The GOP-controlled Senate has already shown it will confirm Environmental Protection Agency leaders with massive conflicts of interest. "Yet Michael Dourson, the industry scientist Trump nominated to head EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, may be unable to clear even this low bar." Some of the opposition is from red states.

"At a private meeting in September, congressional aides asked Rebeckah Adcock, a top official at the Department of Agriculture, to reveal the identities of the people serving on the deregulation team she leads at the agency."

"Juan Flores and his family live in Galena Park, Texas, which is bordered on three sides by pipeline terminals, oil refineries, fertilizer plants and rail yards."

"North Carolina regulators will sanction The Chemours Co. for the release of an unregulated chemical into the Cape Fear River –  the latest in a barrage of legal assaults facing the Delaware company in the Tar Heel State."

"In early 2016, agri-business giant Monsanto faced a decision that would prove pivotal in what since has become a sprawling herbicide crisis, with millions of acres of crops damaged."

"The National Academy of Sciences has agreed to review U.S. EPA's beleaguered chemical assessment program, the Integrated Risk Information System."

"Jack McCall was a fixture at the local farmers market, where he sold avocados and other fruits he grew on his 20-acre ranch in Cambria, on California’s Central Coast. The U.S. postal worker and Little League coach was “very environmentally friendly,” said Teri McCall, his wife of 41 years. He avoided chemicals, using only his tractor-mower to root out the thistle and other weeds that continually sprouted on the flat areas of the ranch."

"Besides lead, no contaminant in drinking water has provoked as loud a public outcry in the last two years in the United States as a class of chemicals known as perfluorinated compounds. New Jersey regulators are taking the strongest action to date on the man-made chemicals that are used in scores of household and industrial products."

"The World Health Organization, worried about an increasing epidemic of drug-resistant infections, has thrown its considerable weight behind the campaign to cut the use of antibiotics in pigs, chickens and cattle that are raised for their meat."

"For years Texas’ chief toxicologist, Michael Honeycutt, has accused the EPA of scaring the public about the health risks of toxic chemicals."