FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Hannah Story Brown, [email protected]
The White House announced late last week that the Environmental Protection Agency is launching epa.gov/cancer as part of the Biden administration’s Cancer Moonshot efforts, and will share new information about the EPA’s role in leveraging its existing authorities to “accelerate the rate of progress to prevent cancer, including phase-outs of carcinogens, regulatory actions to protect children, workers and overburdened communities, and enforcement actions to ensure pollution is curbed.”
The Revolving Door Project welcomes this announcement; we have previously called on President Joe Biden to wed his cancer moonshot to the energy transition. We now urge the administration to deepen its commitment to cancer prevention through tackling the carcinogens that pervade our homes and workplaces and contaminate the environment. The sources of carcinogenic chemicals are diverse—from tobacco to plastic to fracking—but behind them all are powerful industry interests bent on evading regulatory scrutiny.
“If Biden really wants to fight cancer in America,” our Hannah Story Brown and Dorothy Slater wrote at the start of National Cancer Prevention Month in February 2023, “he’s going to have to challenge the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries.”
Revolving Door Project Senior Researcher Hannah Story Brown said: “It is encouraging to see the Environmental Protection Agency taking steps to be an active partner in President Biden’s laudable Cancer Moonshot initiative. We hope that this stated commitment will be carried forward in various branches of the Agency’s work, and propel internal scrutiny of the EPA’s own role in enabling toxic and carcinogenic chemicals to be bought and sold. The very same day the administration announced its new Cancer Moonshot commitments, new investigative reporting from The Guardian revealed the harms of the EPA’s lax scrutiny of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals.”
Revolving Door Project Senior Fellow Dorothy Slater said: “A whole-of-government approach to fighting cancer requires every federal agency to reckon with their unique capacity to tackle the forms of pollution that fall under their jurisdiction. It’s excellent to see the administration initially recognize this issue, but fully addressing the problem will require standing up to the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries in spite of their powerful backlash. Doing so is the executive branch’s obligation, would be politically advantageous, and is the humane thing to do.”
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Image: This archival photograph of chemical plants by Lake Charles, La. from the Environmental Protection Agency is in the public domain.
