Opinion

March 21, 2025

An open letter from EPA staff to the American public

“We cannot stand by and allow this to happen. We need to hold this administration accountable.”

Editor’s note: This op-ed was written by a group of current and former employees of the US Environmental Protection Agency, who have asked to remain anonymous due to concerns about retaliation. It was originally published by Environmental Health News and is republished with permission.

The Trump administration is making accusations of fraud, waste, and abuse associated with federal environmental justice programs under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) as justification for firing federal workers and defunding critical environmental programs. But the real waste, fraud, and abuse would be to strip away these funds from the American people.

As current and former employees at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who developed and implemented the agency’s environmental justice funding and grant programs, we want to offer our first-hand insights about the efficiency and importance of this work. This is not about defending our paychecks. This is about protecting the health of our communities.

IRA funding is often described as a “once-in-a-generation investment,” putting billions of dollars toward improving the lives of American families in red, blue, and purple states. Working with communities, we’ve been placing these resources directly into their hands, supporting people to better protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land where we live, learn, work, play, and grow — including key protections from natural disasters.

As civil servants, we took an oath to protect and invest in the American public. We are committed to providing effective programs and being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars, and there are many policies in place to ensure our accountability. But despite our careful planning and oversight, the new administration is halting programs Americans depend on for their health and wellbeing.

We should work together to demand that the Trump administration restore this critical funding back to the people.

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March 11, 2025

The growing cancer crisis in young adults and a call to action

By Dr. Raphael Cuomo

Over the past several decades, cancer has been predominantly viewed as a disease of aging. Conventional wisdom suggests that the longer we live, the more opportunities our cells have to accumulate genetic mutations that can eventually lead to malignancies. Yet, this paradigm is being upended by a disturbing trend: Cancer is increasingly striking younger adults.

Recent data show that rates of early-onset cancers—those diagnosed in individuals under 50—are rising across multiple cancer types, with colorectal, breast, pancreatic, and esophageal cancers showing some of the most dramatic increases. This shift is prompting urgent questions about what could be fueling the trend. While genetics plays a role, the rapid nature of this rise suggests that environmental and lifestyle factors, including changes in diet and the gut microbiome, may be contributing in ways we are only beginning to understand.

Historically, colorectal cancer was considered a disease of older adults, and screening guidelines reflected this assumption. However, in 2021, the US Preventive Services Task Force lowered the recommended age for colorectal cancer screening from 50 to 45 in response to mounting evidence of rising incidence in younger populations. Similar concerns are emerging for other malignancies, including breast and pancreatic cancer, which are also appearing at increasing rates in adults under 50.

While some researchers have suggested that improvements in early detection may be responsible for part of the increase, this explanation does not fully account for the trend. The data reveal a true rise in incidence, not merely better detection. Moreover, these cancers are often more aggressive when they appear in younger adults, leading to worse prognoses. This makes understanding the underlying risk factors an urgent priority.

March 4, 2025

Postcard from California: Chemical warning labels are everywhere – and they’re working

By Bill Walker

A driver entering an enclosed parking garage in California is greeted by a 20-by-20-inch sign declaring in 72-point type:

WARNING: Breathing the air in this parking garage can expose you to chemicals including carbon monoxide and gasoline or diesel engine exhaust, which are known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.

The signs are known as Prop. 65 warnings, after the ballot proposition number of the state Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, which in 1986 was approved by almost two-thirds of California voters.

The law established a registry that is regularly updated with substances that include hazardous chemicals found in common household products, electronics, pesticides, food, drugs, dyes, additives, construction materials and automobiles. All must carry warning labels if they contain threshold levels of a listed chemical. The law also prohibits the discharge of listed chemicals into sources of drinking water.

In the most recent update, the Prop. 65 registry, which is maintained by scientists at the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), has grown to 874 chemicals and compounds. Chemicals are added only after exhaustive reviews by independent expert panels of studies from authoritative national and international public health agencies.

February 10, 2025

Fluoride in drinking water – what the public needs to know

By Tom Theimer

After decades of debate, there no longer is any doubt that the widespread US practice of adding fluoride to drinking water is posing risks to our health.

The evidence that makes this clear has accumulated over many years, with much of it laid out in court files after a group of non-profits and individuals sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to end water fluoridation, alleging that fluoride’s neurotoxicity posed an unreasonable risk to human health.

The litigation led last year to a federal court ruling that fluoridated water is not safe. US District Judge Edward Chen stated in his September 24 decision that it was “proven” that “water fluoridation at the level of 0.7 mg/L” “presents an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment”.

Obama-appointed Judge Chen grilled both trial counsels without bias, and drilled down on the scientific nuances concerning fluoride’s neurotoxicity in coming to his conclusion. His 80-page ruling will be one for the history books of environmental law.

Judge Chen wrote in his ruling: “In all, there is substantial and scientifically credible evidence establishing that fluoride poses a risk to human health; it is associated with a reduction in the IQ of children and is hazardous at dosages that are far too close to fluoride levels in the drinking water of the United States.”

“One thing the EPA cannot do…in the face of this Court’s finding, is to ignore that risk,” the judge wrote.

February 6, 2025

Postcard from California: The long-term public health toll of the LA fires

By Bill Walker

The horrific fires that incinerated more than 40,000 acres in Southern California last month were still burning when newly-inaugurated President Trump flew in to view the devastation. At a Jan. 24 press briefing with local officials, he groused that he had heard people who lost their homes would not be allowed to rebuild for up to 18 months.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass pointed out that, first, burned lots had to be cleared of hazardous waste. “The most important thing is for people to be safe,” she said.

“What’s hazardous waste?” Trump retorted. “You’re going to have to define that. Are we going to go through a whole series of questions on determining what’s hazardous waste? I just think you have to allow people to go on their site and start the [cleanup] process tonight.”

Despite what Trump may think, federal regulators have established clear definitions of hazardous waste. When the Palisades and Eaton fires consumed more than 16,000 homes and other structures in the Los Angeles area, they left behind over 4.25 million tons of it. While the fires have been contained, exposure to dangerous toxins in that lingering waste and in the smoke that choked the region for more than three weeks will, over time, claim many more victims than the 29 lives lost in the flames.

Heat, drought and the Santa Ana winds were the fires’ direct causes, but scientists say conditions were made worse by climate change. Park Williams, a hydroclimatologist at the University of California at Los Angeles, told NPR: “These fires are very likely more intense and dangerous … because of global warming.”

US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) workers in hazmat gear are racing against a Trump-ordered Feb. 25 deadline to inspect each burn site and perform an initial cleanup. “We have to move five times the speed based on the directives we are getting,” an EPA official told Reuters. “Normally, this takes months.”

January 7, 2025

Postcard from California: State and feds head for showdown over electric cars

Of California’s dozens of landmark laws to curb climate-heating greenhouse gases and health-threatening air pollution, none is more ambitious than the rule that by 2035 all new passenger cars and trucks sold must be zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) that run on electricity.

Contrary to the inflammatory rhetoric of its critics, the ZEV rule is not a total ban on gasoline or diesel vehicles. In 2035 and beyond, Californians could still drive their existing gasoline cars or buy used ones.

But by electrifying the state’s fleet over time, the rule would steadily reduce tailpipe emissions, which are by far the largest source of greenhouse gases in California. It would also slash emissions of smog-forming air contaminants, averting thousands of heart attacks and strokes and hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks.

The Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California at Davis calls the ZEV rule “one of the most daring and controversial air quality policies ever adopted.” Eleven other states have signed on, extending its reach to 40% of the US population.

California lawmakers adopted the current version of the ZEV rule in 2022. But to implement it, the state needed a waiver from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), allowing California to set stricter emissions standards than federal rules.

In one of the last major acts of the Biden administration, the EPA granted the waiver Dec. 18. It was a huge milestone in California’s clean-energy transition – but it also set up a high-stakes showdown between the state and the incoming Trump administration.

December 2, 2024

Postcard from California: Two refineries to close but fenceline communities still besieged by pollution

By Bill Walker

Next year, people in Wilmington and Carson, Calif., neighboring communities in south Los Angeles County, will breathe a bit easier thanks to a decision by Phillips 66 to shut down its gasoline refineries in those communities by the end of 2025.

For more than 100 years, the twin refineries – five miles apart and connected by a pipeline – have emitted air pollutants that increase cancer risk, trigger asthma and other respiratory illnesses, form toxic smog, and lead to heart attacks and strokes. They emit millions of tons each year of climate-heating greenhouse gases, which also contribute to respiratory problems.

California is not usually thought of as an oil state, but it ranks third in the US in crude oil refining capacity. Hundreds of thousands of Californians are exposed daily to pollution from gasoline refineries. Most are people of color who live in lower-income industrial suburbs where refineries are clustered, but too often are kept in the dark about what happens inside the refinery gates.

As the state moves toward its legally mandated goal of virtually eliminating fossil fuel use in 20 years, and electric car sales continue to rise, more refineries are likely to close. Meanwhile, fenceline communities continue to pay the price for our dependence on gasoline.

Wilmington, with 53,000 residents, is part of Los Angeles. Carson, population 91,000, is its own city. About 90% of Wilmington residents are Latino, about 60% of Carson residents are Latino or Black, and both are state-designated disadvantaged communities.

November 4, 2024

Postcard from California: Climate change is fueling faster-spreading, more extreme wildfires

By Bill Walker

This summer, the Park Fire burned more than 425,000 acres near Chico, Calif. – the fourth-largest wildfire in the state’s history. It started when an arsonist pushed a flaming car into a grassy, brush-strewn gully, sparking California’s largest-ever deliberately set wildfire. But what set the Park Fire apart from the 7,194 wildfires that have burned more than 1 million acres in California this year was how fast it grew.

After first igniting on July 24, it spread an estimated 5,000 acres an hour – about one football field a second. In 24 hours it burned 150,000 acres, and in 72 hours incinerated an area larger than San Francisco. Fire experts said it was among the fastest-growing wildfires in history.

As it burned, Zeke Lunder, director of Deer Creek Resources, a wildfire management consulting firm in Chico, told The Washington Post that in 25 years of mapping large fires throughout the Western US, he couldn’t recall another blaze that spread so far so fast. He said the Park Fire “was moving in ways we aren’t used to seeing.”

It’s settled science that the climate crisis is increasing the number and frequency of wildfires. A 2016 study estimated that from 1984 to 2015, human-caused climate change contributed to the burning of almost twice the acreage in 11 Western states than might have burned in its absence.

Now, new research confirms that Western wildfires are also spreading faster.

In a study published Oct. 24 in the journal Science, a team of researchers analyzed images from NASA satellites to track the day-by-day spread of more than 60,000 fires in the continental US from 2001 to 2020.

They found that in that period, the average peak daily growth rate of wildfires in the West more than doubled. In California, wildfires spread almost four times as fast in 2020 as in 2001. They cited other research predicting that if global warming continues at its current pace, the frequency of the fastest-spreading fires in the West could double in 30 years.

“The modern era of megafires is often defined based on wildfire size, but it should be defined based on how fast fires grow,” the researchers wrote. “Speed fundamentally dictates the deadly and destructive impact of megafires… [F]ire speed matters more for infrastructure risk and evacuation planning.”

October 6, 2024

Opinion: Revealing the toxic lobbying power of Bayer

By Hans van Scharen

Big fossil-fuel companies like Shell, Exxon, BP or Total are not your trusted source to go to for solid advice on how to urgently prevent the climate from changing ever faster. But for halting the spread of cancer and all kinds of degenerative diseases, helping farmers out of their collective socioeconomic nightmares, combating hunger or how to avoid a further collapse of biodiversity, policymakers find it completely normal to engage with powerful agrochemical companies like Bayer and BASF.

Yet these companies produce many chemical products that are bad for our health, for the environment and increasingly for democracy itself, as shown by Corporate Europe Observatory’s new report Bayer’s Toxic Trails.

Whether it’s over glyphosate, GMOs, or global warming, we show how it attempts to capture public policy to pursue its private interests.

Bayer tries to legitimize this expensive lobby by being more or less transparent about it and calling it “political advocacy“. In fact, it is thanks to it’s deep pockets and economic clout capable of changing laws and regulations which should serve the general interest. Bayer simply wants to maintain monopolistic control of the seed and pesticides markets, fights off regulatory challenges to its toxic products, tries to limit legal liability, and exercises political influence.

First there is the element of global market power and ever increasing concentration, making them an essential part of a small club of global Food Barons. Just four of these multinationals – Bayer, BASF, Corteva and Syngenta – control over 65% of global trade in pesticides and at least half of the world’s seed trade. That represents a multi billion euro market, co-control over the world’s production of food, and very much related, loads of deep political influence on agricultural and environmental policies.

Just for the record: the successful lobby campaign to take down the Farm2Fork Strategy, a crucial part of the EU Green Deal, was the work of these companies, their consultancies and trade associations like Croplife (with a little help from their political friends, of course).

Bayer and allies were also spearheading the campaign to prolong the EU authorization for glyphosate with another 10 years, despite a wealth of scientific indications that show the product is a disaster for health, biodiversity, soil and water.

October 1, 2024

Postcard from California: State sues ExxonMobil for plastics recycling fraud

By Bill Walker

Last year, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a monumental lawsuit against five of the world’s largest petrochemical companies for an alleged “decades-long campaign of deception” about fossil fuels’ harm to the climate and the climate crisis’ devastating impacts on the state. The complaint built on similar fraud and liability suits against Big Oil by US cities, counties and states, and “rolled them all into a super-case” backed by the legal resources of the world’s fifth-largest economy.

Now Bonta has filed another sweeping lawsuit against ExxonMobil, also named in last year’s suit, alleging that for more than 50 years it has deceived the public by fraudulently promoting recycling as the solution to the ever-growing global plastic waste crisis.

Plastics are made from polymers – synthetic chemical substances derived from oil and gas – and ExxonMobil is the world’s largest producer of polymers used to manufacture single-use plastics. The suit claims that ExxonMobil’s advertising, marketing and lobbying campaigns have peddled the false promise of plastics recycling, even while knowing recycling “will never be able to process more than a tiny fraction of the plastic waste it produces.”

Americans discarded more than 50 million tons of plastic waste in 2021, but despite the deceptive chasing-arrows symbol on most plastic items, only about 5% was recycled into new plastic goods. The vast majority of plastic waste is dumped in landfills, eventually fouling oceans and rivers, littering the landscape, endangering wildlife and building up in our bodies. Curbing the crisis will require slashing plastic production, but the plastics industry keeps making more. Worldwide production is projected to reach 590 million metric tons by 2050, an increase of 30%.

“For decades, ExxonMobil has been deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the plastic waste and pollution crisis when they clearly knew this wasn’t possible,” Bonta said in a news release. “ExxonMobil lied to further its record-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health. Today’s lawsuit shows the fullest picture to date of ExxonMobil’s decades-long deception.”