Wednesday, November 13, 2019
Experts Warn This Industry-Backed Attack on Science at EPA Would Be Among 'Most Damaging' of All Trump-Era Policies
"Let's call this what it
is: an excuse to abandon clean air, clean water, and chemical safety
rules."
Tuesday, November 12, 2019
Advocates of strong public
health protections responded with alarm to a Monday night New York Times report on
the Environmental Protection Agency's new draft proposal for the Trump
administration's drawn-out effort to dramatically scale back the scientific
research that can be used in government policymaking.
"Let's call this what it
is: an excuse to abandon clean air, clean water, and chemical safety
rules," said Andrew
Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of
Concerned Scientists. "This is a blatant removal of well-established
science from the policymaking process, to the benefit of polluters and at a
huge cost to the marginalized communities who face the biggest threat from
pollution."
The draft proposal (pdf), titled "Strengthening
Transparency in Regulatory Science," would force the agency to only
consider research that discloses all raw data, including private medical files.
It follows a similar proposal unveiled by
former EPA chief Scott Pruitt in April 2018 that provoked nearly 600,000
comments from the public, the majority of which were critical.
Pruitt's successor as EPA
administrator, ex-lobbyist Andrew
Wheeler, delayed the prior proposal, purportedly to consider concerns from
environmental and public health groups. However, the new version "headed
for White House review and obtained by The New York Times shows that
the administration intends to widen its scope, not narrow it."
According to the Times:
The measure would make it more
difficult to enact new clean air and water rules because many studies detailing
the links between pollution and disease rely on personal health information
gathered under confidentiality agreements. And, unlike a version of the
proposal that surfaced in early 2018, this one could apply retroactively to
public health regulations already in place.
"This means the EPA can
justify rolling back rules or failing to update rules based on the best
information to protect public health and the environment, which means more
dirty air and more premature deaths," said Paul Billings, senior vice
president for advocacy at the American Lung Association.
Public health experts warned
that studies that have been used for decades—to show, for example, that mercury
from power plants impairs brain development, or that lead in paint dust is tied
to behavioral disorders in children—might be inadmissible when existing
regulations come up for renewal.
One key example of scientific
research that wouldn't be permissible for government use under the EPA proposal
is a 1993 Harvard University project known as the Six Cities study, which
connected air pollution to premature deaths and subsequently informed
nationwide air quality policies.
"A separate internal EPA
memo viewed by The New York Times shows that the agency had
considered, but ultimately rejected, an option that might have allowed
foundational studies like Harvard's Six Cities study to continue to be
used," the newspaper reported Monday.
As journalist Emily
Atkin put
it in her HEATED newsletter Tuesday: "In other words,
air pollution denial is becoming U.S. policy for the first time." She
noted that this proposal "is a key priority of Steve Milloy, a former tobacco
and fossil fuel industry lobbyist who served on Trump's EPA transition
team."
Atkin recalled speaking with
Stan Glantz, a professor of tobacco control at the University of California San
Francisco, when reporting on Pruitt's version of the proposal last year. The
tobacco industry, Glantz told her, "realized that, rather than fighting
every single study that came out linking them to cancer, if they could get the
rules of evidence changed, they wouldn't have to worry about it."
The Times report on
Wheeler's revived and expanded version elicited impassioned warnings and
critiques on Twitter:
An EPA spokesperson told
the Times in an emailed statement that "the agency does not
discuss draft, deliberative documents, or actions still under internal and
interagency review." Wheeler, for his part, said in September that
"we're moving forward [with the proposal] to ensure that the science
supporting agency decisions is transparent and available for evaluation by the
public and stakeholders."
UCS's Rosenberg said Tuesday
that "Wheeler's claims about the need for these restrictions don't pass
the laugh test. Everything about this rule makes a mockery of the EPA's claim
that this change is necessary for transparency. This rule was driven by
political operatives. It's being rushed through with minimal opportunity for
public comment. And it introduces pointless hurdles and delays into the
policymaking process that will compromise the federal government's ability to
protect the public."
"The Trump administration
has a clear pattern of sidelining science and undermining public health
protections," he added. "If this rule is finalized, it would be one
of the most damaging and far-reaching policy changes enacted by the
administration. It would put the entire enterprise of developing science-based
public health safeguards at risk."
The Times report
came ahead of a Wednesday morning hearing planned by
the Democrat-controlled U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Committee
about the Trump administration's effort to restrict the use of scientific
research in federal policymaking, which will feature testimony
from various scientists and public health experts.
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