President Joe Biden understands the devastating risks of toxic chemicals. Its personal, he said in August 2022, before signing into law a bill to expand health care benefits for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits during deployments overseas.

Toxic smoke, thick with poison, spreading through the air and into the lungs of our troops, Biden said. When they came home, many of the fittest and best warriors that we sent to war were not the same headaches, numbness, dizziness, cancer. My son Beau was one of them.

Bidens oldest son died of brain cancer in 2015. The president has speculated that his sons cancer was caused by exposure to toxic chemicals from burn pits during his military service in Iraq.

In the same vein, the White House has prioritized reducing chemical pollution in communities across the country, touting an ambitious agenda to protect public health and advance environmental justice.

Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency moved to crack down on the ongoing practice of open burning of hazardous waste explosives, primarily military munitions, to reduce chemical exposures and better protect human health and the environment. In December, the EPA began the process of formally evaluating the risks of five specific chemicals, including vinyl chloride, a cancer-causing chemical used to make plastic. And in April, the EPA released a draft national strategy to combat plastic pollution, including reducing exposure to harmful chemicals released during production.

Much of the administrations work on toxic substances falls under the umbrella of Bidens Cancer Moonshot initiative, which aims to reduce the cancer death rate by 50% over the next 25 years.

But one incident casts a long shadow over the administrations fight against toxic chemical exposures: last years derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, Ohio. The administration has been widely criticized by experts including some from the EPA for not stepping in to prevent the railroad giant from intentionally torching more than 1 million pounds of vinyl chloride, and for waiting weeks to test for dioxins , a family of extremely toxic compounds that are known to form when chlorinated chemicals like vinyl chloride combust.