Sixteen Trump-appointed EPA officials were paid more than $2.8 million by chemical companies and trade groups before they joined the agency that oversees the industry, according to a CREW analysis of financial disclosures. The chemical industry has scored major wins during Trump’s second term, including a February proposal to gut the majority of a 2024 rule attempting to prevent chemical plant disasters.

Nearly every other day on average, a life threatening or fatal incident occurs at a chemical facility, posing a serious danger to chemical plant workers and first responders and the communities near those facilities. Just last month, two workers died and more were injured after a chemical release at a plant in West Virginia. Over half of the U.S. population lives in worst-case scenario zones where chemical disasters could happen. Despite how many Americans’ safety could be compromised by regulatory rollbacks, the EPA’s proposal would rescind or modify most of the accident-prevention program changes in the original rule.

CREW’s analysis shows that 23 separate chemical companies paid EPA officials a total of at least $1,442,913. This total includes salaries, bonuses, compensation for consulting and legal services and other payments. Nineteen of those companies have faced enforcement actions by the EPA in the past for allegedly violating federal environmental laws. Additionally, eight chemical industry trade associations—including two groups that publicly supported the rollback—paid EPA officials a total of at least $1,431,638 before they joined the agency.

These totals are likely a dramatic undercount. Officials report the sources of their income from past client relationships in a section of the financial disclosure for “sources of compensation exceeding $5,000 in a year.” This section does not require filers to disclose how much money they made from each client. We are counting each of those payments as $5,000, but many were likely far more lucrative than that minimum threshold. The disclosures include the past one- and two-year periods of income, depending on the section of the form.

Out of the 16 Trump-appointed EPA officials CREW found to have received money from the chemical industry, John Evans, the Senior Adviser for Implementation at the Office of Land and Emergency Management, reported the most— over $850,000 from TPC Group and LyondellBasell Industries—before joining the EPA. TPC Group, which has a documented history of air pollution violations, agreed to pay over $30 million in criminal fines and civil penalties in 2024 after a series of explosions at their facility in Port Neches, Texas in 2019. In its final investigation of the Port Neches incident, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board found that the TPC Group made several safety failures that released hazardous chemicals into the air, endangering the surrounding community.

The 2024 Safer Communities by Chemical Accident Prevention rule revised the EPA’s Risk Management Program to “further protect vulnerable communities from chemical accidents, especially those living near facilities in industry sectors with high accident rates.” It included modest safeguards such as requirements for analysis of safer technologies, third-party safety audits for facilities with a prior accident and employee participation in facility accident prevention. Several chemical trade associations formally opposed these safeguards, arguing that they placed undue burdens on chemical companies. In February, before the rule was set to take effect, the Trump EPA proposed a new rule that would slash most of these safeguards, a move which it estimated could save companies up to $240 million a year in compliance, labor and third-party auditing costs.

A broad coalition of labor, health and environmental justice organizations has opposed the EPA’s proposed chemical plant safety rollbacks. Executive Director of Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services Ana Parras described the proposed rule as a “direct assault on safety and a political gift to polluters,” explaining that, “for fenceline communities and facility workers, this rollback is a declaration that our lives are deemed acceptable sacrifices. By ripping away the requirement for safer technologies, the administration is actively increasing the threat of explosions and toxic releases – preventable disasters that will deepen environmental injustice for generations.”

The communities that live in closest proximity to these facilities face higher risks of developing pollution-related ailments such as cancer and respiratory illness from toxic air pollution. These communities are disproportionately composed of low-income people and people of color who already face additional layers of inequity due to lack of proper healthcare, inadequate access to healthy food and substandard housing conditions. 

The proposed safety rollback is just one example of how Trump’s EPA is systematically dismantling the environmental protection apparatus in ways that serve the interests of corporations rather than people. This analysis doesn’t even include every official who, in their prior roles, had an interest in chemical deregulation. For instance, Kyle Kunkler, now the top official in charge of pesticide policy at the EPA, earned nearly $300,000 from the American Soybean Association where he lobbied for a controversial weedkiller called dicamba used by soybean growers. Within a month of Kunkler joining the agency, it proposed reallowing the use of dicamba, and, earlier this year, the pesticide was officially reapproved. When dicamba gets picked up by wind, it can drift miles away and poison crops that farmworkers’ livelihoods depend on.

Given EPA officials’ deep ties to the chemical industry, the potential for the Trump administration’s proposed rollbacks to improve the bottom line of chemical companies, at the expense of people’s health, cannot be ignored. The EPA’s stated mission does not include reducing cost burdens for polluters. Rather, the EPA was created to protect the environment and the health and livelihood of all Americans, especially for those who have already borne the brunt of environmental injustice. 

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