmful. The proposed process changes would prevent EPA from taking actions to reduce the risks to consumers until after the industry litigation is over.
The proposal would make it significantly more difficult to produce key information on the hazards of chemicals, how people are exposed to them, and how they harm the environment. It even prohibits EPA from requiring testing for whole groups of chemicals, including highly toxic chemicals. This information is key to properly characterizing the risks we face from groups of toxic chemicals, such as PFAS or “forever chemicals.”
This proposal creates a loophole for so-called advanced or chemical recycling – essentially the burning of plastic waste. It would allow harmful products produced through this process to be considered “equivalent” to chemicals already on the market without undergoing a safety review. Despite the fact that the products are contaminated with plastic’s toxic additives and harmful byproducts such as dioxins, these false equivalents would be rubberstamped as safe.
The chemicals industry and manufacturers have advocated for most of the proposals in this bill, and according to news reports EPA “keeps adding former industry lobbyists to the office that manages TSCA.” The Trump EPA has made moves to roll back numerous essential Toxic Substances Control Act protections against toxic chemicals, including altering the way the agency evaluates chemical risk and lowballing the risks from cancer-causing formaldehyde.
Joanna Slaney is Vice President for Political and Government Affairs at Environmental Defense Fund.
What’s new: January 20, 2026 marks the first-year anniversary of the European Union’s (EU) ban on most uses of bisphenol A (BPA) — an industrial chemical that’s commonly used in household plastics and food packaging. The 2025 regulation, which includes an 18-month phase-out, prohibits the use of BPA in several food contact materials including plastics, coatings, varnishes, inks and adhesives.
The EU’s decision to ban most BPA uses is supported by the 2023 European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA) risk assessment, which found that the amount of BPA that’s safe for daily human consumption is 20,000 times less than what its 2015 assessment had found.
Why it matters: EFSA’s latest risk assessment found that BPA exposure could lead to an overactive immune system, causing out-of-control inflammation. BPA has also been linked to disruptions of the endocrine system, harming reproduction and inhibiting learning and memory. Research has shown that the immune system is most sensitive to BPA exposure, which can cause disruptions that weaken it and make the body more vulnerable to disease.
Americans face similar widespread exposure to BPA in their daily lives as EU residents did before last year’s ban. A survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that approximately 95% of Americans tested have BPA in their bodies, with children facing the highest levels. BPA has been detected in blood, urine, sweat, amniotic fluid and breast milk.
In 2022, EDF and our allies submitted a food additive petition asking the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to 1) limit BPA in food by revoking approvals for using it in adhesives and can coatings and 2) set strict limits on using BPA in plastic that contacts food. FDA has not yet made a decision on our petition, despite a legally-mandated 180-day deadline.
Our take: While Europe moves forward, the FDA has still not taken substantive action. That inaction is a decision. It means BPA continues to be allowed in the foods American families eat every day. It’s been 1,320 days since the agency filed our petition. The delay continues to put our health at risk.
Maricel Maffini is an independent consultant focused on human and environmental health and chemical safety.
Despite a 6-month delay and data gaps, EPA’s drastic reduction in lead service line counts may have unintended consequences.
What Happened?
After a 6-month long delay, EPA announced the next round of federal funding dedicated to lead service line replacement in late November. This year’s funding, totaling $3 billion, is allotted to states based on the service line inventories that were required to be submitted in October 2024.
This is the fourth year of the $15 billion funding as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure law, dedicated to replace harmful lead pipes delivering drinking water to homes in thousands of communities.
Prior year allotments are based on EPA’s 7th Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey and Assessment (DWINSA), a voluntary survey used to estimate water infrastructure needs. Now, the allotments are based on the service line inventories that utilities submitted to states as part of their requirements under the Lead and Copper Rule Revisions. This data is now driving the best current estimate of total lead pipes in the nation, which has drastically reduced from 9 million to 4 million.
How Did the Funding Change?
Check out the map above to see all the changes since the FY24 allotment.
What happened to all the lead service lines?
EPA uses a formula to determine the allotments, pulling from data submitted by utilities on service line material types and projecting the number of each type in the state. They did make some questionable choices when it came to applying the data to address gaps in the service line inventories. For example:
While fewer lead pipes nationally would be a positive change, this drastic reduction may have unintended consequences if this new total is an underestimate, ultimately making it difficult for water utilities to plan effectively and receive needed funding for replacement.
Go Deeper: Read EPA’s memo on the funding allotments.
Despite a clear legal prohibition of carcinogens in food, several are still permitted, posing a risk to Americans’ health.
By Maria Doa, Ph.D., Liora Fiksel and Emma Barrett
What’s new? A new EDF analysis has found that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows 25 chemicals linked to cancer — or carcinogens — to be used in Americans’ food. These chemicals can be used across the food production chain as ingredients or processing agents, in packaging materials and more, putting the health of consumers and workers at risk.
Our analysis identified 8 known human carcinogens and 17 probable human carcinogens that the FDA allows for use in U.S. food products when they are present in small amounts in other ingredients or in food contact articles approved for use. All 25 substances are recognized as carcinogenic by the congressionally mandated 15th Report on Carcinogens from the National Institutes of Health or by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.
Why it matters: These substances pose substantial health risks because they are present in one of the most common exposure pathways for ordinary Americans: food. They are not just risky for consumers, but also for every worker involved in getting food to our plates. Let’s highlight a few examples of particular concern:
The law is clear: Cancer-causing chemicals are not allowed in our food. The 1958 Food Additives Amendment gives the FDA authority to regulate food chemicals. Within it, the Delaney Clause explicitly prohibits adding carcinogens to food. In contrast, the regulations FDA derives from the law allow carcinogens to be used if they are either absent from the final product or present only in trace amounts, making their inclusion a deliberate regulatory choice.
The FDA has maintained its approvals for chemicals long known to cause cancer, disregarding its responsibility to protect human health by enforcing regulations aligned with the law. Keeping carcinogens out of U.S. food is a clear mandate of the agency. While the law is straightforward, the FDA’s enforcement of it has been far from it.
Our take: The FDA’s decision to remove cancer-causing food additives should be quick and easy, particularly because safer substitutes are readily available. EDF and others have already petitioned the FDA to act on four cancer-causing substances, including methylene chloride, with no response for more than a year.
The FDA can take years to resolve cases that should be open-and-shut. In January 2025, the agency revoked an authorization for the color additive Red No.3, three years after EDF and partners submitted a petition citing decades of evidence of its carcinogenicity. The FDA’s response to comments on its January 2025 decision made clear that it was rooted in the Delaney Clause. But the slow response left this carcinogen in Americans’ food for three decades too long.
The FDA does not need to wait for groups like EDF to petition it to revoke approvals for carcinogens. The agency already has the legal authority — and responsibility — to keep carcinogenic substances out of U.S. food processing and food; it’s time they use it.
Read our analysis on the carcinogens found in food here.
5 Takeaways from New York Climate Week
By Sarah Vogel, Senior Vice President, Healthy Communities, EDF, Dr. Arnab Ghosh, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College and Stefanie Le, Writer, Data Smart Cities
Extreme weather is no longer a distant threat—it’s here. NASA reports that in the past year alone, the U.S. saw twice as many extreme weather events as the 2003–2020 average. Storms are stronger, heat waves last longer and wildfires spread faster.
At New York Climate Week, leaders from cities, universities and health organizations gathered to ask a pressing question: how can data help communities protect themselves? The panel, hosted by Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability and Environmental Defense Fund with the Community Data Health Initiative, City of Detroit, NYC Department of Health, NYU’s City Health program and the African American Mayors Association, emphasized the role of data in shaping health-focused climate solutions.
Here are five takeaways:
Mount Vernon Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard described how data revealed a stark divide in her city: tree-lined streets in the north are up to 7 degrees cooler than the south side, where residents face higher asthma rates and utility bills.
“We don’t have the luxury of ignoring climate because we live at its intersection,” she said. “With a 5 to 7 degree difference in heat because urban heat islands on the south side, tree lined streets on the north side. And what does that cause? More asthma, more pulmonary issues and higher utility bills for the people that can afford them the least.”
Detroit is turning vacant land into opportunity. With more than 124,000 empty parcels, the city is converting lots into urban farms.
“It can’t be one or the other,” said Trisha Stein, Detroit’s Chief Strategy Officer. “We’re protecting the vulnerable, stabilizing neighborhoods, growing locally sourced food and generating $23 million in health benefits.”
Savannah Mayor Van Johnson put it bluntly:
“Seventy percent of our most intense storms have occurred since 2015. If we’re ever hit by a Category 3 hurricane, three-quarters of Savannah would be underwater.”
Margot Brown of EDF reminded the audience that climate change doesn’t create inequities—it deepens them.
“Climate change is what we call a threat multiplier. So it doesn’t just create new challenges, it worsens the ones that we already face, especially for the most vulnerable populations. People already facing poverty or racism are hit first and worst. That’s unfair—and avoidable.”
Representative Maxine Dexter (OR-03) recalled Oregon’s devastating 2020 wildfires, which burned more than a million acres. The smoke spread far beyond the fire line, endangering firefighters and residents alike.
“We must act with urgency and care,” she said. “The smoke literally goes where the wind blows it. Wildland firefighters have been out there with bandanas over their faces, fighting for generations. You don’t see mainland firefighters doing that anymore and we need that for our wildland firefighters.”
The message from New York Climate Week was clear: science and data must guide climate policy. As Representative Dexter put it,
“We should be depending on science to make policy. Citizens must demand investment in research and data collection.”
What’s new: Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) withdrew a proposed rule covering 18 new chemicals, which would have paused industry efforts to turn toxic oils from plastic waste into fuel until the agency could review their health risks. Companies make these oils through pyrolysis, a controversial process that essentially burns plastic waste—often full of toxic additives like lead, phthalates and PFAS—at high temperatures. Industry has sought for years to re-brand this inefficient and dirty process as “advanced recycling”—a false solution to the plastic waste crisis.
Why it matters: In 2022, the EPA approved the production and use of the 18 chemicals despite significant health risks documented in the agency’s own analysis. These risks include an up-to 1-in-4 lifetime cancer risk—250,000 times greater than what the EPA typically considers acceptable. It was only after residents near the facility in Pascagoula, Mississippi that received the approval learned of these risks and filed a lawsuit that the EPA finally pulled it back.
As damning as the EPA’s 2022 analysis was, it almost certainly underestimated the true risks of the 18 chemicals by failing to consider the known health risks of toxic additives such as lead, PFAS and dioxins commonly found in waste-plastic pyrolysis oils. In response to mounting pressure, the EPA issued the proposed rule in 2023 to address these additional risks. Because it is nearly impossible to make fuels from these oils that are free from toxicants, the rule had an immediate chilling effect on industry investment in “advanced recycling” that’s thawing now that it has been withdrawn.
Our Take: The proposed rule was effective because it would have required companies to notify the EPA before producing and using the new chemicals when they contain toxic plastic additives by designating it as a significant new use. This designation also would have given the agency time to evaluate potential risks to human health and the environment—and mitigate them if necessary.
The proposed rule was also significant because it represents the first time the EPA officially acknowledged that waste plastic-derived pyrolysis oils contain toxic additives “known to cause cancer and harm the reproductive system, among other health effects.” While we believe this rule (and the list of toxic chemicals requiring review) did not go far enough—and submitted comments to the EPA in 2023 explaining why—it was a big step in the right direction.
What’s the problem with so-called “advanced recycling?” Although industry touts “advanced recycling” as a solution to the plastic waste crisis, the process has major flaws. Not only does it fail to recycle anything, but it also rarely results in new plastic products. To make matters worse, the oils it produces are so toxic that their use is highly limited. Continued investments in “advanced recycling” will lock us into burning more polluting fossil fuels that contribute to climate change. Instead of spending its resources propping up this toxic scam, industry could devote them to developing truly innovative and safe solutions.
What’s next? With the rule now out of the way, the EPA is likely to reissue its approval of the 18 chemicals and propose a new set of “rules” that would ignore both the known cancer risks and the additional risks from the highly toxic additives. This would be an unacceptable outcome for public health. The agency must consider the full picture of risk—not just part of it.
With industry actively pushing to develop new facilities across the country—and simultaneously seeking exemptions from other pollution limits for facilities like the one in Pascagoula—the EPA’s reversal opens the door to more pollution and greater harm to both people and the environment. We must hold both the EPA and industry accountable to ensure these plastic waste-derived new chemicals filled with dangerous toxins are not approved—and that any future rules protect people and the environment from unreasonable risk.
To learn more about the health risks of “advanced recycling,” check out this recent Instagram reel by Sarah Vogel, Senior Vice President of Healthy Communities.
