This is evidenced by the long-awaited report of the Environmental Protection Agency Formaldehyde poses an unreasonable risk to human health. But a report released Thursday downplayed the threat the chemical poses to people who live near industrial plants that spew large amounts of the carcinogen into the air.
The health risk assessment was released weeks after a ProPublica investigation found that formaldehyde, one of the most widely used chemicals in commerce, causes more cancers than any other chemical in the air and causes asthma, miscarriages and fertility problems.
Ours analysis of EPA’s own data showed that in every census block in the US, the risk of cancer from lifetime exposure to formaldehyde in outdoor air is higher than the target set by the Air Pollutant Agency. The the risk is even greater indoorswhere formaldehyde leaches from furniture and other products long after they enter our homes.
In its report, the EPA evaluated 63 situations in which consumers and workers are exposed to formaldehyde and found that 58 of them pose an unreasonable health risk from the chemical — a designation that requires the agency to mitigate it. Among the products that can release dangerous levels of formaldehyde in these scenarios, according to the report, are car care products such as car wax, as well as craft supplies, inks and toners, photographic supplies and fabrics, building materials, textiles and products. from the skin.
While a memo accompanying the EPA report said workers are most exposed to the chemical, the agency’s risk assessment adopted weaker standards for protecting workers from formaldehyde than had been proposed in the previous draft. The move was condemned by some environmentalists, including one who said it would affect hundreds of thousands of people whose jobs require them to come into contact with the chemical.
By law, EPA must now begin the next phase of regulation: development of restrictions to mitigate identified risks. But even before the agency released the report, House Republicans called on the administration to rescind it. And a a chemical industry group immediately attacked the report as wrong, accusing the EPA of “engaging in unaccountable actions that threaten the U.S. economy and key sectors that support health, safety, and national security.”
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One of the EPA’s first tests under a second Trump administration will be how — and whether — to curb formaldehyde risks. The relatively inexpensive chemical is ubiquitous, used for everything from preserving bodies to making plastics and semiconductors. During the election campaign, President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly said that he supported clean air. But he has also promised to roll back regulations he sees as anti-business — and the industry has rallied around formaldehyde for decades.
When Trump first took office in 2017, the agency was preparing to release a report on the chemical’s toxicity. But one of his EPA appointees, who rose to a top position in the agency’s Office of Research and Development, was a chemical engineer who worked to fight off formaldehyde regulation as an employee of Koch Industries, whose subsidiary produced formaldehyde and many products that release it. The report was not released until August 2024, long after the Trump appointee had left the agency.
About 320 million people live in areas of the U.S. where the lifetime risk of developing cancer from outdoor exposure to formaldehyde is 10 times higher than the agency’s ideal, according to a 2020 analysis of EPA AirToxScreen data by ProPublica. ProPublica has released a search tool that allows anyone in the country to understand the risk of formaldehyde outdoors.
However, the EPA decided in its final assessment that these health risks are not unreasonable, echoing a draft the agency released in March. At the time, to determine whether formaldehyde posed an unreasonable risk of harm, the EPA compared outdoor levels to the highest concentrations measured by monitors over a six-year period. A ProPublica investigation found that the measurement used as a baseline in the draft report was a fluke and did not meet the quality control standards of the local air monitoring agency that recorded it.
That clarification was not included in the final version released this week. Instead, he offered several new arguments, including that some formaldehyde decomposes in the air and that levels change over people’s lifetimes, but he reached the same conclusion as the project: that outdoor formaldehyde is not the threat that needs to be eliminated is addressed.
According to Kathryn O’Brien, a senior staff attorney at Earthjustice who has closely followed the EPA’s efforts to regulate formaldehyde, the decision leaves people who live near industrial facilities — known as buffer zones — with little hope of protection.
“Despite calculating a very high risk of cancer for people living in their homes and for people living in suburban areas, the EPA completely wrote off those risks and set the stage for no regulation to address those risks,” O’Brien said. “It is deeply disappointing and very difficult to understand.”
Compared to the draft released in March, which was heavily criticized by the industry, the final version contained weaker standards to protect workers. The acceptable levels of formaldehyde workplace exposure established in the final version of the assessment were significantly higher than the levels in the previous draft report.
Maria Doa, senior director of chemical policy at the Environmental Defense Fund, expressed dismay at the decision. “It’s a less protective standard that will put workers at risk,” said Doa, a chemist who has worked at the EPA for 30 years. She noted that the report’s figures show that an estimated 450,000 workers could be vulnerable to formaldehyde exposure as a result.
The EPA did not immediately respond to questions about the definition of outdoor air or the change in the value set to protect workers.
It is not yet clear which parts of the new report will be preserved.
Last month, Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, urged the new administration to make overhauling Biden’s EPA’s work on formaldehyde a “top priority for 2025.” U letter to Lee ZeldinTrump’s pick to lead the agency, Sessions derided the report this week as “based on unscientific data used by unaccountable officials at the EPA to tie the hands of the new administration and hinder economic growth.” (For the first time reported about the letter InsideEPA.)
Sessions, who is co-chairman of the new Holding meetings on the extraordinary efficiency of the government and staunch Trump ally, recommended that the EPA’s assessments of formaldehyde be reversed and a “broad Biden policy” on the chemical be reversed.
