Trump considers easing safety screenings for chemicals

The Trump administration will consider easing regulations under which it considers the safety of existing chemicals — drawing concerns from public health advocates.

The administration announced Monday that it was weighing a rewrite of the rules that govern safety screenings for these substances, which decide whether they should be restricted.

If implemented, such changes are ultimately expected to prevent further regulations on chemicals.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin described the potential changes as allowing the agency to balance safety with speed.

“Today’s announcement will allow EPA to develop a path forward to ensure a timely review of chemicals while bolstering our commitment to safeguard public health and the environment,” Zeldin said in a statement.

However, opponents of the potential moves said they could allow for fewer restrictions on toxic chemicals.

“The public is not going to be protected,” said Betsy Southerland, a former career official at the EPA.

Among the changes the EPA said it was considering is baking in an assumption that all employees who handle potentially toxic chemicals would be wearing personal protective equipment — likely raising the bar needed to deem a chemical dangerous.

The agency is also thinking about narrowing the scope of the review as it evaluates a chemical's safety — saying it will weigh whether the agency needs to look at every single use of a chemical during its review period.

Southerland said the potential impacts of such changes would be “huge.”

“It will undermine all regulation of toxic chemicals,” she said. “They're going to eliminate whole routes of exposure or … really weaken the assumptions so that the few routes of exposure you’re left with in the risk evaluation will be unrealistically low estimates of exposure.”

The possible move comes as President Trump pledges to take on chemical safety issues, having said in his recent address to Congress that he wants to “get toxins out of our environment.”

At the same time, his administration last week signaled that it could also loosen safety standards at chemical plants and has put chemical industry alumni in top roles at the EPA.

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