Sources: Trump EPA quashed report linking leukemia and formaldehyde, used in farming, factories and buildings

In 2017 the Environmental Protection Agency under President Trump suppressed a report that, using updated calculations, showed formaldehyde causes myeloid leukemia, according to several sources. The Integrated Risk Information System division's report could have big repercussions on public health if the Biden administration allows it to be finalized, Sharon Lerner reports for The Intercept.

Millions of workers each year are exposed to formaldehyde through construction, firefighting, agriculture, manufacturing and more. Because the chemical is so commonly used, a "wide range" of business lobbies have pressured EPA not to finalize the assessment, Lerner reports. EPA refused to release the report following a request under the Freedom of Information Act, saying in court that the assessment wasn't complete or ready to be shared publicly. But that's not true, former EPA officials told The Intercept. The report was ready to go in early 2018, but former EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler and others would not allow it to be published, they said.

Wheeler's office exhibited an unusual amount of interest in the report while the researchers were working on it, and shared it with the American Chemistry Council, the sources said. The trade group then sought to preemptively discredit the research before it had been published.

The EPA regulates formaldehyde using outdated calculations. The assessment with new calculations "concludes that 1 microgram of formaldehyde in a cubic meter of air increases the number of myeloid leukemia cases by roughly 3.5 in 100,000 people, more than three times the cancer risk in the assessment now in use. If the nasopharyngeal cancer and myeloid leukemia risks are combined, the cancer risk could be 4.5 times higher than the current value," Lerner reports. "Even using the much lower, outdated cancer risk number set in 1991, formaldehyde is already the greatest source of nationwide cancer risk from industrial air pollutants, estimated to cause roughly 18 of the 32 cancers in every 1 million people in the U.S. that are caused by toxic pollutants in the air, according to the EPA’s own data. If the risk values are increased by a factor of four or more, the reported cancer risk from formaldehyde will go up accordingly, revealing previously unrecognized cancer hot spots around the country."