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Formaldehyde Causes More Cancer Than Any Other Toxic Air Pollutant

The Environmental Protection Agency’s attempts to reckon with formaldehyde have been repeatedly thwarted by the companies that rely on it. If the past is any guide, even modest steps toward reform are all but guaranteed to hit a dead end under Trump.

As the backbone of American commerce, formaldehyde is a workhorse in major sectors of the economy, preserving bodies in funeral homes, binding particleboards in furniture and serving as a building block in plastic. The EPA concluded the levels near polluting factories would not be unreasonable if they were below this record high, even though local scientists had noted that the Fontana reading didn’t meet their quality control standards, according to documents obtained by ProPublica. Project 2025, the conservative playbook organized by the Heritage Foundation, calls for the EPA’s structure and mission to be “greatly circumscribed.” Its chapter on the agency specifically recommends the elimination of the division that evaluated the toxicity of formaldehyde and hundreds of other chemicals over the past three decades.

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