Washington – New analysis from the advocacy group Food & Water Watch reveals that the PFAS industry has spent up to $60 million lobbying the EPA and up to $12 million lobbying the Trump administration on PFAS-related issues in the first half of 2025. This massive lobbying effort comes as the White House moves aggressively to roll back and cancel key safety standards intended to limit the amount of these toxic “forever chemicals” in the country’s drinking water. 

Today the EPA has another filing deadline in an industry lawsuit seeking to roll back regulations designating PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, which gives EPA tools to hold polluters accountable for clean-up costs. Late last week the administration filed a motion asking a federal court to throw out Biden-era rules limiting the level of  four common and dangerous PFAS chemicals in drinking water.

The lobbying analysis found:

• From Jan.-June 2025, 17 industry trade groups and companies, representing PFAS polluters, the fossil fuel industry and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s PFAS deregulation coalition group spent up to $60 million lobbying the EPA and up to $12 million lobbying the White House on PFAS-related issues.

• The Chamber’s group spent up to $272.8 million in PFAS-related lobbying expenses since 2023, including up to $50.5 million in PFAS-related expenses in the first half of 2025.
• From Jan.-June, five major current and former PFAS producers spent up to $6.3 million in PFAS-related lobbying expenses. Dow, the top spender, has accounted for more than half of spending amongst the PFAS producers.

Meanwhile, Trump’s EPA is now stacked with former PFAS industry lobbyists, lawyers and executives:

• David Fotouhi, deputy administrator of the EPA, has a long record of defending corporate PFAS polluters accused of violating the Clean Air Act and other EPA regulations

• Nancy Beck, senior EPA adviser on chemical safety and pollution regulation, was formerly the director of the American Chemistry Council (ACC). In a previous role at EPA, she pushed to weaken a rule meant to restrict the uses of PFAS in some products.
• Lynn Dekleva, another former ACC lobbyist, worked at DuPont for more than 30 years. She is now responsible for greenlighting new toxic chemicals for the market at the EPA.

“From a president who claimed on the campaign trail that America would have ‘the cleanest water in the world,’ we are seeing the opposite: a complete disregard for clean, safe water and instead a total deference to profit-driven corporate polluters,” said Mary Grant, water program director at Food & Water Watch. “We will be watching closely as more critical decisions on common-sense PFAS regulations come before this administration in the days and weeks ahead.”

Known as “forever chemicals,” PFAS are lab-made chemicals that have been linked to a large range of health problems including various cancers, altered hormone levels, decreased birth weights, digestive inflammation, and reduced vaccine response. New research comes out almost every day that indicates no amount is safe. It is estimated that about half of all Americans are regularly exposed to PFAS contamination through their drinking water.