PFAS pesticides approved after EPA adopts new toxicity definition

(CNN) — The US Environmental Protection Agency quietly approved the use of three new PFAS pesticides last week to kill weeds on the nation’s crops. An additional two “forever chemical” pesticides were approved in November 2025, for a total of five during the second Trump administration.

Nearly 40% of nonorganic fruits and vegetables grown in California already contain traces of PFAS pesticides, according to a March report. California is significant because the state supplies nearly half of the vegetables and more than three-quarters of the fruits and nuts eaten in the United States.

The EPA itself says perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are linked to a higher risk of cancer, obesity, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, decreased fertility, reproductive and developmental disruptions, and damage to the immune system. PFAS are known as “forever chemicals” because the carbon-fluoride bonds — one of the strongest in nature — remain in the environment for years, decades or possibly even centuries.

Despite public fears and scientific warnings about the dangers of PFAS to human health, the administration has already delayed or rolled back strict rules set by the Biden administration on levels of toxic PFAS in drinking water.

“We’re seeing the Trump administration do everything they can to continue our exposure to PFAS,” said Jared Hayes, a senior policy analyst at the Environmental Working Group, or EWG, a nonprofit focused on protecting human health and the environment.

“Unfortunately, our exposure is being increased, not decreased,” Hayes said. “We’re seeing drinking regulations changed. We’re seeing new PFAS pesticides being approved on a regular basis, much faster than the previous administration.”

During the Biden presidency, the EPA approved one new PFAS pesticide.

Conflict-of-interest concerns

The new EPA approvals angered members of the “Make America Healthy Again,” or MAHA movement, which had originally rallied behind the Trump administration’s promises to reduce toxic chemicals in food and water.

MAHA supporters have expressed outrage against the approval of industry-affiliated candidates for positions of power within the EPA and on scientific advisory committees. While the revolving door between employment at federal agencies and industry is a chronic complaint, critics say the Trump administration has taken it to new levels.

Those financial ties to industry could lead officials to favor “industry’s profits over people’s health,” Alexandra Munoz wrote in public comments opposing candidates who were later approved to serve on the EPA’s Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals. Munoz is an independent toxicologist working in collaboration with MAHA against pesticides and toxics.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin “claims he wants to protect people from PFAS but his actions indicate that he is willing to expose people to more PFAS substances by approving new PFAS pesticides and rescinding drinking water protections for PFAS — actions that reflect a disregard for gold standard science and the Americans that have been harmed by PFAS substances,” Munoz told CNN in an email.

Internal emails at EPA

In mid-November 2025, the EPA changed a page on its website that originally included a definition for PFAS chemicals endorsed by more than 150 leading PFAS researchers, the European Union and nearly half of US states.

The nuance was important: Instead of considering pesticides with any type of carbon-fluoride bond as potentially toxic, the agency declared single carbon-fluoride bond chemicals were no longer PFAS and therefore “safe.”

“EPA-approved single fluorinated compounds are not forever chemicals, they are not PFAS, and do not pose any risks of concern when used as labeled,” the page now states.

The agency’s deviation from the global scientific consensus in defining PFAS reflects the “deep level of industry capture at the agency and the willingness of political appointees to succumb to that pressure,” Munoz told CNN.

Internal EPA emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity show top officials at the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention approved the new guidance on the dangers of PFAS pesticides. The center is an advocacy nonprofit based in Tucson, Arizona, dedicated to preserving endangered species.

The EPA emails, reviewed by CNN, show the changes were coordinated by OCSPP Deputy Assistant Administrator Kyle Kunkler, the former senior director of government affairs for the American Soybean Association; Assistant Administrator Doug Troutman, former general counsel of the American Cleaning Institute; and Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator Nancy Beck, a former executive for the American Chemistry Council, among others.

EPA Administrator Zeldin, who does not have ties to the chemical industry, edited the changes and claimed in November that criticism of the administration’s first approvals of PFAS chemicals were “fake news.”

“To have the EPA administrator and his handlers directly involved in revising a single webpage is absolutely bonkers,” said Nathan Donley, the environmental health science director for the Center for Biological Diversity.

“Donald Trump’s PFAS presidency is being orchestrated by former industry lobbyists and Lee Zeldin, the one cabinet member who claims to care about PFAS pollution,” said Donley, who oversaw the Freedom of Information Act request.

CNN asked the EPA for a response to the allegations of industry bias but did not receive a reply. The American Soybean Association did not provide an answer, while the American Chemistry Council and American Cleaning Institute referred CNN to the EPA.

Redefining PFAS pesticides as safe

However, the EPA did provide the following reasons for the revised definition.

“EPA updated its public webpage on pesticides containing a fluorinated carbon for a single reason: to make a widely misunderstood subject as clear and transparent as possible. Reporters, advocacy organizations, and members of the public repeatedly conflate single-fluorinated-carbon compounds with the perfluorinated ‘forever chemicals’ most people have in mind when they say PFAS,” a spokesperson said via email.

The new guidance maintains that unlike many PFAS, the single fluorinated carbon compounds used in many pesticides are less toxic, do not accumulate in the body or the environment, and may even qualify for reduced risk status.

That’s not accurate, according to experts CNN consulted.

“Whether you dress PFAS up as a pesticide or a cookware or as firefighting foam, at their core, the chemicals the EPA are approving are PFAS. They share that common characteristic of a carbon fluorine bond and remain highly environmentally persistent and toxic in chronic dosages,” said EWG science analyst Varun Subramaniam.

“That’s because when PFAS pesticides break down, they don’t actually change their identity,” he added. “The PFAS component is not removed. It’s just transformed into different forms which are equally, if not more concerning, from a health standpoint.”

Two of the three newly approved PFAS pesticides, diflufenican and epyrifenacil, will eventually degrade into multiple smaller PFAS chemicals, including trifluoroacetic acid, or TFA, Subramaniam said. Globally, TFA concentrations in soil, drinking water and plants are “orders of magnitude higher” than those of other PFAS and are fast becoming a threat to the planet, according to a 2024 analysis.

Trifluoroacetic acid “is now the most abundant #PFAS in drinking water, the most abundant #PFAS in your blood, the most abundant #PFAS in your juice, your wine, your tea, your beer, the trees outside your window, the snow falling down in the Arctic, the groundwater wells, the soils,” environmental chemist Hans Peter Heinrich Arp wrote on LinkedIn. Arp, the lead author of the 2024 analysis, is a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.

“We are ignorant of where the biggest impacts of TFA on the global scale will be realized, but we know that when they are they are irreversible,” he added.

According to the European Chemicals Agency, which works with countries in the EU to ban dangerous chemicals, trifluoroacetic acid is a persistent “forever chemical” that is also a direct breakdown of almost all PFAS pesticides. Studies show TFA’s half-life — the time it will take for the chemical to disperse by half — is hundreds of years.

In June, the ECHA recommended classifying trifluoroacetic acid as “highly hazardous to early-life development,” because it may be linked to infertility and may “damage the unborn child.”

The new EPA website does not address the possible link between PFAS pesticides and trifluoroacetic acid. However, an EPA spokesperson told CNN breakdown products like TFA were considered at “levels people may be actually exposed to.”

“The ECHA’s committee opinion is a hazard-based recommendation — not a finalized classification — and not a conclusion that anyone is at risk of being harmed by a registered pesticide use in the United States. EPA weighs real-world exposure risks, not just intrinsic hazard, and we will keep following the evidence on TFA and other chemicals wherever it leads.”

One day after approving the three new PFAS pesticides, however, the agency proposed requiring US drinking water to be monitored for TFA under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Supreme Court ruling may apply to PFAS pesticides

The most recent EPA approval of three PFAS pesticides occurred just days after the US Supreme Court blocked a citizen lawsuit against Bayer, the maker of the herbicide glyphosate, sold for years under the brand name Roundup. The lawsuit claimed the company failed to disclose glyphosate as a potential cause of non-Hodgkins’s lymphoma.

Studies have linked heavy, chronic exposure of glyphosate to a 41% greater risk of non-Hodgkins’s lymphoma. The EPA, however, maintains the chemical is safe when used as instructed on the label.

Because the Supreme Court ruled that pesticide and herbicide manufacturers can’t be sued under state laws for “failure to warn” the public about health harms if they are already using an EPA-approved label, the ruling may limit any future lawsuits against pesticide companies, Donley said.

“It’s a national outrage that Trump’s EPA is expanding use of dangerous, cancer-linked PFAS pesticides just days after the Supreme Court limited the American people’s right to sue pesticide companies,” he said.

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