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The Make America Healthy Again movement aims to warn against the harmful effects of chemicals and toxins in our water, food and environment. But within the coalition, there's a growing sense the Trump administration is not living up to its promises. NPR's Will Stone reports.
WILL STONE, BYLINE: Kelly Ryerson remembers how she felt right after the election. Ryerson has spent many years advocating against the use of pesticides like glyphosate, and she'd come to know Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as an ally who was helping lead this fight in the courts.
KELLY RYERSON: President Trump - he stood on a stage and was talking about pesticides. He's shaking Bobby Kennedy's hand. We're feeling so excited.
STONE: But in the past year, that sense of optimism has started to sour.
RYERSON: What happened is once things fell into place, all the special interests poured in.
STONE: Ryerson doesn't blame Health Secretary Kennedy. She says it's elsewhere in the administration, namely the Environmental Protection Agency, where she sees troubling decisions on pesticides and chemicals. Last month, Ryerson and other influential voices in the MAHA movement cataloged their concerns to the head of the EPA, Lee Zeldin. The letter states there's a profound contradiction that as the administration claims to prioritize health, it's approving, expanding and normalizing chemical exposures.
RYERSON: It has been just very, very distressing because where we started versus where we are right now is definitely the opposite direction of where I would've thought we were going.
STONE: The list of grievances with the EPA is long and includes the agency moving to roll back drinking water standards for PFAS, or forever chemicals, and weakening protections against air pollutants like mercury, arsenic, ethylene oxide and more. It's OK'd pesticides and insecticides with known health risks and on the carcinogen formaldehyde proposed there's a safe level of exposure for humans. Alexandra Munoz, who has a Ph.D. in toxicology, advocates alongside many in the MAHA coalition on issues like pesticides.
ALEXANDRA MUNOZ: Everything that the EPA has done does not align with MAHA, and it does not align with a regulatory approach that's needed to stop harmful chemical exposures now.
STONE: From the outset, Zeldin has pursued a deregulatory agenda with zeal, even inviting companies to email his agency so they can be exempted from air pollution standards. Meanwhile, Munoz points out those in charge of the EPA office that regulates pesticides and industrial chemicals have worked for these very industries.
MUNOZ: There is this constant effort to lie to everybody and say that what they're doing is MAHA and say that they care about people's health.
STONE: Increasingly, what Munoz notices are PR stunts meant to appease advocates like her. For example, she points to the splash made by Zeldin and Kennedy early this month.
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LEE ZELDIN: I'm pleased to announce a landmark set of actions by EPA to safeguard the nation's drinking water.
STONE: The news - EPA was adding microplastics and pharmaceuticals to a list of contaminants in drinking water. Chris Frey is a professor of environmental engineering at North Carolina State University who worked at the EPA during the Biden administration.
CHRIS FREY: While that to the public probably sounds like, oh, EPA is doing something that will protect public health, that's kind of like the waiting room where contaminants go to be ignored.
STONE: Frey says, in reality, there are hundreds of contaminants on that list which have never seen any regulatory action. What's more, the EPA has dismantled the key office responsible for independent research on toxic chemicals and lost hundreds and hundreds of scientists.
FREY: The agency has basically cut itself down at the knees.
STONE: In a statement, the EPA told NPR it's committed to transparency and rigorous gold-standard science and that it values open communication with the public and MAHA community and takes these concerns seriously. Sarah Vogel is with the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the groups fighting the administration in court over many of these decisions on pollution and chemicals.
SARAH VOGEL: What I see is an administration scrambling to try to give this grassroots base a bone. And I don't think they're buying it 'cause they're actually following these issues.
STONE: In particular, pesticides. The president infuriated MAHA supporters with an executive order to expand production of the widely used weed killer glyphosate. And later this month, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case involving Bayer that could shield the pesticide maker from lawsuits related to claims that glyphosate causes cancer. The Trump administration has asked the court to side with the pesticide maker.
Will Stone, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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