MAGA's scariest environmental proposal
Paul Cotter, left, on the job as a firefighter in Worcester, Massachusetts. He’s one of thousands of firefighters diagnosed with cancer following a career-long exposure to toxic PFAS chemicals in his gear. Image courtesy of Diane Cotter.
The blueprint for Trump’s second term envisions deregulating ubiquitous and carcinogenic “forever” chemicals.
Diane Cotter is a proud “firewife”: the wife and mother of firefighters. On a phone call last week, she told me she’s “very much afraid” for her family and firefighting community, because of a little-known environmental proposal in Project 2025.
In the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page blueprint for Donald Trump’s second term, there’s a brief proposal to potentially deregulate a class of toxic chemicals called PFAS, found in firefighting foam and gear and linked to high rates of cancer among firefighters nationwide. Written by former members of Trump’s administration, it says the Environmental Protection Agency should “revisit the designation of PFAS chemicals as ‘hazardous substances’.”
The PFAS section does not specifically say how it will revise the EPA’s protections against the chemicals. But further in the document, Trump’s former EPA chief of staff reveals a vision to eliminate toxic chemical regulation of all kinds, to save “billions in economic costs” for the chemical industry.
It’s “just absolute bullshit,” Diane said of the proposal, and told me about the hell she believes PFAS has put her family and community through. Her husband Paul Cotter was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2014, shortly after making lieutenant after 28 years at his firehouse in Worcester, Massachusetts.
“In Worcester alone, Paul's got a list of 50 of the guys that he's worked with and they have cancer,” said Diane, whose experience led her to become one of the most prominent PFAS activists in the country. “It just destroyed us …. All you think of is a death sentence.”
Paul survived his cancer, but complications from his life-saving surgery ended his career for good. He soon slipped into a depression so deep he couldn’t speak, Diane recalled. “I just couldn't recognize my husband anymore,” she said.
Diane links Paul’s cancer to PFOA—one of the most common types of PFAS chemicals and a known carcinogen—because of its ubiquitous presence in protective “turnout” gear. One night, she pulled out Paul’s 10-year old suit, and found small pieces of fabric missing from the crotch area. “The skin is so much more absorbent when a firefighter is sweating,” she recalled. “It took a nanosecond for me to click in and think, did Paul's gear degrade in the groin and that went right into his reproductive organs?” Diane sent samples to a physics professor at the University of Notre Dame; he found so much PFAS that he described the samples as “off the scale in parts per million of fluorine.”
Doctors were never able to confirm precisely what caused Paul’s cancer. But multiple peer-reviewed studies have linked PFAS and other chemical exposure to increased cancer risk among firefighters. And research has also confirmed that firefighting gear releases more PFAS the longer it’s worn.
If PFAS chemicals are deregulated as Project 2025 envisions, firefighters won’t be the only ones at risk. Because of the pervasive nature of these toxic chemicals in household goods, food, and drinking water around the country, advocates and academics tell me that this is among the most harmful environmental proposals of Project 2025.
“It just is really shocking,” said Scott Faber, vice president of government affairs at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, which tracks PFAS contamination across the country. “It’s hard to imagine a more irresponsible act.”
“Doing the bidding of polluters”
PFAS—the abbreviation for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances—are a large, complex group of synthetic chemicals found in everything from nonstick pans to stain-resistant carpets, cosmetics, microwavable popcorn, and firefighting foam. They’re commonly known as “forever” chemicals because the vast majority don’t break down: Once they’re released, they remain in the environment and human body forever.
The vast majority of PFAS forever chemicals—which include more than 12,000 chemical compounds—remain unregulated, untracked, and poorly understood. But one thing health experts do know is that exposure to even very small amounts of common PFAS chemicals are incredibly harmful, leading to cancer, reproductive issues, birth defects, immune system disorders, thyroid and other diseases.
That’s why this year, the Biden administration began regulating PFAS in the nation’s drinking water supply—the first time in more than 30 years that the Environmental Protection Agency has made a new rule for drinking water. The testing has so far revealed that more than 1,000 drinking water systems have PFAS levels above the safe limits set by the EPA, affecting more than 100 million Americans. Among them are thousands of civilian and military firefighters and their families, who are the most likely to be exposed to high levels via firefighting foam and their protective suits, called turnout gear.
A screenshot of the Environmental Working Group’s map of PFAS contamination across the country. The blue dots are places where PFAS in the drinking water are above the EPA’s safe limit, the purple dots are polluted military sites, and orange dots represent other sites. Source: EWG
The chemical industry, however, finds these regulations costly and burdensome—which is one reason why Project 2025 proposes to revisit them. Along with revisiting the designation of PFAS as hazardous, the document proposes to “revise groundwater cleanup regulations and policies to reflect the challenges of omnipresent contaminants like PFAS.” This would save “billions in economic costs,” the document says.
Mandy Gunesakara, Trump’s former EPA chief of staff, also argues that the current safe limit of PFAS set by the EPA is not based in sound science. Currently, the EPA’s recommended safe levels for six PFAS compounds range from 4 parts per trillion to 10 parts per trillion—though some scientific studies recommend a lower limit of only 1 part per trillion.