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Daily exposure to a stew of chemicals and their link to chronic health problems is a big concern of the Make America Healthy Again platform. It's a priority that scientists in the field of environmental health also welcome, but the Trump administration has overseen massive cuts to federal agencies that test these substances. NPR's Will Stone reports.
WILL STONE, BYLINE: Susanne Brander was sitting in the audience at a conference on chemicals and plastics back in April. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was giving the keynote address...
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ROBERT F KENNEDY JR: Some of them are deliberate additives, and others make their way into food from packaging and the environment. If we care about our children's health, we have to look at all of them.
STONE: ...When he brought up a statistic to underscore his concern.
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KENNEDY: Recent study from the University of Oregon found microplastics in 99% of the seafood samples.
STONE: Brander is an ecotoxicologist at Oregon State University, and she knew that figure.
SUSANNE BRANDER: It was definitely our study.
STONE: Done by Portland State University and her lab. Her next reaction?
BRANDER: Baffling - I was baffled and incredibly frustrated.
STONE: Because an hour earlier, while in line for breakfast, she'd received an email notifying her that an EPA grant she'd relied on for years, focused on pesticides and testing chemicals, was being terminated.
BRANDER: Your research no longer effectuates agency priorities, is what the letter literally said.
STONE: She says it feels surreal. Kennedy and his MAHA allies are calling attention to a body of evidence on widely used synthetic chemicals and their link to health problems like obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease, fertility, neurodevelopmental disorders and more. Phthalates, PFAS, or forever chemicals, flame retardants, bisphenols, formaldehyde - these are some of the culprits, but Tom Burke, a former EPA official now at Johns Hopkins, says thousands more are in use with little to no data on health effects.
TOM BURKE: There are huge gaps in the way that we regulate or protect people from these harms.
STONE: Burke agrees much more should be done to study and limit these chemicals. But when he looks at what's happened under the Trump administration so far...
BURKE: It's an enormous contradiction in actions.
STONE: Take the dramatic cuts to federal agencies, including nearly the entire division at the CDC that investigated environmental hazards like heavy metals, air pollution and carcinogens, or another agency in the CDC that responds to toxic substances in the workplace. At the EPA, the priority is deregulation, and the agency has already delayed the timeline on implementing a national standard for PFAS in drinking water. Then there are the cuts to research grants doled out by the NIH and the EPA. Rebecca Fry chairs the environmental science department at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. All of her faculty who had EPA grants have lost their funding.
REBECCA FRY: Their focus is exactly what's in the MAHA - right? - understanding how chemicals are associated with human health and disease, promoting the health of children.
STONE: One scientist at Wayne State, who was even cited in the recent MAHA report, had his grant cut on the health impact of chemical mixtures. Environmental health scientist Ami Zota had all four of her NIH grants canceled - work on PFAS and consumer product chemicals. And she points out training grants for scientists are being slashed at Columbia University where she works and at universities all over the country.
AMI ZOTA: It's just so devastating 'cause you talk about how to kill a field if you really attack the up-and-coming generation.
STONE: In response to NPR's questions, HHS reiterated its commitment to MAHA goals and pointed to a new review program to reassess previously approved chemicals in food and food-contact material and expand safety assessments to study endocrine and neurobehavioral effects. And Kennedy has said that work on chemicals in the environment will be folded into a new agency, the Administration for a Healthy America. Dr. Leonardo Trasande directs the NYU Langone's Center for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards. He says the proposals outlined by Kennedy will take a lot of investment.
LEONARDO TRASANDE: It would make America proud. It would do what many of us have been asking for for a long time.
STONE: And he credits the administration for setting these ambitious goals.
TRASANDE: I'm not trying to put rose-colored glasses on. I just think we have to call it fairly.
STONE: Still, it's a disorienting moment for the field. Linda Birnbaum was also in the audience during Kennedy's recent keynote speech on toxic chemicals and plastics.
LINDA BIRNBAUM: Yeah, I would say 80- to 90% of that was really good.
STONE: Birnbaum is the retired director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and she's well acquainted with Kennedy's history. Years ago at NIH, she says she was in a meeting with him where he was discussing the debunked link between vaccines and autism.
BIRNBAUM: Where he was not interested in what the science said or what the facts said.
STONE: And she sees the widespread damage to her field, but...
BIRNBAUM: Some people refuse to do anything with him. And I'm - as a pragmatist, if I can help salvage something from this mess, that's what I want to do.
STONE: After all, this has brought more public attention to the health concerns about our cumulative exposure to toxic chemicals. At the same time, Tracey Woodruff, who directs the UCSF program on reproductive health and the environment, says Kennedy is clearly a complicated messenger for this research.
TRACEY WOODRUFF: What I'm worried about is that if we don't speak up and talk about the things that he's saying that are real scientific concerns the government should be addressing, that it will delegitimize all our work.
STONE: The question Woodruff and many have is, who even carries out this proposed MAHA agenda when federal agencies are cut and scientists have lost their funding?
Will Stone, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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