Formaldehyde Outpaces Other Harmful Air Pollutants in Triggering Cancer Cases. Notable Efforts to Reduce Associated Risks Are Lacking.
Formaldehyde Outpaces Other Harmful Air Pollutants in Triggering Cancer Cases. Notable Efforts to Reduce Associated Risks Are Lacking.
In a world filled with harmful air pollutants, there is one that causes more cancer instances than any other in the United States. This pervasive chemical exposes everyone, regardless of their location, to increased cancer risks due to ProPublica's recent analysis. Unfortunately, the greatest risk often emerges in the place where individuals feel most secure – inside their homes.
As the driving force behind numerous American industries, formaldehyde plays a pivotal role. From preserving corpses in funeral homes to binding particleboards in furniture and serving as a plastic component, this chemical is ubiquitous. The risk isn't solely for those handling it; formaldehyde also affects everyone as it contaminates the air we breathe and seeps out of products long after their entry into our homes. It's practically omnipresent.
Federal bodies have known for over four decades that formaldehyde is toxic. However, their attempts to limit the chemical have consistently been blocked by the numerous corporations that rely on it.
This year, under the Biden administration, there seems to be a step towards change. The Environmental Protection Agency is likely to make advancements later this month, potentially implementing new rules intended to restrict formaldehyde.
However, ProPublica’s investigation reveals that the EPA has underestimated the dangers of formaldehyde by bypassing its own scientists’ conclusions that the chemical increases the likelihood of myeloid leukemia, a potentially fatal blood cancer affecting 29,000 individuals annually in the U.S. This results in alarmingly lower estimates of cancer risk due to formaldehyde exposure.
The agency justified this decision, stating that the myeloid leukemia risk calculation was too unreliable. The EPA cited the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which concurred with its decision to exclude myeloid leukemia from its cancer risk analysis. However, four former government scientists specializing in statistical health impact analyses told ProPublica that the myeloid leukemia assessment was sound. One even suggested that the risk might be higher than the EPA’s estimate.
EPA scientist Jenniffer Jinot, who spent years calculating the leukemia risk, said there is always uncertainty surrounding chemical health effects estimates. But the real issue, she claimed, was cowardice.
“In the end, they didn't have the nerve,” Jinot, who retired in 2017 after 26 years with the EPA, lamented. “It was quite sad.”
The EPA has also retrenched from its own findings regarding formaldehyde's other health effects, such as childhood and adult asthma, respiratory issues, and reproductive harms, including miscarriages and fertility problems. A draft report, expected to be published this month, identifies numerous public health threats posed by formaldehyde, but questions whether most of these area significant enough to address. In response to ProPublica’s inquiries, the EPA wrote in an email that the report is not final, and it is currently revising it.
If history is any guide, even the Biden administration's limited efforts to restrict harmful chemicals are highly unlikely to materialize past a Republican presidency. The decades-long campaign to curb formaldehyde exposure would, once again, face setbacks.
ProPublica has dedicated several months to investigating formaldehyde, its extensive health risks, and the government's frustrating battle to control exposure.
They've reviewed federal air pollution data from every populated census block in the U.S., conducted their own testing in homes, cars, and local businesses, talked to over 50 experts, digested numerous scientific studies, and analyzed EPA records. They've also assessed the actions of the previous Trump administration and the next, which may or may not take place.
In conclusion, the health risks related to formaldehyde are far more extensive and prevalent than people realize. Effectively mitigating these risks may be an elusive mission, at least for the foreseeable future.
The EPA has struggled against the powerful chemical industry since its inception. This battle intensified as the EPA attempted to evaluate the public health threat posed by formaldehyde under the Trump administration. Regulatory rules obligate the government to prove a chemical is harmful, whereas companies are only required to demonstrate their products are safe. The EPA comprises staff members with industry ties, and each presidency features appointments of former industry insiders.
Former President Trump pledged to roll back regulations seen as detrimental to businesses. This stance threatens to disrupt the work of government beyond just formaldehyde regulations. Even after Biden's presidency, the efforts being made today could be halted, further delaying the hope of major advancements in protecting people from harmful chemical exposure. Under Trump, the EPA commented on formaldehyde by appointing a key figure from the chemical industry who had previously defended the chemical. This individual then shelved a report on formaldehyde toxicity. The agency also failed to enforce limits on formaldehyde emissions from wood products unless a judge intervened. Additionally, Trump's presidency marked the first time that the agency decided to omit its estimate of the risk of developing myeloid leukemia from formaldehyde's overall cancer risk calculation, weakening its ability to protect people from the disease.
Recent attempts to combat formaldehyde contamination might follow a similar pattern of ineffectiveness, as per William Boyd, an environmental law professor at UCLA. Boyd views formaldehyde as a symbol of the EPA's struggle to regulate chemicals due to its essential role in various profitable industrial processes. Companies manufacturing and utilizing formaldehyde have invested substantially in challenging and postponing government initiatives aimed at controlling it.
Boyd stated, "The Biden administration was wrapping up that process, but we can assume that these efforts will now be revised. It'll likely take years for the EPA to take action on this issue."
Unseen Hazard
Formaldehyde gained notoriety due to its use in preserving dead specimens in high school biology labs, but its industrial application is just as prevalent as salt in cooking. The EPA reports that between 1 to 5 billion pounds of it are produced annually in the US.
Outdoor air often contains formaldehyde fumes emitted by cars, smoke, factories, and oil and gas extraction, potentially reaching toxic levels believed to worsen with climate change. A significant portion of the outdoor formaldehyde originates spontaneously from other pollutants.
Invisible to the naked eye, this gas increases the likelihood of developing cancer, particularly in certain regions.
This year, the EPA unveiled its most comprehensive assessment of the risk of developing cancer due to exposure to chemicals in outdoor air in every populated census block within the US. The extensive analysis revealed that among numerous air pollutants, formaldehyde poses the greatest cancer risk — far ahead of any other pollutant.
However, ProPublica's examination of this same data exposed a more worrying scenario: It isn't just that formaldehyde poses the highest risk, but its risk also surpasses the EPA's targets by substantial margins.
ProPublica discovered that in every census block, the lifetime risk of cancer from exposure to formaldehyde outside remains higher than the EPA's goal of one incidence of cancer per million people, which sets the limit for air pollutants. This risk level implies that if a million individuals in an area are consistently exposed to formaldehyde over 70 years, the chemical would be responsible for no more than an additional cancer case beyond the existing cancer risks they face.
Based on ProPublica's analysis of the EPA's 2020 AirToxScreen data, over 320 million people live in areas of the US with 10 times higher lifetime cancer risk from outdoor exposure to formaldehyde than the EPA's ideal.
(ProPublica is releasing a search tool that allows anyone in the country to comprehend their outdoor risk from formaldehyde.)
In the Los Angeles/San Bernardino, California, region alone, over 7.2 million individuals are exposed to formaldehyde at a cancer risk level considerably higher than the EPA's goal. An industrial area east of downtown Los Angeles, hosting several warehouses, has a lifetime cancer risk from air pollution 80 times higher, with formaldehyde accounting for the majority of the risk.
Even these startling figures may underestimate the actual danger. As the EPA acknowledges, its cancer risk calculation does not reflect the chance of contracting myeloid leukemia. Using the agency's own scientists' calculation, which it describes as "the best estimate currently available," the hazard of the chemical would be shown to be far more severe. Instead of causing 20 cancer cases for every million people in the US, formaldehyde would be revealed to cause roughly 77 cases.
Setting regulations based on the higher figure could potentially prevent thousands of myeloid leukemia cases, according to ProPublica's analysis.
As Mary Faltas can attest, the diagnosis can disrupt one's life.
Faltas, 60, is still coping with the aftermath of developing myeloid leukemia in 2019. "It's like a storm passing through," she recently said. "It's gone, but now you're left to deal with everything else."
It wasn't always clear she'd recover. There are two types of myeloid leukemia. Faltas had the more harmful acute form, which required her to undergo chemotherapy, battle life-threatening infections, and undergo a bone marrow transplant. Unable to work, she lost her job as a dental assistant. She and her husband were forced to sell their house in Apopka, Florida, and downsize to a smaller condo — a move that took place when she was too weak to pack a box.
It's almost always impossible to pinpoint a single cause of someone's cancer. But Faltas has spent her entire life in places where the EPA's data indicates a cancer risk 30 times the level the agency claims it aims to achieve. And she's far from unique. Nationwide, that's the average lifetime cancer risk from air pollution, with formaldehyde accounting for the lion's share. Account for the EPA's myeloid leukemia calculation, and Faltas has lived in areas where cancer risk from formaldehyde alone is 50 to 70 times the agency's goal.
The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) assessments reveal that prolonged exposure to formaldehyde in homes could lead to as many as 255 cancer cases per million individuals throughout their lifetimes, a figure that does not account for the risk of myeloid leukemia. The agency acknowledges that there might not exist a feasible method to significantly lower the indoor average level of formaldehyde to a point that poses negligible risk.
ProPublica will delve deeper into indoor hazards and methods of safeguarding against them in the upcoming days.
The Fruitless Journey
The struggle to mitigate public exposure to formaldehyde dates back to the early '80s, less than a decade after it was linked to cancer in rats.
The EPA had intended to curb risks associated with formaldehyde, but the appointment of John Todhunter, an aide to President Ronald Reagan, halted these efforts. Todhunter argued that formaldehyde posed minimal risks to humans, after meeting with chemical industry representatives, including a lobbyist from the Formaldehyde Institute. Despite his denials, he resigned under mounting pressure.
More than a decade later, under President George H.W. Bush, the EPA announced formaldehyde as a probable human carcinogen and estimated its potential to cause a rare cancer in the nasopharynx. Loopholes soon became apparent, leading to further calls for protection measures.
A 2003 research reported that workers who were regularly exposed to high levels of formaldehyde were three and a half times more likely to develop myeloid leukemia compared to those with low-level exposure. Jinot, a former EPA statistician and toxicologist, stressed the need to exploit this evidence.
Jinot and her team at the EPA conducted extensive research, scrutinized medical literature, and consulted with other experts, concluding that formaldehyde was a proven carcinogen and linked to myeloid leukemia, among other cancer types.
However, their findings stalled in 2004 due to intervention from Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla. He urged the EPA to delay its formaldehyde report update, awaiting the results of a study being conducted by the National Cancer Institute.
Meanwhile, reported health issues persisted. In 2006, individuals who lost homes to Hurricane Katrina and lived in temporary government trailers complain of symptoms such as breathing difficulties, eye irritation, and nosebleeds, attributable to high levels of formaldehyde.
In 2009, under the Obama administration, the EPA was ready to publish its report on formaldehyde's toxicity. By then, the National Cancer Institute's study had been published, strengthening the link between formaldehyde and myeloid leukemia.
Yet another Senator, David Vitter, R-La., obstructed the confirmation of an EPA nominee. In response, Vitter agreed to approve the nominee only if the EPA underwent an additional review of the formaldehyde report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
The outside review found issues with method clarity and transparency in the EPA report, advocating for more clear presentations and arguments in future iterations.
Regrettably, the EPA did not issue a new report for over a decade. Post-review, the chemical industry seized upon the findings to discredit the agency, resulting in stalled chemical evaluation releases and EPA's formaldehyde report revisions for extended periods.
"They became completely cowardly," Jinot confessed. "They were shell-shocked and retreated."
The EPA lagged behind global organizations in recognizing formaldehyde's cancer-causing properties. The World Health Organization had already declared it a carcinogen in 2006, and the Department of Health and Human Services verified the link between formaldehyde and myeloid leukemia in 2011.
The Foundation for Chemistry Research and Initiatives, created by an industry trade group, funded 20 studies on the chemical between 2011 and 2017. The research portrayed formaldehyde as relatively harmless. The trade group continues to dispute the mainstream consensus, insisting that the majority of scientific evidence concludes that formaldehyde does not cause myeloid leukemia.
The trade group's formaldehyde panel argued that stringent regulations would have catastrophic economic consequences for businesses. The argument lacked credibility when compared to the lone regulation that the EPA did manage to enforce.
In 2016, the EPA released a rule regulating formaldehyde emissions from certain U.S. wood products. The Trump administration delayed implementation until 2018, following a court order.
However, many companies still complied with the regulation, initiating invention and innovation to create glues and binders without increased formaldehyde content in furniture and wood products.
Nonetheless, the EPA refused to pursue further formaldehyde regulations under the Trump administration, withheld the toxicity report that Jinot had been working on.
One of the latest appointees to the EPA under Trump was David Dunlap, a chemical engineer who, in his role as director of environmental regulatory affairs for Koch Industries, had attempted to convince the EPA that formaldehyde does not cause leukemia. Koch's subsidiary, Georgia-Pacific, produced formaldehyde and various items that emitted it. (Georgia-Pacific later sold its chemicals division to Bakelite Synthetics.) At the EPA, Dunlap held authority over the division where scientists like Jinot were working on the toxicity report.
Ethical guidelines mandate that federal workers abstain from participating in matters concerning former clients for a period of two years. Dunlap adhered to this rule, recusing himself from formaldehyde-related work in 2018, but only following his participation in internal EPA discussions regarding its health implications. He chose to recuse himself on the same day the EPA scrapped the toxicity report. Dunlap declined to comment on the matter.
The Upswing of Fallibility, the Inevitability of Change
The Biden-led EPA eventually managed to conclude the report in August, following its review by other agencies and the White House. This marked the first time that a threshold was established to safeguard individuals against breathing problems caused by formaldehyde, such as heightened asthma symptoms and reduced lung function.
In a preliminary report on formaldehyde released in the same year, the EPA found that levels of the chemical were potentially harmful in numerous scenarios, including the use of lawn and garden products by workers and inhalation of formaldehyde by consumers through air fresheners, foam seating, and flooring. However, the EPA is only required to address risks if they are deemed unreasonable. The EPA stated that, in many of these scenarios, it was uncertain whether the risks were unreasonable.
The EPA made this decision after employing unconventional scientific methods. One such method involved analyzing outdoor air. The EPA first calculated the amount of formaldehyde in the air near some of the country's largest polluting facilities. To determine whether these quantities posed an unreasonable risk, the agency compared them to a specific benchmark—the highest concentration of formaldehyde detected by government monitoring stations between 2015 and 2020. EPA records indicate that the peak level was recorded in 2018 in Fontana, California, approximately 50 miles east of Los Angeles. The EPA concluded that levels near polluting factories would not be unreasonable if they were below this peak level, even though local scientists noted that the Fontana reading did not meet their quality control standards, as outlined in documents obtained by ProPublica. Local air quality officials stated that they were unsure of the cause of the temporary spike in formaldehyde levels near the Fontana monitoring station.
The fact that an air monitoring station in Fontana once recorded a spike in formaldehyde levels that far surpassed the amount of formaldehyde in the air near Rocky Rissler's home offers little comfort to her.
A retired teacher residing in Weld County, Colorado, alongside her husband, two horses, a dog, and 12 highland cows, Rissler called her home the "Ain't Right Ranch"—a name that she now feels is increasingly apt as the number of oil and gas facilities near her home has dramatically increased in recent years.
The rural area is one of numerous locations throughout the country—many of which can be found in Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, and West Virginia—where the risk of formaldehyde exposure is heightened due to oil and gas production. Waves of nausea-inducing pollution have become so frequent that Rissler now carries peppermint spray with her at all times to ease the discomfort. She experiences frequent headaches, and her asthma has worsened significantly, resulting in multiple hospitalizations in recent years.
Rissler, who is 60 but feels "closer to 99," has also been diagnosed with chronic bronchitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease—conditions that have been linked to formaldehyde exposure. Even the slight incline from her horse barn to her front door leaves her winded.
"It feels like a gorilla is sitting on my chest," she said. And even though she used to jog in her youth, "these days, I'm only running if there's a bear chasing me."
Under Biden, EPA scientists have been divided over how to quantify the various dangers of formaldehyde. Some within the agency have been working to strengthen the final health assessment set for release later this month. However, they face considerable opposition from outside forces.
During the previous four years, no fewer than 75 trade organizations opposed the EPA's findings. Among these organizations are the Fertilizer Institute, the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, the Toy Association, the National Chicken Council, the Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association, the Independent Lubricant Manufacturers Association, the RV Industry Association, the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance, and the American Chemistry Council—representing over 190 companies that led the charge against stricter regulations on formaldehyde. Meanwhile, scientists with ties to the industry are advocating for the EPA to abandon their own toxicity evaluations in favor of using those provided by industry-affiliated scientists—a move that could significantly weaken future regulations on the chemical.
"I've seen the industry engage in various risk assessments," stated Tracey Woodruff, a professor and director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at the University of California, San Francisco. "This one feels unusually intense."
An EPA spokesperson wrote in an email that the agency's draft risk evaluation of formaldehyde was "based solely on the best available science."
Trump has outlined a strategy for federal agencies to eliminate 10 existing regulations for each new one they introduce, which is more harsh than his previous approach in the White House where over 100 environmental regulations were repealed. His transition team has proposed moving the EPA headquarters, a move likely leading to significant staff reductions.
Experts consulted by ProPublica suggest that the incoming administration can meddle with the ongoing assessment of formaldehyde's health impacts in several ways. The EPA could simply claim they're reassessing the chemical's risks, although legal obstacles may arise.
Robert Sussman, an attorney who represents environmental groups and served in the EPA under Clinton and Obama, stated, "They can just declare they're reopening the risk assessment and examine it again. There might be some legal challenges, but they can definitely give it a shot."
Project 2025, a conservative plan organized by the Heritage Foundation, advocates for limiting the EPA's scope and objectives. It recommends eliminating the division responsible for assessing formaldehyde's toxicity as well as hundreds of other chemicals during the past 3 decades. Project 2025 also aims to remove funds for research on toxic chemicals' health effects and welcomes industry-sponsored scientific studies at the EPA.
Trump distance himself from Project 2025 by stating, "I have no idea what that is." However, after the election, some of his representatives openly endorsed the document, and Trump chose an architect of the conservative strategy for a key cabinet position.
Last month, Trump announced former U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York as his pick for the EPA head. Zeldin was unavailable for comment, and Trump's transition team declined to answer questions about formaldehyde. In his announcement, Trump said Zeldin would make deregulatory decisions "to empower American businesses."
"Trump's election is music to the ears of those advocating for chemical deregulation," remarked Woodruff, a professor at University of California, San Francisco. "We are bound to witness more illnesses and deaths due to this chemical."
Despite the EPA's acknowledgment of formaldehyde's indoor cancer risks, there is currently no feasible method to significantly lower indoor levels to a negligible risk. (from the text)
In the future, advancements in technology and science could potentially lead to more effective methods for reducing formaldehyde levels in homes, thereby lowering cancer risks.
As new research progresses in health and environmental sciences, innovative solutions could emerge to mitigate the risks associated with formaldehyde exposure, paving the way for a healthier future.