Like my own Obi-Wan, former Chemical Processing editor Mark Rosenzweig reached out to me to make sure I saw a July 13 Guardian article, “Trump officials accused of stacking top chemical safety board with industry ‘mouthpieces’.” The article notes that Trump administration appointees to the Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC) include at least 13 members with likely conflicts of interest.

SACC provides independent scientific advice to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency EPA for risk assessments, methodologies and pollution prevention measures under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

At the top of the baker’s dozen is Wade Barranco, senior toxicologist at LyondellBasell. He would be reviewing nearly 1 million pounds of chemicals his employer released in 2024, including acetaldehyde, benzene, ethylbenzene, naphthalene and styrene.

Aside from being unseemly, his participation may be illegal. Federal law and EPA's own guidelines require SACC to be "balanced and free of members who have actual or perceived conflicts of interest."

Without these guardrails, the public is at risk, leaving industry vulnerable to future actions, as we’ve seen with the PFAS fallout.

Last year, The New York Times highlighted the appointment of ex-American Chemistry Council (ACC) lobbyist Lynn Dekleva, who had pushed for public-records requests and industry-funded studies challenging EPA's science. ACC counters that EPA's own review panels, including SACC, found flaws in its formaldehyde risk assessment, though SACC's chair said ACC overstated those critiques. EPA finalized a formaldehyde "unreasonable risk" determination in December 2024. Under Zeldin's EPA, Dekleva and fellow ex-ACC official Nancy Beck were expected to push deregulation. And push they did.

Dekleva called for a formaldehyde reassessment that nearly doubles the "safe" inhalation exposure threshold set by the Biden-era EPA.

Beck’s deregulatory record, so far, includes scaling back proposed bans on asbestos and methylene chloride, rewriting per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) tracking rules to loosen reporting requirements, and working to reverse a proposed ban on trichloroethylene, a solvent linked to cancer.

Beck and Dekleva obtained written waivers from EPA’s ethics office to work on matters involving their former employer, ACC, the Detroit News reported.

Conflict of Interest

This isn't "industry vs. environmentalists." It's about whether the review process itself can be trusted by anyone, including responsible chemical companies.

A 2025 Guardian article explained that industry-tied scientists, led by toxicologist Michael Dourson, director of science at the nonprofit Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment and a former senior adviser to the EPA administrator, are mobilizing to fight new EPA drinking-water limits on PFAS "forever chemicals." Their plan: Publish industry-funded, peer-reviewed research to challenge the science. Former EPA staff call it a legal strategy to manufacture doubt, not valid science.

When "industry science" becomes synonymous with "bought science" in the public eye, it taints credible research and credible companies along with the bad actors.

In June 2026, CP picked up a story from The Charleston Gazette-Mail, West Virginia. The article detailed how Trump's EPA is proposing to rescind 2024 drinking-water limits on four types of PFAS and delay PFOA/PFOS compliance deadlines to 2031, citing rulemaking technicalities and cost savings. This follows a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling tossing an injunction against Chemours' PFAS discharges into the Ohio River.

What Can Be Done?

Certainly, industry money doesn't automatically invalidate science, but the current pattern of commissioning studies to fit a predetermined regulatory outcome does. We need to push for cleaner advisory processes. Durable, credible regulation beats regulation that gets rewritten every four years by whoever controls the committee.

As for Barranco/LyondellBasell, asking a reviewer to grade his employer’s work isn’t a good look. The chemical industry has more to lose than anyone from a science advisory system nobody believes. The power of the dark side is strong; may the Force be with you.