On June 30, 2026, the Environmental Protection Agency approved a weedkiller called trifludimoxazin for use on many crops, including corn, wheat, oats, soybeans, oranges, apples, peanuts and almonds.
Trifludimoxazin is a PFAS compound — one of the "forever chemicals," synthetic compounds whose carbon-fluorine bonds resist breaking down for years or decades. On August 28, 2026, three environmental organizations sued the administration in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, arguing the EPA approved it without fully assessing the risk.
What the studies found
In animal testing, trifludimoxazin produced thyroid tumors, liver damage and harm to the reproductive system at high doses.
Bill Freese of the Center for Food Safety, one of the groups that filed the petition, described the chemical this way:
"Trifludimoxazin is a likely human carcinogen that belongs to a family of weedkillers that also causes reproductive harm, birth defects, and neurological deficits in animal studies."
Nathan Donley of the Center for Biological Diversity was blunter:
"It's unconscionable, immoral, and illegal."
The third plaintiff is the Pesticide Action & Agroecology Network North America.
This is not a narrow approval
Corn, wheat, soybeans and apples are not specialty products. They are staples — the corn and soy that run through most of the processed food supply, the wheat in bread, and a fruit that gets eaten raw, by children, often unpeeled.
And they are not the whole list. The residue limits the EPA set for trifludimoxazin are written by crop group, not by crop: all citrus, all pome fruit, all tree nuts, peanuts, every cereal grain except rice.
Approving a forever chemical across that much of the food supply is not a limited pilot. It is a decision to put a persistent, likely carcinogenic compound into the ordinary food supply and into the soil and groundwater of the farm belt.
"Forever" is the operative word. Trifludimoxazin "takes years to decades to break down," and what it breaks down into is more PFAS — "long-lived, PFAS byproducts," as the groups suing put it. Unlike a pesticide that is gone by the end of a season, this one is still there. The exposure does not end when the spraying stops.
The legal question, and the other one
The lawsuit's claim is that the EPA never finished the work. The agency "refused to conduct a cumulative risk assessment of trifludimoxazin and other PPO inhibitors as required by law," the groups say, and never assessed "the cancer risk to farmworkers who use the pesticide or to people exposed to trifludimoxazin-contaminated food or water." That is the legal question a court will decide. The broader one is why an agency whose job is to assess that risk approved a likely human carcinogen for most of the American food supply without finishing the work.
What the record shows
The EPA approved trifludimoxazin, a PFAS "forever chemical" that caused thyroid tumors, liver damage and reproductive harm in animal studies, for use on many crops including corn, wheat, oats, soybeans, oranges, apples, peanuts and almonds on June 30, 2026. Two months later, the Center for Food Safety, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Pesticide Action & Agroecology Network North America petitioned the 9th Circuit to overturn the approval, arguing the agency never fully assessed the risk. The compound takes years to decades to break down and leaves long-lived PFAS behind when it does, and the crops it was approved for are among the most widely grown and eaten in the country.
Sources
'Unconscionable, Immoral, and Illegal': Lawsuit Targets Trump Approval of Cancer-Causing Forever Chemical — Common Dreams, August 31, 2026.
Trump Administration Sued for Approving 'Forever Chemical' Pesticide Trifludimoxazin — Center for Biological Diversity, August 31, 2026.
Trifludimoxazin; Pesticide Tolerances — Federal Register, May 17, 2021.
