PediatricDigest: Latest from Food Politics: More MAHA hypocrisy in action: Dicamba, Mercury, and PFAS

By Marion Nestle

March 03 2026

More MAHA hypocrisy in action: Dicamba, Mercury, and PFAS

One of the major items on HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s agenda has been to get toxic chemicals out of the food supply.

He’s not doing a good job on that.

Last week, I discussed his hypocritical backtracking on glyphosate.

Here, I mention three more:

DICAMBA

The Environmental Protection Agency has announced its reapproval of the pesticide dicamba as a spray on genetically engineered cotton and soybeans—despite how it drifts onto everyone else’s crops, whether growers want it or not.

Federal court decisions in 2020 and again in 2024 said such approvals were unlawful.

As the Center for Food Safety puts it,

Since its first approval in 2016, dicamba drift has damaged millions of acres of farmland and caused devastating damage to orchards, vegetable farms, home gardens, native plants, trees, and wildlife refuges across the country. Experts have found dicamba drift damage to be the worst of any herbicide in the history of U.S. agriculture. Yet the current approval provides even fewer protections from dicamba drift and damage than past approvals.

The first lawsuits have already been filed.

MERCURY

RFK Jr particularly wanted mercury out of fish.

Mercury gets into fish from two sources: volcanos and coal-burning power plants. We can’t stop volcanos, but we sure could insist that coal-burning power plans clean up their emissions.

No such luck.

The New York Times writes: E.P.A. Plans to Loosen Mercury Rules for Coal Plants, Documents Show

In particular, the administration is taking steps to improve the economics of coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, by rolling back several regulations that would have made it much more expensive, if not impossible, for many coal plants to keep operating. Over the past nine months, the Energy Department has taken the extraordinary step of ordering eight coal-burning units that had been headed for retirement to stay open and keep running….the E.P.A. is arguing that it would reduce “unwarranted costs” for utilities that own and operate coal plants across the country.

The administration is, however, banning mercury from dental fillings (where it s use is declining rapidly and currently accounts for less than 6% of fillings).

PFAS

A report from the National Academies of Sciences says the USDA has plenty of opportunities do so something about PFAS on farmland.

As the New Lede explains,

On Feb. 13…the House Agriculture Committee released its draft 2026 Farm Bill, which includes language that would permit research grants on the agricultural impacts of PFAS in land exposed to firefighting foams, sewage sludge or compost containing the chemicals…But US Rep. Chellie Pingree from Maine said the draft bill reflected a “willful neglect of the PFAS crisis.”

“The bill acknowledges PFAS contamination on farmland — but then stops at research,” said Pingree. “While further research is a critical component to addressing PFAS contamination on farmland, we also need to support farmers who have already lost their livelihoods, their markets, and their land.”

COMMENT

To state the obvious, what all this tells us is that when public (or even personal) health comes up against corporate health, corporate profits win.

Make America Healthy Again? American corporations, yes, American citizens? Not so much.

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