Bureaucrats Run Amok: The Regulatory Assault On Formaldehyde
Activist-led EPA wrecks credibility with attack on low-risk chemical
Imagine a world where a multi-purpose chemical that helps build safer, more energy-efficient homes and contributes to life-saving vaccines becomes the villain in a regulatory melodrama. This is the reality we face with formaldehyde—a compound crucial to modern life but now under siege from an activist-led Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hell-bent on tarnishing its reputation.
Despite formaldehyde's low-risk profile in everyday exposure, a cascade of alarmist regulatory claims has fueled a misguided crusade against this essential chemical, further amplified by sensationalist media reports. For instance, NPR recently complained that the FDA has yet to ban this “highly toxic gas,” while the New York Times lamented that “hotspots” around Manhattan were dotted with “cancer-causing formaldehyde.”
At stake in this battle against bureaucratic and media alarmism is not just public health but the integrity of our regulatory bodies, as they drift further from science in pursuit of ideological agendas.
Facts about formaldehyde
The latest round of anti-formaldehyde hysteria has its origins in a recent EPA risk assessment of the chemical, which concluded that it “poses unreasonable risk to human health.” The FDA made similar comments last fall when it proposed banning the use of formaldehyde in some hair care products, alleging “long-term adverse health effects, including an increased risk of certain cancers.” These seemingly authoritative statements from respected regulatory agencies were all the press needed to churn out deceptive headlines.
But therein lies the real problem. These agencies didn’t carefully assess the evidence around formaldehyde; they cherry-picked research that helped them advance an ideological narrative about a chemical they had already determined was harmful. Here are just a few contrary conclusions we can draw about formaldehyde after examining all the available science:
There is no evidence that most people face unreasonable risks from outdoor exposure to formaldehyde, such as from a nearby industrial facility that makes or uses formaldehyde.
Industrial formaldehyde emissions are generally within the range of concentrations that come from natural sources, such as decomposing leaves, or combustion sources such as car exhaust. Tailpipe emissions of formaldehyde have plummeted in recent years.
Formaldehyde is not expected to persist in water or soils based on the physical and chemical properties and therefore is not expected in groundwater or surface water used for drinking.
Even when looking at the best available data, there is little evidence that real-life exposure to formaldehyde in the workplace, indoor situations and from outdoor air poses any risk to human health.
Most of these conclusions come from the EPA’s March 2024 preliminary risk assessment of formaldehyde. Despite having those results in hand, the agency absurdly concluded that a formaldehyde exposure of 0.11 parts per billion (ppb) or higher could increase cancer risk and 7 ppb or higher could have non-cancer effects. For context, the graphic below depicts the doses of formaldehyde we are commonly exposed to and where they come from.
These recommendations put EPA at odds with a global scientific consensus that is based on decades of research into formaldehyde’s health effects. Paul Selberg, former executive director of the Nevada Conservation League, explained the details in a recent op-ed:
“In 2017 the World Health Organization reaffirmed its previous ruling of setting formaldehyde emissions at a maximum of 80 parts-per-billion. The European Chemical Agency set their safe range as between 50-100 ppb. In the daily course of everyday life, humans naturally breathe in and out formaldehyde at 1 ppb. There are decades of scientific research backing safety standards at these levels…”
[our emphasis]
Zealous bureaucrats fabricate a scandal
The EPA’s fringe conclusion was difficult to explain until a 2022 Freedom of Information request revealed critical problems with the agency’s risk-assessment process. Most fundamentally, the ostensibly independent scientist EPA appointed to oversee the peer-review process for its formaldehyde assessment was toxicologist Kate Guyton, a former agency scientist who helped draft the report she was later tasked with reviewing.
This was a flagrant breach of research ethics and EPA policy; the point of peer review is to have independent scientists scrutinize their colleagues’ work. This is especially important when the work under review is official EPA regulatory science that influences federal chemical policy.
Remarkably, this wasn’t Guyton’s only offense. As Firebreak editor David Zaruk has documented, the rogue toxicologist has a history of evading FOIA requests and collaborating with activist groups and tort lawyers who sue chemical companies. Guyton famously was the lead author of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) glyphosate monograph, relentlessly resisting near unanimous criticism from the scientific community to ensure the agency's cancer conclusion could be used in the courts.
The fact that EPA entrusted a scientist with such a checkered track record to chaperone its formaldehyde risk assessment through peer review is inexcusable.
The overlooked science
While not mired in the same kind of scandal, the FDA is also well aware of the infinitesimal risk formaldehyde poses to the vast majority of people. In an article defending the safety of vaccines that contain the chemical, FDA made this explicit, noting that industrial workers appear to be the only population that faces a potential cancer risk:
“...the latest research has shown that the highest risk is from the air when formaldehyde is inhaled from breathing, and occurs more frequently in people who routinely use formaldehyde in their jobs. There is no evidence linking cancer to infrequent exposure to tiny amounts of formaldehyde via injection as occurs with vaccines.”
But even that conclusion is too conservative. As EPA noted in its risk assessment, this danger generally occurs only “if workers are not protected from breathing or touching formaldehyde.” The agency also conceded that “many employers do take measures to protect the safety of workers in their facilities.” Actually, employers are mandated to do so by federal law.
A 2009 National Cancer Institute study of more than 25,000 industrial workers added a crucially important piece of context: cancer risk due to industrial formaldehyde exposure has been declining for decades:
“Risks declined steadily over time, such that the cumulative excess risk of myeloid leukemia was no longer statistically significant at the end of the follow-up period. The researchers noted that similar patterns of risks over time had been seen for other agents known to cause leukemia.”
If even people with the highest formaldehyde exposures face a decreasing cancer risk, the general public, which faces much lower exposures, has nothing to fear. It’s not a coincidence that recent research has failed to find a link between consumer products that contain formaldehyde and any meaningful health risk. The Consumer Products Safety Commission got to the heart of the matter in a 2016 analysis:
“Formaldehyde is normally present at low levels … in both outdoor and indoor air … For most people, a low-level exposure to formaldehyde will not produce any adverse effects.”
Reining in the administrative state
All this research points to a clear conclusion: the administrative bureaucracies charged with protecting public health are ignoring the available evidence–including their own research–when issuing chemical regulations. The good news is that the courts have recently begun to rein in these federal agencies, which could inspire Congress to step in and further restrict their overreach.
We see this as a positive development, separate but equal branches of government checking each other. The EPA’s allies in the activist space don’t share our enthusiasm for constitutional government, but they do recognize that the administrative state has overplayed its hand. After lambasting the EPA’s formaldehyde assessment, Selberg noted that:
“The conservative federal courts have set their sights on the ‘administrative state’ and have used invented legal reasoning to take down regulatory action — giving these judges actual scientific backing to undermine regulatory action is dangerous. What would be even more devastating though is a repeal through congressional action.
If the EPA used a flawed scientific approach, Congress could repeal the regulation through the Congressional Review Act. In this scenario … the EPA would be prohibited from setting any future standards unless Congress explicitly passed a law giving them that authority, undermining the very mission this regulatory action seeks to put into place.”
We’ve watched this scenario unfold in recent weeks with the Supreme Court repudiating the so-called “Chevron Deference.” This 40-year-old legal doctrine enabled federal agencies to expand their authority as the courts deferred to them on legal questions related to agency expertise. Those days are over. And even in the months before the case was decided, there were examples of Congress investigating federal agencies and demanding transparency in how they wielded their regulatory authority.
Conclusion
Before anybody laments the downfall of the public health establishment that protects us from harmful chemicals, there is a simple solution to this standoff between the administrative state and the courts and Congress. EPA and the other alphabet agencies could abandon their anti-chemical activism and return to science-based regulation, making sensible rules that protect consumers and the environment.
If the agencies refuse, they risk further wrecking their credibility and losing even more regulatory authority. And they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.