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EPA Ripped for 'Routinely' Failing to Label Cancer-Causing Pesticides
"If the agency is going to allow such chemicals to be freely sold at Home Depot, Walmart, and farm supply stores, the very least the EPA must do is require a clear cancer warning on the label," said one critic.
Mar 30, 2026
The US Environmental Protection Agency has repeatedly failed to warn consumers of the cancer risks posed by pesticides—even when its own research has found those products to be carcinogenic, a pair of green groups said Monday.
The Center for Food Safety studied the EPA's permitted risk level in active components of both currently approved and legacy pesticides. CFS researchers found that the EPA allowed pesticides with a cancer risk "as high as 1 in every 100 people exposed, a far greater level than the EPA’s benchmark of a 1-in-a-million chance of developing cancer."
"Of the 570 unique pesticide chemicals that EPA’s Office of Pesticide program has classified for carcinogenic potential since 1985, over one-third (200, or 35%) are either possible human carcinogens (127) or likely to be carcinogenic to humans (73)," the CFS report notes. "The status of 62 others (11%) is uncertain, because EPA lacks sufficient data to make a determination.
A second report, from the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), shows that of the 200 pesticides that are possible or likely human carcinogens, 125 are still registered for use.
CBD analyzed the labels of every pesticide currently approved by the EPA and found that the agency has placed cancer warnings on just 69 of 4,919 pesticide labels (1.4%) "containing an active ingredient that the agency has designated a 'likely' human carcinogen." Additionally, the EPA has put cancer warnings on just 242 of the 22,147 pesticide labels (1.1%) that "contain an ingredient the agency has designated as a 'possible' human carcinogen."
CFS science director Bill Freeses said in a statement Monday: “It’s bad enough that the EPA approves cancer-causing pesticides. But if the agency is going to allow such chemicals to be freely sold at Home Depot, Walmart, and farm supply stores, the very least the EPA must do is require a clear cancer warning on the label. Warnings save lives by incentivizing users to wear protective equipment that reduces risk."
Lori Ann Burd, director of environmental health at the CBD, said on Monday that “it's dumbfounding that the EPA has failed to require any cancer warning on thousands of pesticide products sold to the public that the agency itself has linked to cancer."
“Why should anyone have confidence in the EPA’s ability to keep tabs on the pesticide industry and protect us all from harmful poisons when it won’t even compel companies to put long-term health warnings on pesticides it knows are really dangerous?" she added.
Last month, CFS, CBD, and others denounced the EPA's reapproval of the pesticide dicamba—which scientific studies have linked to increased risk of cancer and hypothyroidism in high-dose exposure—for certain cotton and soybean crops.
The new CFS and CBD analyses come ahead of next month's oral arguments in Monsanto Company v. John L. Durnell, a case before the US Supreme Court in which Bayer, the Germany-based pharma giant that bought Monsanto in 2018, is seeking substantial immunity from future lawsuits filed by people in the United States who used glyphosate-based products like Roundup weedkiller and were then diagnosed with rare pesticide-linked cancers. The company has paid out billions of dollars to settle such suits.
CBD and other advocacy groups have also warned that the industry-backed Farm Bill currently advancing in the Republican-controlled Congress weakens or delays pesticide safety regulation, preempts state-level cancer warning rules, and shields chemical companies from lawsuits.
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'Direct Attack on the Health of Americans': Trump EPA Greenlights More Mercury Pollution
Sierra Club said the rollback "puts the public at greater risk of heart and lung disease, cancer, and even premature death, as well as causing severe neurological damage to fetuses and children.”
Feb 20, 2026
The Trump administration on Friday finalized its rollback of clean air regulations limiting mercury and other toxic pollutants from power plants, sparking condemnation from public health and environmental advocates who warned that the move will increase the risk of death or serious illness for millions of people in the United States.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it is repealing the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which were implemented during the Biden administration in order to protect people from mercury and other toxic air pollutants—including arsenic, lead, and chromium—from fossil fuel power plants.
The Trump administration contends that rescinding MATS will lower financial costs for utilities running older coal-fired plants during a period of rapidly rising demand from consumer and data centers powering artificial intelligence systems.
“The Biden-Harris administration’s anti-coal regulations sought to regulate out of existence this vital sector of our energy economy," EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said Friday at the Mills Creek Power Plant, a coal-fired facility in Louisville, Kentucky. "The Trump EPA knows that we can grow the economy, enhance baseload power, and protect human health and the environment all at the same time."
However, the Sierra Club said Friday that "rolling back the new and more protective [MATS] will allow coal- and oil-fired power plants to emit more damaging pollution that puts the public at greater risk of heart and lung disease, cancer, and even premature death, as well as causing severe neurological damage to fetuses and children."
"According to the Sierra Club’s Trump Coal Pollution Dashboard, reversing the 2024 improvements and reverting to the 2012 standards will allow the dirtiest coal-fired power plants to emit 50% more mercury pollution," the group added. "In May 2025, the Trump administration exempted 68 power plants—including some of the biggest polluters in the nation—from MATS after soliciting exemption requests from big polluters over email."
Sierra Club Beyond Coal campaign director Laurie Williams called the MATS rollback "a direct attack on the health of Americans."
Last June, Sierra Club was a key part of a coalition of environmental and community groups that sued the Trump administration over the exemptions.
“These protections from mercury and other toxic pollution existed to protect communities from reckless polluters," Sierra Club campaign organizing strategist Bonnie Swinford said Friday. "By repealing these protections, the Trump administration is giving handouts to the coal industry elites—and waging war on the public’s ability to hold polluters accountable."
The Environmental Protect Network also decried the MATS repeal, saying it "will allow hundreds of facilities across 45 states to avoid meeting critical safety standards—jeopardizing public health, degrading ecosystems, and disproportionately harming children, pregnant people, and communities already overburdened by pollution."
"This is no way to make America healthy again."
Moms Clean Air Force co-founder and director Dominique Browning focused on the harms to children the rollback will inflict.
"The science is clear, and profoundly alarming. No amount of mercury is safe for babies’ developing brains," she said. "Mercury is a dangerous neurotoxin that damages the architecture of babies’ and children’s developing brains."
“The mercury rules were working," Browning argued. "Toxic emissions from US coal plants were dropping, and water bodies were getting cleaner. But now EPA Administrator Zeldin’s rollback... will allow coal plants to emit more toxic heavy metals like mercury, chromium, and lead—pollutants that contaminate our air, fall into our lakes and waterways, and poison our food supply."
"This is no way to make America healthy again," she added, referring to one of President Donald Trump's campaign slogans.
Julie McNamara, associate policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists' Climate and Energy Program, said in a statement Friday: “Once again, the Trump administration is abandoning science and abandoning statute to give polluters a free pass. And once again, the Trump administration is doing so at the expense of people’s health."
National Resources Defense Council senior attorney John Walke asserted that "the coal industry is in decline, and dismantling clean air protections won’t bring it back."
“It will only lead to more asthma attacks, more heart problems, and more premature deaths, especially in communities living in the shadow of coal plants," Walke added. "We have a right to breathe clean air, and we will fight for that right even if Trump’s EPA refuses to.”
The EPA’s newest decision will allow power plants to emit more brain-damaging mercury and dangerous soot pollution, putting frontline communities at especially greater risk of heart and lung disease, cancer, and premature death.
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— NRDC (@nrdc.org) February 20, 2026 at 9:09 AM
Friday's EPA announcement followed the agency's repeal earlier this month of the endangerment finding, the Obama-era rule empowering climate regulation over the past 15 years that treated six greenhouse gases caused by burning fossil fuels as a single air pollutant for regulatory purposes.
Speaking at a Friday press conference in Washington, DC organized by Moms Clean Air Force, Talia, a local fourth grade student, said that “climate disasters are becoming more common, and they’re hurting our planet, our health, and the future of kids like me."
“Adults in the government are supposed to protect kids from climate change and not ignore it," she said, adding in a message to Trump officials that "we are taught to listen to scientists and doctors and moms—why don’t you listen to them?”
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US Youth, Climate Coalition Sue to Stop Trump EPA 'From Torching Our Kids' Future'
"This shameful and dangerous action," said one expert, "is rooted in falsehoods, not facts, and is at complete odds with the public interest and the best available science."
Feb 18, 2026
Over a dozen young Americans as well as a coalition of environmental and public health groups on Wednesday filed a pair of legal challenges against President Donald Trump's administration for repealing the "endangerment finding" that enabled federal policies aimed at combating the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the long-anticipated move last week. The coalition of groups responded with a petition at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that names him and the EPA.
"The endangerment finding has been the backbone of climate policy for 17 years, protecting us from air pollution that endangers public health and welfare—including greenhouse gases that are driving climate change," explained Lawrence Hafetz, legal director at Clean Air Council, one of the groups behind the case, in a statement.
"By repealing the finding, we are sweeping the single deadliest type of pollution, climate pollution, under the rug," Hafetz continued. "Deadly floods, droughts, wildfires, and hurricanes are harming our health, our communities, and our economy. This climate chaos plan is decimating the EPA's ability to act when we need protections more than ever."
Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO at the Union of Concerned Scientists, another plaintiff, argued that "EPA's repeal of the endangerment finding and safeguards to limit vehicle emissions marks a complete dereliction of the agency's mission to protect people’s health and its legal obligation under the Clean Air Act."
"This shameful and dangerous action by the Trump administration and EPA Administrator Zeldin is rooted in falsehoods, not facts, and is at complete odds with the public interest and the best available science," she noted. "Heat-trapping emissions and global average temperatures are rising—primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels—contributing to a mounting human and economic toll across the nation."
In the lead-up to the repeal, institutions worldwide concluded that 2025 was among the hottest years on record, a group of global experts declared that "current economic models systematically underestimate climate damage," and another international team of scientists warned in a review of climate tipping points that Earth is at risk of a hothouse trajectory.
Despite such findings, Trump has waged a sweeping war on the climate since he returned to office last year, thanks in part to campaign cash from the fossil fuel industry. In addition to repealing the 2009 endangerment finding—which the administration celebrated as the "single largest deregulatory action in US history"—he has declared a "national energy emergency" and ditched a long list of organizations and treaties, including the Paris Agreement.
Friends of the Earth legal director Hallie Templeton said Wednesday that "today's lawsuit makes clear that we will not idly stand by while EPA blatantly refutes its core mission to protect the environment and public health from dangerous pollution."
Templeton and David Pettit, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, stressed that with the repeal, the Trump administration is unlawfully choosing big polluters at the expense of the public and the planet."
"We're suing to stop Trump from torching our kids' future in favor of a monster handout to oil companies," said Pettit. "Nobody but Big Oil profits from Trump trashing climate science and making cars and trucks guzzle and pollute more. Consumers will pay more to fill up, and our skies and oceans will fill up with more pollution. The EPA's rollbacks are based on political poppycock, not science or law, and the courts should see it that way."
Other organizations involved in the case include the American Public Health Association, American Lung Association, Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Public Citizen, Sierra Club, and more.
Also on Wednesday, 18 children and young adults from across the United States filed a separate petition at the same court challenging the EPA repeal. They are represented by Our Children's Trust and Public Justice, which have worked on various youth climate cases.
"My Catholic faith teaches me to care for all life and protect the most vulnerable, and it teaches that children are a gift," said lead petitioner Elena Venner. "I now struggle to imagine bringing a child into a world where the air is unsafe and the climate is increasingly unstable. The EPA's repeal of the endangerment finding violates my First Amendment right to practice my faith and my Fifth Amendment rights to life and liberty."
"I have asthma, and worsening pollution harms my health and makes it harder for me to breathe and live fully outdoors," Venner explained. "When the air is thick with the pollution of fossil fuel-burning cars and trucks and ever-increasing wildfire smoke, I feel it in my chest, and I am reminded that something as basic as breathing is no longer guaranteed. That is not the life today or the future my generation deserves."
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