2026-06-08T10:00:08.241Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/08/politics/trump-epa-chemicals-political-pressure
在美国特朗普政府领导下的环境保护署内，科学家们表示他们正面临压力，要求改变对家庭清洁剂、化妆品等消费品中常见化学品的安全审查，以便在纸面层面消除对人类健康和环境的风险。
美国环保署化学品安全与污染预防办公室的多名现任和前任职业雇员回忆称，他们被主管敦促淡化已在货架上销售产品中使用的化学品的潜在风险。
这些雇员因担心遭到报复而要求匿名。他们表示，随着唐纳德·特朗普总统打击多元化、公平性和包容性举措，科学家们还被告知不要再考虑化学品对特定种族群体可能产生的影响。
尽管美国环保署告诉CNN，他们希望采用反映真实接触情况的测试，但一些资深雇员表示，他们被敦促通过设置不切实际的测试参数，让化学品看起来是安全的。
“我们得到的指示是：‘让我们看看替代场景’，”一名雇员说。如果双手接触某化学品显示出风险，这名雇员表示，主管可能会问：“如果只浸一只手呢？如果只浸一根手指呢？”以寻找所需的最小接触量，从而将其判定为安全。
“我们正在考虑毫无依据的场景，”这名雇员说。
美国环保署的化学品安全办公室会对多种化学品开展健康风险评估，因为人们担心这些化学品可能对人类健康造成影响，比如癌症、内分泌紊乱、出生缺陷和生殖伤害。
科学家们对化学品审查流程的担忧之际，正值特朗普领导下的美国环保署放宽环境和气候法规，且其政府任命前化工行业内部人士和说客担任监督化学品监管的关键机构办公室负责人。
接受CNN采访的现任和前任雇员表示，在化学品安全审查中发现风险可能会导致监管措施出台。相反，当风险被消除后，监管的必要性也就随之消失，他们说道。
“每一项决策都会被提交到政治层面，哪怕是最细微的细节。这很反常，”最近离开该机构化学品部门的一名科学家告诉CNN。
科学家们表示，他们不再敢于提出反对意见，并指出联邦工会合同已被终止，签署异议信的雇员已被停职。
“你必须服从指令，”一名职业雇员说。“否则就是不服从命令。”
在给CNN的一份声明中，美国环保署为其科学工作进行了辩护。
“美国环保署正在落实总统关于在整个风险评估中恢复黄金标准科学的行政命令，”声明说道。
“实际上，这意味着采用符合现实的接触场景，而非默认采用复合的最坏情况假设，对每项分析中的假设和不确定性保持透明，并确保结论可测试、可重现，”该机构在发给CNN的电子邮件中说道。
该机构还补充道，其“首要任务是保护所有美国人的健康，机构做出的每一项化学品安全决策都基于黄金标准科学：经过同行评审的文献、经过验证的测试方法、真实世界的监测数据，以及符合用途的接触和归趋模型。”
但职业雇员表示，职业工作人员与特朗普政府的政治任命官员之间，在如何界定健康危害方面的分歧日益加剧。他们表示，这些任命官员希望缩小风险的定义范围。
多名消息人士称，一些资深科学家已被重新分配到行政岗位，不再负责重要的健康风险评估工作。取而代之的是缺乏机构知识、经验不足的新员工担任这些职位，科学家们感到被迫要向上级为自己使用的科学方法辩护，他们补充道。
在前几届政府中，“存在一定程度的尊重和信任，科学家们依靠的是最优秀的科学，”刚刚离开该机构的那位科学家说道。
但现在，“主题专家不得不向政治任命官员解释他们为何选择某一科学方法，他们的工作会受到审查，如果被要求换一种思考方式，当你面见最高层人员时，几乎没有办法提出反对意见。”
目前市场上的日常产品中含有数千种化学品，从未对其对人类健康或环境的影响进行过全面评估。
例如，一种正在接受审查的名为D4的硅化合物，被用于除臭剂、发胶和化妆品等产品。美国每年生产多达5亿磅这种溶剂，但欧盟已禁止使用该物质，因为研究表明它具有毒性，并与不孕症有关联。
1976年美国首部化学品安全法《有毒物质控制法》通过时，已有约6.2万种化学品在生产或上市，并被纳入豁免清单，美国环保署无需对其开展健康风险审查。
如今许多此类化学品仍出现在消费品中。
环保倡导者表示，这是因为最初的法律缺乏约束力；美国环保署几乎不可能有效审查已存在的化学品。
2016年，该法律得到修订，要求美国环保署对市场上现有的化学品进行审查，以评估其潜在的人类健康风险。
今年年初以来，在环保组织和化工行业起诉美国环保署后，该机构正面临法庭规定的最后期限，需完成某些高优先级化学品的风险评估，这促使机构加快审查进程。
美国环保署化学品安全与污染预防办公室的任务之一，就是评估和监管这些化学品。
该机构去年提出了一项有关《有毒物质控制法》的新规则，简化审查流程，倡导者表示这将削弱监管、缩短审查时间，并忽视威胁全美各地社区的真实接触情况。
三名消息人士称，如今评估过程的多个环节都施加了压力。他们描述了一种模式：在科学家审查过程的早期阶段，一旦出现化学品潜在健康风险的迹象，主管就会迅速召集内部会议，迫使科学家在分析完成前就初步发现进行辩护。其中一些会议有被政府任命到化学品评估办公室领导岗位的政治任命官员参加。
“他们甚至不让你完成”风险分析，一名美国环保署工作人员说道。“就好像你必须立即简要汇报你发现的风险。”
“更像是在问：‘我们该如何解决这个问题？我们能做些什么来消除这个风险？’”这名工作人员说道。
第二名职业雇员也附和了这一经历：“基本上，你一计算出风险，就会召开某种会议，他们会敦促你想办法如何让风险消失。”
美国环保署雇员还告诉CNN，该机构领导层实际上忽略了某些种族群体可能因基础健康状况比例更高，或生理、遗传因素，而更容易受到特定化学品伤害的情况。
他们表示，这类分析被视为“多元化、公平性和包容性”内容，并从评估中移除，科学家们对此提出异议，称这反映了长期以来评估人群风险的科学方法。
“你不能在报告中加入任何涉及种族的内容，”一名美国环保署职业雇员说道。“这太荒谬了，因为我们知道某些种族对某些疾病有易感性。”这种易感性可能使他们对某些化学品更加敏感。
米歇尔·弗里德霍夫曾在乔·拜登总统任期内担任美国环保署化学品安全办公室助理管理员，并协助领导了2016年化学品安全法的修订谈判，她告诉CNN：“该法律明确要求评估可能接触或易感亚群体的风险——如果有指示明确忽略法律中针对部分或全部亚群体的相关条款，这可能会让民众面临更低的安全保障，并给该机构带来法律漏洞。”
当被问及有关忽视种族因素的指控时，美国环保署未置评。
消息人士称，推动这些变革的高级官员中，有几名前化工行业说客，他们负责监管和开展对现有化学品及即将上市的新化学品的安全审查工作。
一名美国环保署雇员将这些政治任命官员描述为“在审查中为行业利益偏袒”。
例如，现任首席副助理管理员南希·贝克此前曾在美国化学委员会——一个游说团体——担任高级职位。
据该消息人士透露，贝克是修订甲醛风险评估的幕后推手，甲醛是一种已知致癌物。
该消息人士称：“该化学品的人类健康风险评估在她上任前已于2024年12月定稿，而她专门重新启动了这项评估。”
评估重新启动后，特朗普领导下的美国环保署去年年底提议将甲醛的安全接触水平提高近一倍——这对化工行业来说是一大胜利。贝克的名字出现在该机构征求公众意见的通知中。
该机构尚未发布最终监管规定。
贝克未回复CNN就甲醛问题向她直接提问的电子邮件。
“南希·贝克事无巨细。她逐字逐句阅读。审视每项科学研究。因此，这里确实存在政治压力，因为她在审视一切，”刚刚离开该机构化学品部门的那位雇员补充道。
“对科学家工作的审查程度和对细节的关注程度都是前所未有的，”该人士说道。
当被问及政治干预的指控时，美国环保署未置评。
几名雇员将2月份的一次培训课程作为风险评估流程发生变化的证据。公共雇员环境责任组织获取了该课程的视频，并分享给了CNN。PEER是一个非营利组织，倡导维护公共雇员和环境问题 whistleblower 的权利。
此次培训旨在重新设定化学品安全部门的工作方式，并为特朗普政府重组后重新分配岗位的美国环保署科学家提供入门指导。
化学品的人类健康风险评估本应回答以下问题：化学品在何种情况下可能造成多大危害，以及应采取何种风险管理措施。
在培训中，工作人员被告知：“风险不是一个数字；风险评估是一个过程，是一个叙事过程”，那些接受CNN采访的人员认为这是在寻找“更多回旋余地”，并“为任何风险找借口”。
一名职业雇员告诉CNN，她觉得某些言论相当于“明确指示让你的化学品通过审查”。
“我从未见过我们试图反向推导预先确定的结果，”该人士说道。“如果说有什么不同的话，那就是他们现在正在这么做。他们想要的结果是化学品是安全的。”
在一份声明中，美国环保署驳斥了工作人员对培训内容的解读，称他们“缺乏技术背景”。
“任何暗示美国环保署正将评估导向预先确定结果的说法都是虚假的，”美国环保署说道。有关“细化”风险假设和将风险描述为“叙事过程”的说法是“标准的风险评估实践，而非背离这一实践”，美国环保署说道。
即使是批评部分风险评估改革的拜登政府时期美国环保署官员弗里德霍夫也观看了视频，并表示她认为该课程本身并未指示科学家改变结论。
但接受CNN采访的美国环保署工作人员表示，该机构文化的转变不止于这段视频。PEER的凯拉·贝内特表示，她担心这些变化意义重大，且可能不止局限于特朗普政府任期内。
“这些机构内部的文化比个人更持久，”她说。“这种文化将远比本届政府任期更长久。”
上个月，美国环保署在一份备忘录中表示，将不再依赖该机构内的独立科学项目——综合风险信息系统（IRIS），该系统长期以来一直被用于评估化学品是否为毒素。
数十年来，IRIS科学家完成的评估一直被用作化学品风险评估的基础。
在备忘录中，美国环保署表示，将允许由政治任命官员领导的各个项目办公室对化学品危害做出科学判定。
CNN看到的这份备忘录还对旧体系下完成的过往评估提出了质疑，称使用IRIS进行监管决策的EPA部门“应审查该信息的使用方式”，并“确定是否有必要进行任何更新或修改”。
一名美国环保署工作人员告诉CNN，用权衡经济和其他因素的分析取代IRIS的科学危害评估，可能会让科学更容易受到政治影响。
自特朗普就职以来，美国环保署已采取了一系列被视为有利于行业的举措。
该机构最近宣布将“撤销并重新启动”对四种全氟和多氟烷基物质（PFAS）的监管——这些化学品存在于饮用水以及常见的不粘、防污和防水产品中。
这些化学品已在不同程度上与癌症、肥胖、甲状腺疾病、高胆固醇、生育能力下降、肝损伤、激素紊乱和免疫系统损伤相关联。
到2027年2月，还有近十多种化学品待评估，未来还将有数千种。
随着美国环保署评估方式的改变，一名科学家警告称，多年后可能会出现“健康影响的爆发式增长”。
CNN的桑迪·拉莫特为本报道贡献了内容。
Exclusive: Political pressure threatens to undercut EPA science evaluating chemical safety for consumers, sources say
2026-06-08T10:00:08.241Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/08/politics/trump-epa-chemicals-political-pressure
Inside the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency, scientists say they’re under pressure to alter safety reviews of chemicals commonly found in consumer products like household cleaners and cosmetics to make risks to human health and the environment disappear on paper.
Multiple current and former career employees at the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention recounted being pushed by supervisors to downplay the potential risk of chemicals that are already used in products on shelves.
With President Donald Trump’s crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, scientists are also being told to stop considering the impact a chemical may have on specific racial groups, according to the employees, who spoke on the condition that they remain anonymous for fear of retribution.
While the EPA told CNN it wants testing that reflects real-world exposure, some veteran employees say they have been pressed to make chemicals appear safe by coming up with test parameters that aren’t realistic.
“What we’ve been told is: ‘Let’s look at alternative scenarios,’” one employee said. If putting two hands in a chemical shows risk, this person said a supervisor might ask, “What if you dip one hand? What if you dip one finger?” in search of the smallest amount of contact needed to call it safe.
“We are considering scenarios we don’t have any basis for,” the employee said.
The EPA’s chemical safety office conducts health risk assessments for a slew of chemicals because of concerns over potential impacts on human health, such as cancer, endocrine disruption, birth defects and reproductive harm.
The concerns from scientists about their chemical review process come as Trump’s EPA has rolled back environmental and climate regulations and his administration has installed former chemical industry insiders and lobbyists to lead key agency offices overseeing chemical regulation.
The current and former employees who spoke to CNN said finding risks during chemical safety reviews can lead to regulation. Conversely, when risk disappears, so does the need to regulate, they say.
“Every decision is going to the political level, down to the smallest detail. That is abnormal,” a scientist who recently left the agency’s chemical division told CNN.
Scientists say they no longer feel safe pushing back, pointing to termination of federal union contracts and the suspension of employees who signed dissent letters.
“You have to follow instructions,” one career employee said. “Otherwise, that’s insubordination.”
In a statement to CNN, the EPA defended its science.
“EPA is implementing the President’s Executive Order on Restoring Gold Standard Science across its risk evaluations,” the statement said.
“In practice, that means using realistic exposure scenarios rather than defaulting to compounded worst-case assumptions, being transparent about the assumptions and uncertainties in every analysis, and ensuring conclusions are testable and reproducible,” the agency said in an email to CNN.
The agency also added that its “top priority is protecting the health of all Americans, and every chemical safety decision the agency makes is grounded in gold-standard science: peer-reviewed literature, validated test methods, real-world monitoring data, and fit-for-purpose exposure and fate modeling.”
But career employees described a growing gap between career staff and the Trump administration’s political appointees over how health dangers should be defined. The appointees, they say, want to narrow what counts as risk.
Some senior scientists have been reassigned to administrative roles where they no longer oversee important health risk assessments, several sources said. Less experienced, newer staff who lack institutional knowledge are being put into those roles instead, and scientists are feeling forced to defend the science they’re using to superiors, they added.
In previous administrations, “there was a level of respect and trust that the scientists were relying on the best science,” the scientist who recently left the agency said.
But now, “subject-matter experts having to explain to political appointees why they chose a particular science approach, being scrutinized for what they did, and if asked to think about it differently there’s little you can do to push back if you’re meeting with the top person.”
Thousands of chemicals in everyday products currently on the market have never been fully assessed for their impact on human health or the environment.
For example, one chemical being reviewed, a silicon compound known as D4, is used in products including deodorant, hair spray and cosmetics. Up to 500 million pounds of the solvent is produced in the US every year, but it has been banned by the European Union because it has been shown to be toxic and linked to infertility.
When the nation’s first chemical safety law, the Toxic Substances Control Act, was adopted in 1976, some 62,000 chemicals were already in production or on the market and were grandfathered in with no requirement for EPA to conduct a health risk review.
Many remain in consumer products today.
Environmental advocates say that’s because the original law lacked teeth; it was nearly impossible for the EPA to effectively review already existing chemicals.
In 2016, the law was updated, requiring the EPA to review existing chemicals on the market to assess the potential human health risks.
Since early this year, the EPA has been under court-ordered deadlines to complete risk assessments for certain high-priority chemicals after environmental groups and the chemical industry sued the agency, prompting efforts to speed up the process.
The EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention is tasked, among other things, with assessing and regulating these chemicals.
The agency proposed a new rule last year with respect to the Toxic Substances Control Act that streamlines the review process, which advocates said would weaken oversight, shorten reviews and discount real-world exposures that threaten communities across the country.
Now, pressure is being applied at multiple points in the assessment process, three of the sources said. They describe a pattern of internal meetings rapidly convened by superiors at the first sign of potential health risks for a chemical in the early stages of scientists’ review process, where scientists feel forced to defend preliminary findings before the analysis is complete . Some of these meetings are attended by political appointees the administration has placed in leadership roles in the chemical assessment office.
“They don’t even let you finish” the risk analysis, one EPA staffer said. “It’s like you’ve got to brief immediately on the risk that you found.”
“It’s more like, ‘How can we fix this? What can we do to make this risk go away?’” the staffer said.
A second career employee echoed that experience: “Basically, the moment you calculate risk, there’s some sort of meeting and they push you to figure out how we can make the risk disappear .”
EPA employees also told CNN that agency leadership is effectively ignoring how certain racial groups could be more susceptible to harm from a particular chemical because of higher rates of underlying health conditions or physiological or genetic factors.
They said that type of analysis was deemed “DEI” and removed from assessments, a characterization scientists dispute, saying it reflects longstanding scientific methods for evaluating risk across populations.
“You can’t put any kind of racial comments in there,” one of the career EPA employees said. “Which is ridiculous because we know certain races have predispositions to certain diseases.” That predisposition may make them more sensitive to certain chemicals.
Michal Freedhoff, who was assistant administrator for the EPA’s chemical safety office under then-President Joe Biden and helped lead negotiations to revise the chemical safety law in 2016, told CNN: “The law explicitly requires an assessment of risk to potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulations – if there was direction to categorically ignore that part of the law for some or all subpopulations, that could leave people less safe and create legal vulnerabilities for the agency. ”
The EPA did not comment when asked about allegations of ignoring racial considerations.
Among the top officials fueling these changes, sources said, are several former chemical industry lobbyists who run the offices that regulate and conduct safety reviews of existing chemicals and new ones coming on the market.
One EPA employee described the political appointees as “putting their thumbs on the scales” for the reviews in an industry friendly direction.
For example, Nancy Beck, now the principal deputy assistant administrator, previously held senior positions at the American Chemistry Council, a lobbying group.
According to the source, Beck was the driving force behind revising a risk assessment of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen.
EPA’s human health risk assessment of the chemical “was finalized in December 2024 before she came, and she specifically reopened it,” the source said.
Once the assessment was reopened, the Trump EPA proposed late last year nearly doubling what’s considered safe exposure levels of formaldehyde – a big win for the chemical industry. Beck’s name appears in the EPA’s notice seeking public input.
The agency has yet to issue final regulations.
Beck did not respond to CNN’s email asking her directly about the formaldehyde issue.
“Nancy Beck is in the weeds. She reads every word. Looks at every science research. And so there is absolutely political pressure, because she’s in there looking at everything,” the employee who recently left the agency’s chemical division added.
“The level of scrutiny of scientists’ work and the granular details is unprecedented,” the person said.
The EPA did not comment when asked about allegations of political interference.
Several employees pointed to a February training session as evidence of changes to the risk assessment process. A video of that session was obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and shared with CNN. PEER is a nonprofit organization that advocates for the rights of public employees and whistleblowers on environmental issues.
The training was intended to be a reset for how the chemical safety division does its work, and a primer for newly reassigned EPA scientists following the Trump administration’s reorganization.
A human health risk assessment for a chemical is supposed to ask how much harm a chemical could cause, under what circumstances, and what risk management should be done.
In the training, staff were told: “Risk is not a number; risk assessment is a process. It’s a narrative,” which those who spoke to CNN believed was another attempt to find “more wiggle room,” and to “explain away any risk.”
One career employee told CNN they felt some remarks amounted “explicit instruction to make your chemical pass.”
“I’ve never seen us try to work backward to a preordained outcome,” the person said. “If anything, that’s what they’re doing now. They want the outcome to be that the chemical is safe.”
In a statement, the EPA pushed back on the staffers’ interpretation of what was said in the training, saying they lacked “technical context.”
“Any suggestion that EPA is engineering assessments toward predetermined outcomes is false,” the EPA said. The statements about “refining” risk assumptions and portraying risk as “a narrative” are“standard risk-assessment practice, not a departure from it,” the EPA said.
Even Freedhoff, the Biden EPA official who criticized some risk assessment changes, viewed the video and said she did not think the session on its face instructs scientists to alter their conclusions.
But EPA staff who spoke to CNN say the shift in the agency’s culture goes beyond the video. Kyla Bennett of PEER said she worries the changes are significant and could extend beyond the Trump administration.
“The culture within these agencies outlives the people,” she said. “That culture will far outlast this administration.”
In a memo last month, the EPA also said it would move away from relying on a standalone scientific program within the agency, Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS, that has traditionally been used to evaluate whether a chemical is a toxin.
The evaluations done by scientists within IRIS have, for decades, been used to underpin chemical risk assessments.
In its memo, the EPA says it will instead allow individual program offices, which are run by political appointees, to make scientific determinations about chemical hazard.
The memo, seen by CNN, also raises questions about past assessments completed under the old system, saying EPA departments that used IRIS as part of regulatory decision making “should review how that information was employed” and “determine if any updates or changes are warranted.”
Replacing IRIS’s scientific hazard assessments with analyses that weigh economic and other factors could make the science more vulnerable to political influence, one EPA staffer told CNN.
Since Trump took office, the EPA has made a slew of moves seen as industry friendly.
The agency recently announced it would “rescind and restart” regulations on four PFAS – chemicals found in drinking water and in common nonstick, stain-resistant and water-repellent products.
These chemicals have been linked, to varying degrees, to cancer, obesity, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, decreased fertility, liver damage, hormone disruption, and damage to the immune system.
There are nearly a dozen more chemicals to be evaluated by February 2027, and thousands more in the future.
With changes in how the EPA is carrying out assessments, one scientist warned there could be an “explosion of bad health impacts” years from now.
CNN’s Sandee LaMotte contributed to this story.
