The Problem

Americans are being poisoned through their drinking water, their food, the air they breathe, their product packaging, and the personal care products they put on their skin. Forever chemicals are common in water systems across the country, with exposure linked to cancer, thyroid disease, immune system damage, reproductive harm, and developmental problems in children. Millions of lead service lines still deliver drinking water to American homes. Millions of Americans drink water with arsenic above federal safe levels, especially those on private wells and underfunded public systems. Endocrine disruptors (chemicals that interfere with the human hormonal system, found in plastics, cosmetics, shampoos, sunscreens, and industrial processes) circulate through consumer products with virtually no federal oversight. The country has no coordinated system for tracing a toxic chemical from the factory floor where it is made, through the products it enters, to the human body where it accumulates.

The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the primary federal law governing industrial chemicals, is narrow, case by case, and binary. It either bans a chemical outright or leaves it alone. It has produced very few outright bans. The EPA lacks the staff, the funding, and the authority to investigate or regulate toxic chemicals at scale.

Even where federal standards exist, enforcement is weak. There is no federal standard at all for the air communities breathe. OSHA regulates what workers breathe inside a factory; no one regulates what the family living down the street breathes every day. People who get sick from toxic exposure have to prove that a specific chemical caused their illness. Proving this is nearly impossible, as no one is exposed to only one chemical. Diseases like cancer, thyroid disease, and immune disorders often take years or decades to develop and have many possible causes. When studies cannot draw a straight line between a specific exposure and a specific illness, the finding gets written up as "no effect" rather than "we don't know."

The financial picture is worse. In early 2025, the federal government terminated hundreds of grants that were funding toxic cleanup in the hardest-hit communities. The federal funding programs that remain are tied to climate projects and exclude most toxic pollution. As of 2026, no federal money exists to help companies switch away from toxic chemicals. Cleaning up forever chemicals in drinking water alone will cost more than $50 billion over the next 20 years, and ratepayers are being left to pay most of it. The military faces its own forever-chemical crisis from firefighting foam. PFAS contaminates 80 percent of its sampled bases, cleanup is years behind schedule, and more than 15,000 lawsuits are pending.

No private investor will coordinate the remediation of tens of thousands of contaminated water systems, the industrial retooling of every manufacturer that uses toxic chemicals, and the cleanup of 1,343 Superfund sites, the most hazardous contaminated locations in the country.

The Mission

The Mission for America will eliminate the toxic contamination that poisons American communities and build the regulatory infrastructure to protect public health. The government will stop treating toxic chemicals as exceptions to be dealt with case by case. Instead, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation will finance the transition of every manufacturer away from toxic inputs, the EPA will trace chemicals from factory floor to human tissue, thousands of contaminated sites will be reclaimed, and the burden of proof will shift from civilians to manufacturers. The Mission delivers two forms of support in parallel. It backs the manufacturers transitioning away from toxic chemicals, and it provides healthcare, compensation, and remediation for the Americans already exposed to them. In the process, communities that have borne a disproportionate share of toxic exposure for generations will see that poisoning reversed and replaced with investment, jobs, and measurable health improvements.

Two kinds of money do this work, and the plan keeps them distinct. The loans, loan guarantees, and municipal bond purchases are recoverable RFC capital that comes back as it is repaid. The cleanup of sites that will never be worth their cleanup cost, the biomonitoring, the transparency dashboard, the pay-for-performance milestones, and the purchase guarantees are public spending, funded from a dedicated appropriation and the polluter-pays fee rather than booked as money that returns.

The country will acquire and remediate thousands of contaminated industrial sites that sit vacant in every American city. The new Remediation Finance Facility will acquire these sites, deploy contractors to clean the soil and groundwater, issue federal covenants that clear the federal cleanup liability from future owners, and sell the revitalized land to communities and developers.

Upstream, manufacturers will transition away from toxic chemicals. The RFC will lend manufacturers the capital to retool, on 30-year, low-interest terms. Small and mid-size manufacturers (chrome plating shops, textile finishers, dry cleaners, electronics manufacturers) will access lending through the full range of RFC financing tools, from direct loans to loan guarantees to partnerships with community lenders. The regulatory demand signal (what chemicals must be phased out and when) will be paired with the financial supply response (capital available to switch). No manufacturer will face a choice between compliance and survival.

The EPA will build an investigative branch that the United States has never had. Today, the country does not know how toxic chemicals travel from the factory floor to the inside of a human body. The branch will trace that journey, connecting wastewater surveillance, biomonitoring, and supply chain data into a forensic picture of how a toxin moves from source to body. The branch will also set the federal protocols and accreditation that contractor laboratories will use to run chemical safety testing at industrial scale. A new American chemical-safety-testing industry will form to do this work, creating tens of thousands of lab jobs across the country and putting American firms in position to test chemicals for the world.

Finally, the country will direct this entire mission first to the communities that have borne the heaviest toxic burden. The communities near Superfund sites, contaminated water systems, and industrial facilities that carry the heaviest contamination will receive formula-based RFC investment, not fragile grants vulnerable to political termination. These communities will see their contamination data tracked in real time on a National Toxin Transparency Dashboard. Their residents' chemical exposure will be measured through biomonitoring.

The regulatory framework shifts burden from regulators to manufacturers. The current Toxic Substances Control Act presumes chemicals are safe until regulators prove otherwise. That process takes years and rarely results in a ban. The European Union took the opposite approach: manufacturers must prove chemicals are safe before selling them, or the chemicals are restricted. The United States will adopt this model. Congress will authorize an EPA Investigative Branch that tracks toxic chemicals using the same forensic supply-chain and biomonitoring approach outlined above. Chemicals will be classified by risk tier, with binding phase-out schedules for the highest-risk categories. Manufacturers will be required to demonstrate safety or face restriction.

For contaminated land, the federal government will clean sites to high standards and return them to productive use. The RFC's Remediation Finance Facility will acquire brownfields, deploy workforce and technology to remove contamination, and certify each cleaned site to a rigorous federal standard. Once a site is certified, it can be redeveloped into housing, clean manufacturing, or community use. Banks will lend on it. Developers can build on it. Sale proceeds will fund further cleanup.

This investment will be formula-based, not discretionary. The formula weighs proximity to Superfund and brownfield sites, forever chemical and lead contamination in local water systems, air quality near industrial facilities, income levels, and health outcomes. Investment flows automatically to the communities that score highest. The formula, not an administrator or a political appointee, decides where the money goes. The formula is published, the data is public, and every American will see their community's contamination status on the National Toxin Transparency Dashboard.

The Priority Chemical Classes

Chemical Class	Common Sources	Current Federal Status	The American Plan
Active PFAS (forever chemicals)	Manufacturing, food packaging, firefighting foam, water-repellent coatings	Drinking water limits for six compounds, four of them proposed for repeal in 2026; most industrial uses unregulated	Risk-tier classification of all active PFAS; binding phase-out schedules for the highest-risk uses
Endocrine disruptors	Plastics, cosmetics, shampoos, sunscreens, industrial processes	BPA and phthalates partially regulated; hundreds of related compounds have no federal oversight	Risk classification and phase-out scheduling; safety data required before new uses are approved
Heavy metals (lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic)	Industrial discharge into water, soil, and air	Partial coverage across several federal laws; enforcement is uneven	Source elimination at the industrial process, paired with downstream cleanup
Air toxics	Industrial emissions from chemical plants, refineries, steel mills	Emissions limits on sources and workplace exposure limits for workers; no ambient community standard	Propose federal ambient community exposure standards; integrate real-time air monitoring with lifecycle tracing
Pesticides (light touch; see Farming chapter)	Agriculture, groundwater, food supply	Slow and narrow re-evaluation cycles; many pesticides banned abroad remain in U.S. use	Regulatory and financing framework set here; operational transition in the Farming chapter

Solutions

Solution 1: The Remediation Finance Facility

The United States has 1,343 sites officially classified as its most dangerous contaminated locations, plus tens of thousands of smaller contaminated former industrial properties known as brownfields. Only 6.5 percent of assessed brownfields ever reach full cleanup. These sites sit idle while the country faces a severe housing shortage. The bottleneck is not technology. It is money, coordination, and the legal tangle that keeps contaminated land out of use.

Here is how contaminated industrial sites become "black holes of vacancy." A corporation owns a former factory site. The soil is contaminated with heavy metals, solvents, or industrial chemicals. Federal law holds the owner responsible for the cleanup, which can run into tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Rather than pay for it, the corporate owner sits on the property, doing nothing, paying minimal taxes, and never officially acknowledging the contamination. The property cannot be sold, because any buyer would inherit the cleanup bill. It cannot be developed, because no lender will finance construction on contaminated land. It cannot be donated, because the cleanup responsibility follows the deed. The result is a vacant, toxic parcel surrounded by communities that bear the health costs while the land produces nothing.

The mechanism that unlocks contaminated land is straightforward: a rigorous federal cleanup paired with a formal guarantee that a new owner cannot be held responsible for pollution they did not cause. Without that guarantee, no buyer will touch a formerly contaminated parcel, and no bank will lend on it. With it, the land becomes buildable again. This does not let polluters walk away. The companies that created the contamination remain on the hook for cleanup costs and damages, pursued through federal enforcement of PFAS liability (Solution 4) and a reinstated polluter-pays fund (Solution 5).

The RFC as Remediation Finance Facility. The RFC will take this model national. The mechanism:

1. Acquire. Most of the time, the RFC does not have to force anything. Corporate owners transfer these properties willingly, because handing off the site sheds the carrying costs and the cleanup obligation they have been avoiding for years. For the rare owner who refuses, the Remediation Finance Facility's authorizing statute grants a narrow power to acquire a contaminated parcel through eminent domain, with the just compensation the Fifth Amendment requires. That compensation is low for a straightforward reason: the fair market value of heavily contaminated land, once the outstanding cleanup liability is subtracted, is at or near zero. Acquiring the parcel does not let the polluter off the hook. The company that caused the contamination stays liable for the cleanup whether or not it still owns the land.
2. Remediate. The RFC deploys cleanup contractors and workforce programs for the physical work: soil removal, groundwater treatment, lead abatement, chemical neutralization. The Workforce chapter's training pipeline supplies the workers. The broader waste management and cleanup sector (hundreds of thousands of workers today, with sector revenue growing much faster than headcount) will expand as the RFC creates sustained demand.
3. Certify. The federal government certifies each cleaned site to a rigorous standard and pairs the certification with a covenant not to sue and statutory bona-fide-purchaser protection, so a new owner inherits none of the federal cleanup liability. Federal law is only half the cloud, though. State cleanup laws and private lawsuits from neighbors or future occupants survive a federal covenant, so certification is granted only once the site actually meets a rigorous cleanup standard, because a genuinely clean site is what defeats those remaining claims, and it is coordinated with a parallel release of state liability. A fully cleaned and certified parcel becomes financeable.
4. Sell. The RFC sells revitalized land for green housing, clean manufacturing, or community use. The Buildings chapter needs land for abundant housing. The Industry chapter needs sites for clean factories. The Remediation Finance Facility provides both. Because cleaning up a neighborhood's contaminated land also raises its value, a defined share of the remediated parcels in the hardest-hit communities will be conveyed to community land trusts, tribal or municipal ownership, or affordable-housing set-asides, with a right of first refusal for existing residents, so the people who lived with the contamination are not priced out of the neighborhood once it is clean.
5. Recycle. The economics differ by site. For the large population of moderately contaminated brownfields, cleaned-up land is worth more than the acquisition and cleanup cost, so those sales recover the RFC's outlay and recycle it into the next site, and that tranche runs close to break-even. The most hazardous Superfund megasites are different. Their cleanup costs more than the land will ever be worth, so those are funded as public remediation, with the costs recovered where possible from the responsible parties and the polluter-pays fund rather than from the sale. The facility is a revolving fund on the brownfields and a public cleanup program on the worst sites.

Scale over grants. Existing federal brownfield grant programs are badly underfunded. Recent EPA allocations total only a few hundred million dollars per year. The Remediation Finance Facility pairs those grants with billions in RFC institutional capital and coordinated acquisition, cleanup, and resale.

What this delivers: A national mechanism for converting contaminated industrial land into productive use. A self-sustaining financial model that recycles cleanup investment through land sales. A federal certification system that eliminates the legal barrier keeping brownfields vacant. The brownfield conversion rate rising from 6.5 percent to above 50 percent within a decade.

Solution 2: The Investigative Branch

The United States does not know, in any systematic way, how toxic chemicals travel from the point of manufacture to the inside of a human body. Closing that gap requires a new federal institution with the authority to trace chemicals through the supply chain and to require manufacturers to prove their products are safe. The current federal framework is fragmented across EPA, FDA, and OSHA, and the TSCA's case-by-case approach rarely produces a ban.

The European framework, enacted in 2006 and known as REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals), flips the default. Instead of requiring the government to prove a chemical is dangerous before restricting it, REACH requires the manufacturer to prove the chemical is safe before selling it. Every chemical produced or imported above a set volume must be registered with a central European agency, along with data on its hazards and intended uses. Chemicals shown to pose serious risks (more than 250 so far, designated Substances of Very High Concern) land on a restriction list. Their highest-risk uses require specific authorization, and uses that cannot demonstrate a safe alternative can be denied outright. Widespread product reformulation across European supply chains has followed. That is concrete proof that a proactive, tiered, manufacturer-responsible system works at national scale.

A new EPA Investigative Branch. The Mission will establish a dedicated branch within the EPA for lifecycle tracing of toxic substances. This is not an expansion of existing programs. It is a new function: supply chain mapping, biomonitoring (regular measurement of chemical levels in human blood and tissue), wastewater surveillance, laboratory testing to identify and measure specific chemicals in samples, and enforcement. The branch will operate as a detective agency for chemical exposure, using modern science to follow toxins from source to body.

Federal protocols, contractor delivery. The EPA reviews on the order of a thousand new chemical submissions a year, and tens of thousands of chemicals already in commerce have never been fully assessed for safety. No federal agency can run testing at that scale internally. The Investigative Branch will set the protocols, the standards, and the accreditation, and contractor laboratories will do the testing at industrial scale. Toxicology is shifting toward cell-based methods, where scientists test chemicals on human cells grown in lab dishes and measure how those cells respond, though animal studies still do much of the regulatory work today. Automated equipment can run thousands of these cell-based tests at once, and the pharmaceutical industry already uses the same high-throughput screening at industrial scale in drug discovery. Every contractor lab will operate under a single federal accreditation regime, run the same battery of validated tests, report into the same federal database, and be subject to federal audit. Manufacturers seeking to bring a new chemical to market will pay accredited contractors to run the required testing under federal protocols, the same way drug developers pay accredited labs for clinical-trial work today. Those testing costs fall on manufacturers, and through prices on consumers, and the European experience shows they land hardest on small firms, so the Mission offsets them by having the RFC's small-manufacturer financing in Solution 3 cover testing and registration for qualifying firms, and by scaling the testing a chemical requires to its production volume so low-volume producers are not forced off the market. The registration and restriction framework will be built to World Trade Organization technical-barriers rules, applied identically to domestic and imported chemicals and grounded in the same published safety science, so it cannot be attacked as disguised protectionism. Once the protocols are operational, a safety determination that today takes years can be returned in weeks. A growing chemical-safety-testing industry is a feature of this design, not a bug, and American firms will be positioned to test chemicals for the world.

Wastewater surveillance as an early warning system. During the COVID pandemic, scientists proved that testing sewage could detect disease outbreaks in a community before hospitals saw the patients. The same principle applies to toxic chemicals. By routinely testing wastewater at treatment facilities, the Investigative Branch can identify which chemicals are present in a community, track how concentrations change over time, and trace contamination upstream to its industrial source. This turns every wastewater treatment plant in the country into a monitoring station. It is cheaper and faster than testing individual water supplies one at a time, and it catches chemicals that might not show up in drinking water tests because they enter the environment through industrial discharge, household products, or agricultural runoff.

How the tracing works. The Investigative Branch combines multiple data streams to build a complete picture of how a toxic chemical moves through the economy and into the human body. Wastewater testing identifies which chemicals are present in a community. Biomonitoring (blood and tissue sampling) measures which chemicals are accumulating in people. Manufacturing records and import data from Customs and Border Protection show where the chemicals are produced and which products they go into. Air quality monitors at industrial sites track what is being emitted. The branch connects these data streams: if a chemical shows up in a community's wastewater, the branch traces it back through the supply chain to the factory or import shipment that introduced it, identifies every product it entered, and measures whether the people using those products are accumulating it in their bodies. This is forensic work. It requires analytical chemists, supply chain investigators, and data scientists working together, not a reporting database that waits for companies to volunteer information.

"Ban or Make Safe." The branch will implement a REACH-style tiered regulatory framework. The core principle is burden-shift: industrial processes that introduce toxins into the environment must demonstrate safety or face phase-out. This is the opposite of the current approach, where regulators must prove harm before acting.

We do not wait for a body count. Burden-shift is paired with a second principle. When a chemical is in the highest-risk tier and there are credible signals of harm, the government does not wait for absolute proof before acting. It restricts the chemical while the science is completed, rather than letting people keep absorbing it through the years a definitive study takes. This is not a ban on anything with missing data. The protective default applies to the highest-risk uses and to genuine warning signs, not to the mere absence of information. Every such restriction comes with a defined study clock and an automatic date to reconsider it as evidence arrives, and before a phase-out takes effect the branch weighs whether a safe alternative exists and what the restriction does to price and supply, with a documented exception where no substitute is ready yet. The burden of scientific uncertainty should not fall on the people being exposed, but the Mission will not ban chemicals for which there is no evidence of harm.

Priority chemical classes. The five classes laid out in the Priority Chemical Classes table above are the Investigative Branch's initial focus, with the list expanding over time as biomonitoring and toxicology warrant.

Anti-regrettable-substitution protocol. One of the worst patterns in chemical regulation is replacing a banned chemical with a structurally similar compound that turns out to be equally harmful. BPA was replaced by BPS and BPF, which appear to have similar endocrine-disrupting properties. The Investigative Branch will require mandatory lifecycle assessment of any proposed chemical replacement before it is approved for commercial use. The goal is to solve the problem, not shift it.

What this delivers: A federal regulatory infrastructure that traces toxins from source to human exposure. The burden of proof shifted from regulators to manufacturers. A tiered classification system modeled on REACH, covering active PFAS, endocrine disruptors, heavy metals, air toxics, and pesticides. A protocol to prevent regrettable substitution. The regulatory demand signal that Solution 3's financing fulfills.

Solution 3: RFC Financing for Industrial Chemical Transition

Regulation without financing is a dead end. If the Investigative Branch bans a chemical and the manufacturer has no way to pay for an alternative process, the result is not a cleaner factory. It is a closed factory, or a manufacturer that moves overseas and ships the same product back. The RFC will open federal financing for every manufacturer that needs to switch away from toxic chemicals, at every scale.

RFC direct loans for large manufacturers. The RFC will provide 30-year, low-interest loans for the capital expenditure required to retool production lines, install new process equipment, and qualify non-toxic alternatives. These are large, expensive conversions. A chemical plant switching from a PFAS-based coating process to a fluorine-free alternative may need to replace reaction vessels, reformulate products, requalify with customers, and retrain operators.

Reaching small and mid-size manufacturers. Thousands of small and mid-size businesses use toxic chemicals in their operations: chrome plating shops, textile finishers, dry cleaners, electronics manufacturers, furniture makers. The RFC reaches them by drawing on its full toolkit and matching the instrument to the situation: direct loans for larger retooling projects, loan guarantees and participation financing that let community banks lend at affordable rates, loss reserves that de-risk private lending, bridge financing for equipment changeovers, and partnerships with CDFIs (Community Development Financial Institutions) that serve underserved communities. Leverage is used where it helps (one dollar of loss-reserve money can unlock 10 dollars of private lending) and direct capital is deployed where leverage is not enough. No small manufacturer is locked out because the wrong instrument was on offer.

Pay-for-performance contracts for safe alternatives. The RFC will use pay-for-performance contracts, in which the government sets the target (a safe alternative that meets specified performance and cost requirements) and pays only the companies that actually deliver it, to accelerate the development and commercialization of safe chemical alternatives. Multiple companies can compete for the same contract. Those that deliver working replacements for high-priority toxic chemicals receive milestone payments as each benchmark is met. Those that fail to deliver receive nothing. Development risk sits with the companies best positioned to manage it, not with the taxpayer. Priority research and commercialization areas include:

• Safe replacements for PFAS in industrial and consumer applications
• Biological and integrated pest management alternatives to synthetic pesticides
• Non-toxic packaging and processing materials for the food and beverage industries, including PFAS-free non-stick coatings for food-contact equipment, safer sanitizers, and alternatives to synthetic preservatives and additives
• Green chemistry approaches to industrial processes that currently rely on toxic inputs
• Advanced filtration and destruction technologies for existing contamination

The chicken-and-egg, solved. The critical insight is timing. If you ban the chemical first and finance the alternative later, you bankrupt the manufacturer. If you finance the alternative first and ban the chemical later, nobody switches because the toxic process is still cheaper. The Mission does both at once. The Investigative Branch sets binding phase-out schedules in Solution 2, and the RFC provides the financing to meet them. The regulatory demand signal and the financial supply response launch together.

No worker left behind by a phase-out. The chapter promises that no manufacturer faces a choice between compliance and survival. Its workers get the same promise. Some plants will still close or move overseas rather than convert, and the people who worked there cannot be left to absorb the loss. Any worker displaced by a toxic-chemical phase-out gets first priority and paid training into the remediation, lab-testing, and clean-manufacturing jobs this Mission creates, with wage and health-care bridging in the meantime, coordinated through the Workforce Mission. The transition off toxic chemicals is built to move workers into the new work, not out of a paycheck.

What this delivers: A federal financing program for every manufacturer that needs to transition away from toxic chemicals, from the largest chemical companies to the smallest plating shops. Pay-for-performance contracts that accelerate safe alternative development. The supply-side complement to Solution 2's regulatory demand signal. A framework where no manufacturer faces a choice between compliance and survival.

Solution 4: The PFAS Crisis (Forever Chemicals)

PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of thousands of synthetic chemicals used in nonstick coatings, waterproofing, firefighting foam, and food packaging. They do not break down in nature or in the human body, which is why they are commonly known as "forever chemicals." Exposure is linked to cancer, thyroid disease, compromised immune function, reproductive harm, and developmental damage in children. An estimated 176 million Americans drink tap water contaminated with PFAS. Thousands of public water systems need treatment upgrades to remove it, at a total cost of more than $50 billion over 20 years that is currently being passed to ratepayers.

The Department of Defense faces its own PFAS crisis. AFFF (aqueous film-forming foam), the military's primary firefighting agent for decades, is heavily laced with PFAS. PFAS contaminates 80 percent of sampled DoD locations, more than 15,000 lawsuits are pending against the foam manufacturers, and the military has twice won extensions of its congressional phase-out deadline, now October 1, 2026, and is on course to miss that one too.

Restore and codify the 2024 standard. In 2024, the EPA set the first enforceable federal limits on PFAS in drinking water, covering six of the most-studied compounds plus rules for mixtures. In May 2026, the Trump administration proposed repealing the limits for four of the six, keeping only those for PFOA and PFOS, and letting water systems push the compliance deadline from 2029 out to 2031. If that repeal is finalized, the protections cannot be restored by signature alone, so on Day One the new EPA is directed to immediately reopen rulemaking to restore the full six-PFAS standard, with a fresh compliance deadline set from the start of the administration. Congress then passes the standard into law, so a future administration cannot undo the protection simply by rewriting the regulation. As the Investigative Branch in Solution 2 identifies new priority PFAS, Congress adds them to the same list. A rule a new administrator can dismantle is not really a rule. A law is.

RFC financing for municipal PFAS remediation. The RFC will purchase municipal water system bonds at below-market rates, giving cities and counties access to cheap capital for PFAS treatment plant upgrades. For small and rural systems, the RFC will lend directly through state revolving funds and CDFIs (Community Development Financial Institutions, mission-driven lenders that serve underserved communities). The RFC's cheap capital lowers the financing cost of PFAS treatment. Then the money recovered from the manufacturers that caused the contamination, through settlements like those already reached with 3M and DuPont, together with the reinstated polluter-pays fee, shifts the remaining principal off local water bills and onto those companies, with RFC lending bridging the years until the recoveries land. The Toxins chapter owns the PFAS regulatory and financial framework. The Water chapter owns the municipal pipe and filtration infrastructure. This chapter finances the compliance, and the Water chapter builds the systems.

Private wells, not just public systems. Every water-financing tool above serves public and municipal systems, but more than 40 million Americans draw their water from private wells that no utility can bond against and that sit outside the federal drinking-water standards entirely. Many of those wells carry PFAS, arsenic, or nitrate. The Mission covers them directly, funding free well testing, point-of-entry and point-of-use treatment, and, where a well cannot be made safe, replacement or connection to a water main, delivered through counties, CDFIs, and tribal utilities. The lead-service-line and arsenic work for these households is built jointly with the Water chapter.

Destruction over filtration. Current PFAS treatment relies overwhelmingly on filtration technologies: granular activated carbon (GAC) and ion exchange resins. These work, but they concentrate PFAS rather than destroying it. The contaminated material then has to be disposed of, creating a secondary waste problem. Destruction technologies are the real solution. Processes like electrochemical oxidation and supercritical water oxidation, which uses water at extreme temperature and pressure, permanently break the carbon-fluorine bonds at the core of every PFAS molecule. Companies like Oxyle, Axine Water Technologies, Gradiant, and Aclarity are developing commercial-scale destruction systems, but the technology is not yet widely deployed.

The RFC will create anchor demand for destruction technology through pay-for-performance contracts, paying the companies that deliver working destruction systems at specified cost and throughput targets. The RFC will also issue Advanced Market Commitments guaranteeing minimum purchase volumes for PFAS destruction equipment, giving manufacturers the confidence to invest in production capacity. This is the same demand-creation mechanism the Industry chapter uses for clean cement and clean steel. PFAS destruction is still early-stage and not yet widely deployed, but the cleanup market it will serve is large and growing, on the order of the $50 billion-plus in drinking-water compliance costs this chapter already cites. The Mission will ensure a growing share of that spending goes to destruction, not just concentration.

Cleanup of DoD bases. The military has pushed back the congressional deadline to stop using PFAS-laced firefighting foam twice already, so the Mission sets and enforces a firm new completion date measured from Day One. Base cleanup will be a Pentagon operation, funded out of the military budget. The companies that made and sold the foam will be pursued for damages under existing federal environmental law, offsetting the cost to the taxpayer. Where contamination has spread beyond base boundaries into surrounding communities, the DOD will also finance the cleanup there.

What this delivers: The 2024 PFAS drinking water standard restored in full and codified into statute, covering all six originally regulated chemicals plus the mixture hazard index, with the compliance timeline reset. Financing for every water system that needs PFAS treatment upgrades, and a direct program for the 40 million Americans on private wells. A market for PFAS destruction technology, not just filtration. DoD AFFF phase-out enforced and financed. The PFAS funding gap shifted off ratepayers and onto polluters through manufacturer recoveries and the polluter-pays fee, bridged by RFC capital rather than fragile grant programs.

Solution 5: Presumptive Response for Exposed Communities

The Mission will finally provide wrap-around support for the individuals and communities who have been poisoned by toxic chemicals. Federal law has offered this kind of care for decades, but only to veterans. The Agent Orange precedent established that individuals who served in a designated exposed area are presumed exposed without individual proof, and those who develop specific linked conditions qualify automatically for federally funded care and compensation. The framework has since been extended to 9/11 first responders (Zadroga Act), burn pit veterans (PACT Act), Camp Lejeune survivors, and nuclear test victims. Civilians poisoned by industrial contamination will finally be added to that list.

Presumed exposure by geography and event. Residents of communities designated as exposed (Superfund NPL proximity, documented industrial release, prolonged ambient contamination above health thresholds, disaster events like major derailments or industrial fires) are presumed exposed. No individual sampling, no blood test, no personal proof required. Designations are formula-based and published, using the same data infrastructure as the Investigative Branch's monitoring network.

Exposure is not only residential. Farmworkers, among the most chemically exposed people in the country, qualify on the basis of documented occupational and agricultural exposure, even though the operational pesticide transition itself lives in the Farming chapter. So do people who can document harm from a nationally distributed consumer product rather than a nearby site, so that someone poisoned by what was on a shelf is not shut out because no Superfund site sits next door.

Expert-committee list of linked conditions. A standing scientific panel, housed at the National Academies or the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), maintains and updates lists of health conditions with sufficient evidence of linkage to specific chemical exposures. The lists are living documents, revised as biomonitoring and epidemiology accumulate. Residents in presumed-exposed communities who are diagnosed with listed conditions qualify for benefits automatically.

Healthcare, compensation, and relocation. Qualifying residents receive federally funded healthcare for the linked condition, disability compensation where warranted, and, where exposure is ongoing, relocation assistance delivered up front rather than reimbursed on receipts weeks later. Relocation benefits carry standard anti-fraud verification.

Right to know and recall. Where the Investigative Branch identifies a priority chemical in a consumer product, that product carries a disclosure label, its presence is surfaced on the National Toxin Transparency Dashboard, and products already on shelves during a multi-year phase-out are subject to recall and medical-monitoring requirements, so households are not left unknowingly using a product the government has flagged.

Make the polluter-pays fees permanent and broaden them. The original Superfund taxes on chemical and petroleum producers funded cleanup for years, then lapsed in 1995. Congress has since partially brought them back. The chemical excise tax on roughly 42 feedstock chemicals returned in 2022 and the petroleum excise tax in 2023, but both are set to expire in 2031, and the separate Superfund corporate environmental income tax was never restored. The Mission will make the excise taxes permanent, raise the rates, extend them to the Investigative Branch's priority chemicals including PFAS, and restore the lapsed corporate income tax. Because the fee falls on a broad base of chemical and petroleum feedstock production rather than only on the chemicals being phased out, its revenue does not vanish as those phase-outs succeed. The proceeds capitalize the Presumptive Response Trust, which pays for healthcare, compensation, relocation, and community information services, and supplement RFC remediation financing. The trust's yearly payouts are capped to the revenue it takes in, with a standing federal backstop for years when claims spike. Polluters pay, and the trust does not depend on annual appropriations.

The trust supplements private litigation. It does not replace it. A presumptive trust funded by a Superfund-style fee is the kind of mechanism industry can plan around, and that legibility is part of what makes it work at scale. Some industry voices will press for the fee to come bundled with a liability shield that closes off individual lawsuits in exchange for the contribution. The Mission rejects that trade. Communities that have been poisoned want the apology and the courtroom accountability, not just the check, and they are right to want both. The trust runs alongside private litigation as a faster, no-fault parallel path: residents in designated communities get healthcare, compensation, and relocation up front, without having to prove individual causation, while their full right to sue contributing corporations remains intact. The fee buys polluters a predictable cost of doing business. It does not buy them immunity.

Tribal nations decide for themselves. Native lands carry uranium tailings, abandoned mines, PFAS, and Superfund sites at above-average rates, and tribal drinking-water systems are among the most underfunded in the country. Tribes are a named, co-equal partner in this Mission, engaged government to government. Tribal lands and water systems are an explicit priority category, funded through a channel that flows directly to tribes rather than through the states, and no presumed-exposure designation or Remediation Finance Facility action on tribal land proceeds without that nation's consent.

What this delivers: A federal response mechanism for civilian communities exposed to toxic chemicals, built on five decades of proven veteran legislation. Presumed exposure and linked-condition criteria that remove the impossible burden of individual causation proof. Healthcare, compensation, and relocation funded by a reinstated polluter-pays fee, not annual appropriations. A standing scientific panel that keeps the linked-conditions list current. Civilians receive the same benefit of the doubt the country has long extended to veterans.

Presidential Leadership

During the campaign, the president will stand in a community where the water has not been drinkable for a decade and tell the country the truth: Americans are being poisoned in their own homes, and the federal government has the tools to stop it. The country will build that framework now. It will finance the industrial transition away from toxic chemicals. It will clean up the contaminated sites that sit vacant in every American city. And it will put the communities that have been poisoned the longest at the front of the line.

During the transition, the president-elect's team will draft the legislative package so it lands on the Hill in the first 100 days. The team will name the EPA Administrator, the new Investigative Branch director, the head of the Remediation Finance Facility, and the director of the Presumptive Response Trust. The transition team will draft the Day One executive orders on PFAS phase-out timelines for the EPA and the Department of Defense, ready for signature at inauguration. The team will open preliminary conversations with governors, mayors, and tribal governments in the places with the worst PFAS and lead contamination about the first tranche of RFC municipal bond purchases, and with community organizations in the highest-priority exposed communities about the first presumptive-exposure designations.

On Day One, the president signs a series of executive orders to launch the mission. The EPA is directed to begin classifying the five priority chemical classes outlined earlier (forever chemicals, endocrine disruptors, heavy metals, air toxics, and pesticides) under its existing statutory authority. The EPA is directed to begin rulemaking to bring back the 2024 PFAS drinking water standard. The military is directed to complete its overdue PFAS firefighting-foam phase-out on a firm new schedule, enforced through federal procurement and liability. The Remediation Finance Facility is chartered as a new function of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, with authority to acquire contaminated industrial sites. And the Department of Health and Human Services, together with the federal scientific agencies, begins scoping the first presumed-exposure community designations and the first list of health conditions linked to chemical exposure, so the Presumptive Response Trust can begin operating the moment Congress authorizes it, with any designation on tribal land made only on that nation's consent.

The full legislative package goes to Congress in the first 100 days: the EPA Investigative Branch charter, the REACH-style framework that shifts the burden of proof onto manufacturers, the Remediation Finance Facility authorization, the formula-based worst-first investment authority, the federal covenant-not-to-sue system, the ambient community air-toxics standard, the Presumptive Response Trust for exposed communities, and a permanent, broadened reinstatement of the Superfund polluter-pays fee.

What the 10-Year Mission Delivers

Foundations by Year 1 (2030)

• EPA Investigative Branch established and staffing up, with REACH-style classification launched on the five highest-priority chemical classes
• Classification work begun under existing TSCA Section 6 authority, launched by Day One executive order
• RFC direct loan program for industrial chemical transition open and processing applications from large manufacturers
• RFC direct lending through community lenders for small manufacturer transitions
• 2024 PFAS drinking water standard restored through reopened EPA rulemaking; Congress codifies the full six-PFAS standard and mixture hazard index into statute, with a fresh compliance deadline set from Day One
• RFC purchasing municipal water system bonds for PFAS remediation in the first tranche of highest-contamination systems
• First pay-for-performance contracts issued for PFAS destruction technology
• Remediation Finance Facility acquiring its first portfolio of contaminated industrial sites
• Formula-based worst-first investment beginning to flow to the first cohort of most affected communities
• National Toxin Transparency Dashboard launched with existing data; Investigative Branch data integration underway
• DoD AFFF phase-out ordered and base remediation financing put in place
• Presumptive Response Trust authorized by Congress; first presumed-exposure community designations and initial linked-conditions list published; scientific panel seated
• Superfund polluter-pays fee reinstated; revenue beginning to capitalize the Presumptive Response Trust

Scale Up by Year 5 (2034)

• Investigative Branch has classified hundreds of SVHCs with binding phase-out schedules for the highest-risk categories
• Industrial chemical transition underway across major manufacturing sectors; first production lines retooled to non-toxic processes
• PFAS destruction technology deployed at commercial scale, driven by RFC Advanced Market Commitments
• Municipal PFAS remediation underway in thousands of water systems; costs declining as bulk procurement and destruction tech mature
• Remediation Finance Facility has acquired and begun cleanup on hundreds of brownfield sites; first parcels sold to developers
• Federal covenant-not-to-sue system operational, unlocking private investment in remediated land
• Biomonitoring surveys showing measurable declines in chemical exposure levels in priority communities
• Formula-based worst-first investment reaching the 100 most affected communities, with cleanup and monitoring underway in each
• DoD AFFF phase-out fully enforced across installations; base remediation in active cleanup on funded timelines
• Remediation workforce training programs producing thousands of advanced-tech operators annually
• Presumptive Response Trust delivering healthcare, compensation, and relocation assistance to qualifying residents across dozens of designated exposed communities; linked-conditions list updated annually as evidence accumulates
• Ambient community exposure standards proposed by the Investigative Branch for the highest-priority air toxics

The Mission Delivered by Year 10 (2039)

• REACH-equivalent regulatory framework fully operational. The United States now requires chemical makers to prove a substance is safe before it reaches people, the same standard it has long applied to new drugs, and regulates toxic chemicals as rigorously as any country in the world
• Active PFAS in the highest-risk categories phased out of commercial use; remaining uses on binding phase-out schedules
• All water systems compliant with the restored and statutorily codified PFAS standard, or in funded compliance pathways
• DoD AFFF contamination sites remediated or in active cleanup with funded timelines
• Brownfield conversion rate above 50 percent; thousands of formerly contaminated sites returned to productive use as housing, clean manufacturing, and community space
• Industrial chemical transition substantially complete for the highest-priority toxic processes; RFC loans performing and beginning to be repaid
• The most-contaminated communities showing measurable, biomonitored reductions in toxic exposure
• National Toxin Transparency Dashboard comprehensive and current, covering every water system, air quality monitor, and contaminated site in the country
• Civilians exposed to toxic chemicals receive the same presumptive-response framework the country has long extended to veterans, 9/11 responders, and other federally recognized exposure populations; Presumptive Response Trust operating as a durable, polluter-funded institution
• Ambient community exposure standards in force for priority air toxics, closing the gap between workplace and community regulation
• The United States has shifted from a reactive, case-by-case approach to toxic chemicals to a proactive, lifecycle-tracing, manufacturer-responsible regulatory framework