In 2024, the Biden administration issued a ban on the last type of asbestos still used in the United States due to its links to cancer. The Trump administration isn’t so sure that we need to protect people from such things. Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency will delay the ban on the material and reconsider the rule entirely. Because, hey, when has a little cancer ever hurt anyone?
The material at the core of this back-and-forth policymaking is chrysotile asbestos, otherwise known as “white asbestos.” While it has been on the way out for a while, it’s far from eliminated. White asbestos is still used in some roofing materials, textiles, cement and is found in brake pads and other automotive parts. It is also sometimes used to make chlorine. Its usage continues despite the fact that the material has been linked to lung cancer, ovarian cancer, laryngeal cancer, and mesothelioma, which is a cancer in the linings of the lungs, abdomen, heart, or testicles. The EPA estimates that asbestos exposure is linked to more than 40,000 deaths in the United States.
For those reasons, more than 50 countries have already banned the use of the material outright. The U.S. joined their ranks in 2024, when the Biden administration announced a ban on it last year, though even that had a very long lead time before it actually went into effect. Under the rule introduced by the EPA under Biden, the white abestos ban had a 12-year-long phase-out period, meaning it wouldn’t have truly been banned in full until 2036.
But how’s a chemicals manufacturer supposed to operate with more than a decade of heads up? It’s just too much to ask. Might as well just kill the rule entirely. The Times reported that the Trump administration is considering reworking the rule to lift the ban on the import and use of asbestos in chlorine production and the use of sheet gaskets that contain asbestos in chemical manufacturing facilities.
If you’re wondering why the Trump administration would back off on this rule that seems like a pretty obvious no-brainer, especially for the administration that claims it wants to make America healthy again, there’s a relatively simple answer available: the lobbyists run the show. Per the Times, the court filing from the EPA indicating that it is reconsidering the rule was signed by Lynn Dekleva. Before joining the administration, Dekleva was an official for the American Chemistry Council, where she lobbied to block regulations on the carcinogen formaldehyde. And before that, she spent 32 years at DuPont, a company repeatedly identified as a major producer of dangerous “forever chemicals.” Now she’s in charge of approving chemicals for use at the EPA. Good luck to the rest of us.
