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Despite touting ambitious goals of making America healthier, the Trump administration on Monday revealed in court documents that it is backpedaling on a ban on cancer-causing asbestos.
Last year, under the Biden administration, the Environmental Protection Agency took a long-awaited step to ban the last type of asbestos still used in the US—chrysotile asbestos, aka “white asbestos.” While use of chrysotile asbestos was on the decline, the dangerous mineral has lingered in various gaskets, brake blocks, aftermarket automotive brakes and linings, other vehicle friction products, and some diaphragms used to make sodium hydroxide and chlorine.
With the ban, the US joined over 50 other countries around the world that had banned its use due to health risks. Generally, asbestos is known to cause lung cancer, mesothelioma, ovarian cancer, and laryngeal cancer. Asbestos exposure is linked to more than 40,000 deaths in the US each year, the EPA noted at the time.
“The science is clear—asbestos is a known carcinogen that has severe impacts on public health. President Biden understands that this [is a] concern that has spanned generations and impacted the lives of countless people. That’s why EPA is so proud to finalize this long-needed ban on ongoing uses of asbestos,” Michael Regan, EPA administrator at the time, said in a statement.
“100 Percent Safe”
While the move was decades in the making and hailed by health proponents, it still allowed companies a generous period to phase out use of asbestos—in some cases up to 12 years. That didn’t stop industry from taking legal action against the regulation shortly after the EPA’s announcement. The litigation, brought by a number of companies and trade groups, including the American Chemistry Council, has been ongoing since then.
On Monday, the EPA, now under the Trump administration, filed court documents saying that it “now intends to reconsider” the ban, and it “expects that this process, including any regulatory changes, will take approximately 30 months.” The EPA asked the court to suspend the court case in the meantime. The filing included a declaration in support of the reconsiderations from new EPA Deputy Assistant Administrator of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Lynn Ann Dekleva, who until last year worked as a lobbyist and director for the American Chemistry Council.
As Ars reported last year, there was always concern that another Trump administration would work to overturn the ban; Trump supports the use of asbestos. In his 1997 book The Art of the Comeback, Trump wrote that asbestos is “100 percent safe, once applied” and blamed the mob for its reputation as a carcinogen, writing: “I believe that the movement against asbestos was led by the mob, because it was often mob-related companies that would do the asbestos removal.”
Trump’s support for asbestos has been welcomed in Russia, a primary asbestos supplier to the US. In 2018, a Russian asbestos company began marketing asbestos with Trump’s face and a seal reading “Approved by Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States.”
This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.
