WASHINGTON— Two new “forever chemical” pesticides are among multiple dangerous pesticides approved today by the Trump Environmental Protection Agency for use on food crops, including corn, soybeans, wheat, kiwi, oats, peas, broccoli and coffee.

The controversial approvals come just days after the Supreme Court sided with Bayer and the Trump administration in limiting Americans’ ability to sue pesticide companies for harms linked to pesticides.

Today’s approvals include two new PFAS pesticides never before used in the United States. Diflufenican and epyrifenacil can now both be used on corn and soybeans, the two most widely grown U.S. crops. Epyrifenacil has also been approved on wheat. A previously EPA-approved “forever chemical” pesticide called bifenthrin also got approval for use on additional foods, including coffee, kiwifruit, peas, kale and broccoli.

The EPA has also approved the first food use of chlormequat, which is already found in the bodies of 90% of Americans and is linked to multiple reproductive harms, on wheat, barley and oats.

“It’s a national outrage that Trump’s EPA is expanding use of dangerous, cancer-linked PFAS pesticides just days after the Supreme Court limited the American people’s right to sue pesticide companies,” said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Trump’s reckless push to ignore science and embrace these extremely harmful, long-lasting pesticides ensures his legacy won’t be the many monuments he’s built to himself but the many millions of people his shortsighted polices will sicken and prematurely kill.”

The highly persistent pesticides diflufenican and epyrifenacil are “forever chemicals” — often called PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

These approvals come after Kyle Kunkler, a former lobbyist for the American Soybean Association, was installed as the deputy assistant administrator for pesticides in the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. The soybean association has been a vocal proponent of diflufenican’s and epyrifenacil’s approval.

While the Biden administration had approved one PFAS pesticide in the prior four years, this is the third and fourth approval of a PFAS pesticide under Trump in just his second year in office. The previous two PFAS pesticide approvals were cyclobutrifluram and isocycloseram.

While some PFAS differ in their toxicities, potential to bioaccumulate, and potential to pollute water, all PFAS are highly persistent and have chemical bonds that will essentially never break down. PFAS ingredients in pesticide products have been found to contaminate streams and rivers throughout the country.

The EPA has found that diflufenican and epyrifenacil will eventually break down into multiple smaller PFAS chemicals, including trifluoroacetic acid, or TFA, thought to be one of the most pervasive PFAS water contaminants in the world. TFA comes from many sources, but recent research has highlighted the significant role pesticides play in local groundwater contamination. Researchers believe the world is exceeding what’s known as a “planetary boundary threat” with TFA, where societal health harms may quickly become irreversible.

TFA has been found in 78% of all tested wells in Germany, and diflufenican, specifically, was estimated to be one of the leading pesticide contributors to TFA groundwater contamination in the European Union. Denmark recently banned use of diflufenican due, in part, to its contribution to TFA contamination throughout the country. Epyrifenacil has never been approved in Europe.

The European Chemicals Agency has recommended the European Commission to classify TFA as Toxic to Reproduction, concluding that it “May damage the unborn child” and “Suspected of damaging fertility.” The agency also classified TFA as Persistent, Mobile and Toxic, and Very Persistent and Very Mobile, concluding that it “Can cause very long-lasting and diffuse contamination of water resources.”

Diflufenican can also break down into a chemical called 2,4-difluoroaniline malonate, a fluorinated chemical that has a similar structure and toxicity profile to aniline, a component in tobacco smoke. The EPA has classified aniline as a probable human carcinogen, however, did not require any studies to assess the cancer risks of diflufenican’s breakdown product “in vivo” or in real-life settings.

Epyrifenacil causes liver tumors in animal studies and is part of a class of pesticides called PPO-inhibitors, many of which are also linked to liver tumors. However, the EPA categorized it as “not likely to be carcinogenic” at low doses based solely on the pesticide company’s interpretation of their own studies.

New uses of another PFAS pesticide, bifenthrin, were also approved today. Uses of bifenthrin that have been in place for years have made it one of the most widely detected insecticides in U.S. streams, lakes, and rivers — where it is often found at levels that exceed aquatic safety thresholds.

The approval of chlormequat, a non-PFAS pesticide, is also controversial. Chlormequat is found in the urine of 90% of Americans, thought to come mostly from residues on imported foods where the pesticide has been used. Today’s approval in U.S. wheat and oats ensures that exposure to the U.S. population will increase dramatically. The pesticide has been linked to reduced fertility, reproductive toxicity and birth defects.

Are these pesticides really PFAS?

The EPA has stated in press materials that these new fluorinated pesticides are not PFAS. That assertion is based on the fact that they do not meet the chemicals office’s unilateral regulatory PFAS definition. But the new pesticides do meet the much more widely accepted PFAS definition that was developed transparently by dozens of scientists around the world. That definition has subsequently been endorsed by more than 150 leading PFAS researchers, is used by nearly every U.S. state for regulating PFAS, and specifically was written into past versions of the National Defense Authorization Act.

Using the scientific definition of a PFAS that is widely accepted in this country and around the world, these pesticides are PFAS.

The EPA had even initially acknowledged that these pesticides met the more broadly accepted PFAS definition on its fluorinated pesticides webpage. Yet three weeks after creating the webpage, it removed any mention of the conflicting definition, instead portraying the agency’s unilateral definition as the only PFAS definition.

Freedom of Information Act documents obtained by the Center indicate that these website revisions were overseen by Kunkler, Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention assistant administrator Douglas Troutman, and were reviewed by EPA administrator Lee Zeldin.

The EPA has also stated that its PFAS definition specifically excluded chemicals that had a single fully fluorinated carbon because they do not display the persistence properties commonly associated with forever chemicals. The EPA’s final rule for its PFAS definition cites a single study to support this assertion, Gaines et al, 2023.

But the only instance where this study mentions the lack of persistence of chemicals with one fully fluorinated carbon is when it directly quotes the EPA’s response to a petition from communities seeking greater PFAS oversight by the EPA. Thus the agency is essentially citing its own position as evidence to support its position.

In fact, many fluorinated chemicals that meet the widely accepted PFAS definition, but not the EPA’s PFAS definition, are incredibly persistent. To name just a few, carbon tetrafluoride has an atmospheric half-life of 50,000 years and TFA is thought to have an half-life in water of several hundreds of years and is considered a legacy pollutant.

Chemicals with single fully fluorinated carbons can stick around for generations or longer, which was the basis for their inclusion in the widely accepted PFAS definition. Most PFAS pesticides are expected to eventually degrade into the forever chemical TFA, which could linger in the environment at harmful levels anywhere from months to decades depending on the chemical properties of the individual pesticide.