In what seems to be the last attack on science and regulations that protect public health and the environment, the Trump administration has informed the main advisers of the scientific research arm of the United States’s environmental protection agency that their Trump’s second mandate of the second mandate was canceled.
The advisers received no explanation to explain why the meeting was canceled or any information on the moment or if it would be reprogrammed. The cancellation follows the news that the EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, plans to dismantle the research and development office reported by the New York Times last month.
The Council of Scientific Advisers, or BOSC, is an independent federal advisory committee created in 1996 to serve the public interest by providing advice and recommendations “on all aspects” of the COS research programs. The last time the Bosc Executive Committee met was last April, under the Biden administration.
Political scientists and decision -makers see this decision as part of the administration’s efforts to dismantle the government’s regulatory infrastructure and withdraw experts who formulate and apply the laws and rules designed to protect health and the environment.
“Lee Zeldin is allergic to science,” said Jeremy Symons, a former EPA climate advisor who runs the Save EPA campaign at the Environmental Protection Network, a non -profit organization formed by the EPA former staff during the first Trump administration to defend scientific integrity. “He wants science to disappear because it highlights the very real public health costs of the regulatory declines it provides.”
The scientific council was initially created to help assess how the research and development office worked, then supervised their research programs and the science they were doing, said Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, who was scientific advisor to EPA and ran OD under Trump’s first mandate. She thinks that the administration is trying to rationalize and reduce the number of federal council committees within the framework of the executive power.
“Then, of course, more recently, about a month ago, we learned a plan disclosed to eliminate the Order as an organization,” said Orme-Zavaleta. “If you don’t have an order, you don’t need an independent peer organization to assess them.”
Administration Directed agencies To prepare massive reductions in their workforce in February. The next phase of force reductions is due on Monday, she said, so the fate of the Ord and other agencies is not yet clear.
The Research and Development Bureau is the agency’s only technical and scientific research arm. He is responsible for helping to answer scientific questions resulting from program offices, regions, states and tribes, said Orme-Zavaleta. He was supposed to help manage the type of research that serves the public interest because the congress appropriates orders of orders.
As an independent advisory committee, Bosc provides peers to ensure that Ord is doing good science and doing good science, she said. This includes the SOF invests that does in the financing of research grants in universities and support for scientific research carried out by students and entrepreneurs. Now, university professors who have benefited from these programs fear that all the work they have done, for example, to sample contamination and pollution in their communities, which they have sent to Ord Labs to test and assess, will be lost.
For an administration to be under cover of waste, fraud and abuse, it seems that the administration generates more waste and abuse and finds very little fraud, if necessary, said Orme-Zavaleta. “And there are many dollars of taxpayers who run the risk of being wasted. Whether in closing organizations or eliminating staff, it is a process that is too disturbing that there is no rhyme or reason.”
“It simply shows the lack of interest or respect that this administration has for science.”
– Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, former scientific advisor to EPA
Invited to comment on why the EPA canceled the meeting of the best Bosc advisers, its press office said that there was no planned meeting and that all BOSC meetings were announced by a Federal Registry.
Nevertheless, Inside Climate News examined an email sent to the best advisers with the subject at the head “canceled: meeting Bosc EC”, which was scheduled for April 15.
EPA’s efforts to fuel the “American comeback” and “release American prosperity” under the Trump administration include an industry offer to Submit requests For exemptions under the Clean Air Act and a Portal to suggest Rollback regulations.
“This simply shows the lack of interest or respect that this administration has for science,” said Orme-Zavaleta. And if the Ord is eliminated, she said: “You meet all kinds of conflicts with the legal requirements for the EPA and the Ord to conduct research. But, of course, this group does not seem to worry about the constitution or the laws. ”
It is typical to see a change in political instructions with each administration, she said. But the current administration is launching an attack on federal employees, against civil servants dedicated to the missions of organizations.
“So, no work that Congress asked them to do is to do so,” said Orme-Zavaleta. “The American public will not benefit any of these dollars which have been assigned to organizations, and in particular without this work being done, the American public will not be served by health protections or environmental protections.”
George Thurston, Expert in effects on atmospheric pollution health and professor at the New York University School of Medicine, sat on the Bosc executive committee during the Biden administration. He said that he was asked to submit information to renew his service in February but never heard.
“According to the EPA web page, it seems that my subscription to the Executive Committee has not been renewed,” said Thurston, who heads the NYU program for exposure evaluation and effects on human health.
“It is regrettable that they clearly finish the good job that EPA did to support our knowledge of the effects of human health of air pollution and other pollutants and how to protect public health,” said Thurston.
“We have noticed such an improvement in public protections against environmental factors since the creation of EPA in 1970,” said Thurston. “And there are still challenges to take up.”
Thurston believes that the public is not as aware that it should concern the exhibitions they obtain every day from the combustion of fossil fuels, especially in urban traffic. “We are going in a pollution bubble,” he said.
“We really have to maintain the EPA,” he said, to approach the important side effects for the health of things like air pollution.
The American Thoracic Society, of which Thurston is a member, shared a declaration Friday in support of EPA scientists, focusing on integrated scientific assessment, or ISA, updating the latest sciences on air pollution.
“It is easy to take a cleaner and healthy environment for acquired, but the Americans will miss it when it is gone,” the statement said. “The dismissal of scientists and the dismantling of the EPA ISA process will not make air pollution disappear. But it will make things more difficult to breathe. ”
Most people do not appreciate how federal scientists and regulations affect their lives, said Orme-Zavaleta. They do not think twice to light a tap and have water which is safe to drink or have air which is safe to breathe or to food in a grocery store that is sure to eat, “she said.” They don’t think of how it has become. And it is really because of civil servants who work for the government to ensure health and security for everyone. »»
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