Chemical industry lobbyists have long pushed the government to adopt a less stringent approach to gauging the cancer risk from chemicals, one that would help ease regulations on companies that make or use them. They finally got their wish.
Last week, in a highly unusual move, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it is revising an assessment of the health dangers posed by formaldehyde, a widespread pollutant that causes far more cancer than any other chemical in the air. Working on that effort were two former chemical industry insiders, who are now top EPA officials.
The proposed revisions nearly double the amount of formaldehyde considered safe to inhale compared with the version that was finalized in the last weeks of the Biden administration. Even that older assessment significantly underestimated the dangers posed by formaldehyde, ProPublica found last year.
An EPA spokesperson described the changes to the formaldehyde assessment as corrections of past scientific mistakes. The spokesperson noted that the two former industry insiders who worked on the assessment had obtained ethics advice from the agency that approved their work on the issue. “Because formaldehyde is produced by many manufacturers and is used across many industrial sectors, this risk evaluation is not a specific party matter that raises concerns for them under the federal ethics rules,” the spokesperson wrote.
P.S. Formaldehyde can be found in common household items, from couches to clothes. Revisit our 2024 guide on how to reduce exposure in your home.
