Most of us want to believe that if a product is on a store shelf, it's been inspected properly. We want to trust that the water from our taps is clean, that our food is untainted, and that the plastic in our children's toys is harmless—partly because a federal agency has given its seal of approval. But what if these approvals aren't being made with the public's best interest at heart?
A quiet, systemic betrayal has taken root in Washington. For decades, the agencies we rely on—the EPA, the FDA, and the CDC—have too often allowed regulations to be co-authored by the industries they are supposed to regulate. This is one of the darker and more pernicious aspects of Washington's Swamp Culture, a place where the public interest is too often sacrificed at the altar of corporate profits.
The relationship between industry and Washington has evolved far beyond traditional lobbying. It has become a system in which the lines between corporations and regulators have completely blurred, and the chemical industry provides a powerful and increasingly alarming example.
Chemical company executives and industry-funded scientists often serve on the very advisory panels and committees that agencies like the EPA and FDA rely on for guidance. Instead of providing independent oversight, the system creates a form of self-policing by industry that average Americans should rightly be concerned about and sharply question.
The so-called "revolving door"—the well-documented pattern of regulators cycling into industry jobs, and industry insiders cycling into regulatory posts—makes this worse. In an unprecedented move in 2025, all of the EPA's top management positions were filled with former lobbyists and lawyers from the very industries they are supposed to regulate, including former lobbyists for the American Chemistry Council now writing the rules on PFAS "forever chemicals," formaldehyde, and asbestos. As one pharmacist-attorney put it, nothing corrodes public trust faster than the sense that senior officials are auditioning for future jobs at the very companies they regulate.
This systemic problem leads to serious consequences for our families and our environment. When the Big Chemical agenda takes priority over public health, we see the results in contaminated water systems, recalled products, and illness clusters. We see it in the federal government's hesitant handling of microplastics. To date, there is only one narrow federal law on the books targeting these pollutants: the Microbead-free Waters Act of 2015, which prohibits tiny plastic particles in "rinse-off" cosmetics. Beyond that one small step, the door remains wide open.
Meanwhile, the chemicals found in microplastics continue to leach from food packaging, water bottles, and even children's toys. Exposure to these toxins has the potential to disrupt endocrine systems, suppress testosterone, increase obesity, and may even be linked to childhood behavioral disorders.
Chemical lobbyists are now pushing the EPA to go further still—weakening the health protections already embedded in the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) while easing the path for new chemicals to reach consumers with less scrutiny. Both the House and Senate have released draft bills that would roll back key provisions of the nation's chemical safety law—proposals that reflect longstanding priorities of the chemical lobby and would short-cut safety reviews for new chemicals, making it easier for harmful chemicals like PFAS to enter the market without full evaluations.
The goal is not a safer system; it is a more permissive one. New draft revisions to the law would replace the requirement that a chemical "will not present any unreasonable risk" with the weaker standard that it is "not likely to present an unreasonable risk"—a subtle but consequential shift that critics say would make it harder for the EPA to act on dangerous substances. Since the 2016 Lautenberg amendments, the EPA has used its authority to ban deadly asbestos and methylene chloride, restrict cancer-causing chemicals like trichloroethylene, and block certain PFAS from entering commerce. All of that progress is now at risk. Even members of the "Make America Healthy Again" movement—a group that typically supports the administration's public health agenda—are now publicly with hundreds of other groups opposing the proposed TSCA changes, warning that they deepen corporate influence and undermine chemical safety.
When the agencies meant to protect us are busy protecting the industries they regulate, they are failing their most basic duty to the American people. This isn't just about bad policy; it is about public safety. We cannot allow the Swamp to treat our health as a negotiable line item in a corporate budget.
David Hursey is a policy analyst who has worked on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, as well as on several presidential and congressional campaigns and public policy organizations. He also served on Utah’s COVID-19 Economic Response Task Force.
