Chemical Lobbyists are Asking for a License to Pollute, Here’s How We Protect Kids Instead

From Michigan to North Carolina, officials warn families that the water is contaminated with PFAS, forever chemicals that science has tied to serious health problems. Headlines report pesticide residues on produce and baby food recalls after lead turns up. Shampoo, cookware, and toys have been found to contain chemicals linked to cancer, developmental delays, and reproductive health problems. And across the country, communities receive alerts that the air is unhealthy for children in weather reports or hear breaking news of a chemical incident or potential disaster unfolding.

These are not rare events. They reflect a troubling pattern where government inaction, longstanding injustice, and corporate lobbying lead to weak chemical protections, allowing the water we drink, the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the products we use to harm children’s health.

While every family wants their child to grow up healthy and safe, the current administration is moving in the opposite direction from what we need. Instead of protecting children, the administration is giving licenses to pollute to chemical companies and coal-fired power plants, pledging to gut health protections for drinking water and clean air, shutting down health research labs, and dismantling programs designed to assess chemical risks.

The Trump White House is also assuring corporate and farm lobbies that it will not actually restrict pesticide use or make meaningful changes to food policy. In fact, its actions so far, like a Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission report that researchers found to be riddled with citation errors and nonexistent studies, suggests it is playing a political shell game of misinformation at best, and dangerously false promises at worst, where the administration refers to health threats, but ignores key solutions that would truly protect children’s health.

This is worse than neglect; it is preying on families’ fears to engage in a calculated weakening of health protections, ignoring the laws and science that can keep pesticides, PFAS, lead, mercury, and many other toxic chemicals away from our food, water, and daily products. It’s putting children directly in harm’s way.

The clock is ticking to deliver on the promise of clean air, safe water, and a healthy environment for all children. That urgency is compounded by a simple truth: children are not little adults. Their developing bodies and growing minds leave them far more vulnerable to toxic exposure and far more likely to suffer when protections fall short.

The good news is that we already know some solutions that can create a healthy environment, right from the start and throughout our lives. Earthjustice and our partners have been working for decades on making these solutions the law of the land. And while there have been wins as well as setbacks, what we need now is not empty words from this administration to make the country healthy, but action to:

• Protect children’s developing brains from pesticides like chlorpyrifos and other organophosphates with immediate phase outs.
• Ensure all children can breathe freely on playgrounds, at school, and at home with strong national clean air standards and pollution limits on coal-fired power plants, petrochemical companies, trucks, refineries, and more.
• Establish health safeguards that fully protect children from lead and PFAS in drinking water.
• Prevent fires, explosions, and chemical leaks at facilities that threaten school and community safety with robust chemical disaster prevention measures.
• Prohibit phthalates from food and other products, and defend existing protections against chemicals known to harm children’s health.

Protecting children’s health must be the true north star for every administration, not a political talking point to weaken safeguards. Join us, as we reject delays that leave PFAS in drinking water, fight carve-outs that let corporations keep pumping mercury and cancer-causing chemicals like arsenic into our air, and as we work to stop the sale of products laced with lead, phthalates, and pesticides. Our children’s health, and the nation’s future, depend on acting now.