Iowa has the second-highest rate of new cancer diagnoses in the entire country. That's not a talking point — it's the state's actual public health emergency, and researchers have been pretty clear about what's feeding it.

Mariannette Miller-Meeks is a doctor. She should understand this better than almost anyone in Congress. Instead, an analysis of her campaign finance records shows something else entirely.

$64,000 from companies tied to pollution

The Iowa Independent reviewed Federal Election Commission filings and found that since Miller-Meeks joined the House in 2021, she has taken $64,000 across nearly 30 donations from companies that have faced lawsuits, settlements, or fines over pollution and their products. The individual checks ran from $1,000 to $5,000.

The donors include PACs connected to:

• Bayer — $5,000 since 2022
• 3M — PFAS contamination
• DuPont — PFAS contamination
• Tyson Foods — water pollution
• Kraft-Heinz — wastewater violations
• Green Plains — water pollution permit violations
• Cargill — wastewater spills into waterways

Bayer's own reporting says it has faced roughly 181,000 lawsuits over glyphosate-based products made by its subsidiary Monsanto. A company spokesperson said last year that Bayer has paid out more than $10 billion in settlements, without admitting fault.

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup. Researchers across a number of studies have found that exposure raises cancer risk in exposed people by about 41%. (The EPA has published its own contrary finding that "there are no risks of concern to human health when glyphosate is used in accordance with its current label.")

A spokesperson for Miller-Meeks did not respond to a request for comment.

What's actually in Iowa's water

This isn't a hypothetical concern for people back home.

A report from the Iowa Environmental Council and the Harkin Institute at Drake University identified the environmental cancer risk factors present at high levels in Iowa: pesticides, PFAS "forever chemicals," nitrates, and radon.

The numbers on PFAS alone are hard to read past:

• PFAS have been detected in 94% of surface waters in Iowa
• And in 30% of the state's groundwater sources

The report notes that the most common way the public is exposed to PFAS is through drinking water — and that current monitoring may be significantly underestimating how much Iowans are actually taking in.

So: a state with the country's second-highest cancer rate, forever chemicals in nearly all of its surface water, and a congresswoman collecting checks from the companies whose names appear on the PFAS lawsuits.

Then she voted to make it easier

Taking the money is one thing. What Miller-Meeks did with her votes is the part that should end the argument.

She cheered the 2023 Supreme Court ruling that gutted wetlands protections. The Court narrowed the Clean Water Act to cover only wetlands with "a continuous surface connection" to other protected waters — knocking a huge share of American wetlands out from under federal protection. Miller-Meeks and other House Republicans had pushed the Court to do exactly that.

Her reaction on social media:

"This is a major victory for private property rights, rural America, farmers, and homeowners."

Ben Jealous, then executive director of the Sierra Club, saw the same decision differently:

"Access to clean, safe, reliable water is a fundamental human right, and it is deeply disappointing that the Court has sided with polluters and the industry to roll back the clock on clean water protections. As a result of this decision, millions of Americans will have less safe drinking water than the generation before them."

Then she voted to shrink the Clean Water Act again. On December 11, 2025, Miller-Meeks voted yes on final passage of the PERMIT Act — a bill that redefines "navigable waters" to strip protection from waste treatment systems, streams that only flow after rain, prior converted cropland, and groundwater. The bill went to the Senate, where it has not moved.

Iowa's environmental groups had warned her delegation about this in an August 2025 letter. The entire Iowa delegation voted for it anyway. From the letter:

"If passed, the bill would gut critical clean water protections by weakening oversight and shifting the burden of pollution onto communities already saddled with the high costs of providing safe drinking water from nitrate-contaminated source waters. Additionally, due to the federal nature of this bill it would allow polluters in neighboring states discharge upstream of Iowa, putting the burden of that pollution and costs on Iowans."

Read that last part again. The bill she voted for would let polluters in other states dump upstream of Iowa — and stick Iowans with the cleanup bill and the health consequences.

Who pays for this

The cost of weaker water rules doesn't disappear. It moves.

When federal protection goes away, somebody still has to get nitrates and PFAS out of the drinking water — and that somebody is a small-town Iowa water utility, funded by the people who drink from it. The polluter saves money on a permit. The town raises its water rates. The family pays twice: once on the utility bill, once in the oncology waiting room.

That is the actual trade Miller-Meeks made. Bayer, 3M, DuPont, Tyson, Cargill and the rest got a member of Congress who calls narrowing the Clean Water Act "a major victory." Iowa got the second-highest cancer rate in America and PFAS in 94% of its surface water.

A doctor should know better

The hardest thing to explain here is that Miller-Meeks isn't a lawyer or a businessman who wandered into an environmental issue. She's an eye doctor. She spent a career in medicine before she got to Congress in 2021.

She knows what a carcinogen is. She knows what it means when a state posts the second-worst cancer rate in the country and researchers point at the water. And she voted, twice, to make the rules protecting that water weaker — after taking $64,000 from the companies that benefit.

Iowans are allowed to ask her why. Her office didn't answer the reporter who asked. Maybe voters will get a better response.

Source

Reporting by Jonah Beleckis for The Iowa Independent. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP Images.