Chemical industry lobbyists have long pushed the government to adopt a less stringent approach to gauging the cancer risk from chemicals, one that would help ease regulations on companies that make or use them.

The chemical industry finally got its wish.

Industry lobbyists have long pushed the federal government to adopt a less stringent approach to gauging the cancer risk from chemicals, one that would help ease regulations on companies that make or use them.

Last week, in a highly unusual move, the Environmental Protection Agency embraced that approach in announcing that it is revising an assessment of the health dangers posed by formaldehyde, a widespread pollutant that causes far more cancer than any other chemical in the air. Working on that effort were two of those former industry insiders, who are now top EPA officials.

The proposed revisions to the assessment, released Wednesday, nearly double the amount of formaldehyde considered safe to inhale compared with the version that was finalized in the last weeks of the Biden administration. Even that older assessment significantly underestimated the dangers posed by formaldehyde, a ProPublica investigation published last year found.