WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is dropping plans to allow continued use of the last type of asbestos legally allowed in U.S. manufacturing after an outcry from asbestos opponents.

The Environmental Protection Agency said in a court filing that it now will defend the Biden administration’s ban of chrysotile asbestos, which is used in products such as brake blocks and sheet gaskets.

The carcinogenic chemical has been mostly phased out in the United States, but last year, the agency under former President Joe Biden sought to finish the decades long fight with a comprehensive ban. The EPA in 2024 said “exposure to asbestos is known to cause lung cancer, mesothelioma, ovarian cancer and laryngeal cancer, and it is linked to more than 40,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.”

The EPA had said in a federal appeals court filing last month that parts of the ban may have gone “beyond what is necessary to eliminate the unreasonable risk” and that other options such as requiring workplace protection measures might eliminate that risk. The agency said it planned a roughly 30-month process to write new rules.

Yet industry associations already have filed suit against the Biden administration’s ban. So has the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, which fights asbestos-related diseases and believes the ban isn’t as airtight as it needs to be. The nonprofit opposed pausing the case so the EPA could revisit the rule, arguing that any new proposal would likely be met by lawsuits, too.

Lynn Ann Dekleva, the agency’s deputy assistant administrator of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, said in a filing that the EPA won’t go through a process to rewrite the rule.

The EPA now says the Biden administration “failed to adequately protect chemical industry workers from health risks posed by chrysotile asbestos.”

“To remedy the previous Administration’s approach, we notified the court that we intend to reconsider the applicability of interim workplace protection requirements during the replacement of asbestos gaskets for all workers,” EPA press secretary Brigit Hirsch said in a statement.

Chrysotile asbestos is found in products such as brake blocks, asbestos diaphragms and sheet gaskets and was banned under the Toxic Substances Control Act, which was broadened in 2016. The Biden administration said it moved forward with a ban after decades of inadequate protections and delays in setting better standards.