Making problems disappear by destroying research
George Orwell would be proud
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's decision Friday night July 18 to eliminate its scientific research arm drew horrified responses from public
health experts and climate advocates, who warned that the Trump administration
is targeting the foundation of the department's work to shield Americans from
hazardous chemicals, toxic pollution, and drinking water contaminants.
"This is grim news," said Adam
Gaffney, an ICU doctor at the Cambridge Health Alliance. "For decades, the
EPA's Office of Research and Development has produced the science that
underlies the regulations and technologies that protect us from innumerable
hazards."
"You can't put a number on the lives that it has saved.
Now Trump and Zeldin are killing it," Gaffney added, referring to the
president's handpicked EPA administrator.
Since taking charge at the EPA, Lee Zeldin has moved aggressively to implement President Donald Trump's executive orders aimed at gutting the agency's staff and freeing oil and gas corporations from regulatory restraints.
The agency will soon have 12,448 employees, after starting
the year with more than 16,000. Staffers at the targeted research office—which
had more than 800 employees as of earlier that week—reportedly learned of what
one public health expert called "the
ultimate Friday night purge" through the EPA's public press release.
In the statement, Zeldin said the elimination of the Office of
Research and Development would help "ensure the agency is better equipped
than ever to deliver on our core mission of protecting human health and the
environment."
But scientists said the closure of the research office would
have the opposite impact, leaving the agency's ability to protect the
environment and public health badly compromised.
Gretchen Goldman, president of the Union of Concerned
Scientists, said that "it is absolutely devastating that
Trump officials would shut down this office in its entirety."
"Science, data, and research underpin all of EPA's
work, from protections from harmful chemicals to air quality standards to safe
drinking water. It's hard to see how EPA can fulfill its mission without its
scientific research arm," said Goldman. "The nation enjoys a cleaner
environment thanks to the decades of high-quality research coming out of this
office. Our nation cannot let this stand. Members of Congress must act."
In his public messaging, Zeldin has deemphasized the EPA's
fundamental responsibility to protect the environment, instead casting the
agency as a promoter of "energy dominance"—the slogan Trump
administration officials have used to describe the president's commitment to
boosting fossil fuel drilling.
Earlier this year, Zeldin boasted about launching "the biggest deregulatory
action in U.S. history," targeting power plant rules, Mercury and Air
Toxics Standards, and other regulations.
"Out in the open, Zeldin's EPA has been dismantling
protections against precisely the sorts of dangers that right-wingers warn are
coming from alleged deep-state conspiracies: toxic, cancer-causing
chemicals that corporations have lobbied to freely inject into our air, water,
food, and bodies," The New Republic's Kate Aronoff wrote in a recent column.
"Among the broader suite
of regulations Zeldin's EPA has promised to roll back," Aronoff
wrote, "is one that would require coal-fired power plant operators to
upgrade wastewater treatment facilities, limiting their ability to freely
discharge toxins like mercury, arsenic, selenium, lead, and bromide and to
threaten local drinking water supplies."
