EPA research cuts stoke fears over scientific independence

E&E News

3 days ago

Despite losing an EPA research grant this May, Jane Clougherty feels relatively sanguine about her individual situation.
She's not as optimistic about the future of EPA-funded research, though.
'I'm lucky enough to be tenured and secure in my position at the moment,' Clougherty, an environmental health scientist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, said in an interview early this month. But as the Trump administration slashes funding for university-based inquiry, Clougherty said, 'I think a lot of public health schools are going to be in a lot of trouble.'
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Her project, which was examining the combined impact of extreme heat and air pollution and air pollution on children's health in New York state, was one among many axed midstream this spring on the grounds that they no longer meshed with administration priorities.
It's part of the piecemeal dismemberment of EPA's science initiatives that has only gathered steam.
Earlier this month, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has since confirmed plans to dissolve the agency's Office of Research and Development, which last year had more than 1,500 employees and is described by supporters and former officials as an irreplaceable engine of innovation in fields like chemical safety and the risks posed by pollution exposure.
Under the plan, ORD will lay off some researchers through a reduction in force while shunting others to a new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions as well as existing wings of the agency.
In all, the restructuring will save almost $750 million, Zeldin said in a news release, adding that the reduction in force (RIF) will ensure that EPA can better fulfill its mission of protecting human health and the environment 'while being responsible stewards' of taxpayer dollars.
Apart from that one-page release, EPA has been stingy with details about the plan, which last week encountered its first institutional pushback.
In an explanatory report accompanying a draft fiscal 2026 spending bill, members of the Senate Appropriations Committee said they were 'appalled' by the research office's imminent dissolution and demanded an immediate halt to 'all actions related to the closure, reduction, reorganization, or other similar such changes.'
Asked this week whether EPA will comply with that directive, press secretary Brigit Hirsch cited 'longstanding practice' in declining to comment on pending legislation. One union leader, however, said the agency appears to be pressing ahead unfazed.
'From what we can see, there has been no change of course inside EPA in response to that language,' said Holly Wilson, president of the American Federation of Government Employees local that represents research office staff who work at the agency's campus in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
Hirsch also declined to give the size of the office's current workforce or confirm the number of employees so far reassigned to EPA branches that handle chemical regulation, water protection and other programs.
Current and former staffers, however, put the total number of transfers in the hundreds. Some 75 ORD employees have been moved to the Office of Air and Radiation alone, newly installed air chief Aaron Szabo told participants in an introductory town hall meeting Wednesday, according to people familiar with his remarks.
'It seems like they're making sure the program offices get first crack at people, then absorbing some in OASES, then RIF'ing the rest,' said one employee, who was granted anonymity for fear of reprisal.
'Eliminating scientific independence'
Research office alums are meanwhile watching in dismay at the dismantling of a scientific hub that took decades to build.
'It is heartbreaking to see what's being proposed and the actions that are being taken,' said Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, who served as a top ORD career staffer before retiring in 2021. 'It's really putting American lives at risk.'
Christopher Frey was EPA assistant administrator for research and development under the Biden administration. | Francis Chung/POLITICO | Francis Chung/E&E News
'More than just a research office, ORD is EPA's scientific core, a central hub with spokes reaching into every aspect of public health, technological innovations, and environmental protection,' three former employees wrote in a paper published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.
The breadth of its work is outlined in a series of long-term research strategies last updated in 2022 during President Joe Biden's administration.
Among the hundreds of projects listed there: meeting demand for clean water, especially in regions drying out because of climate change; tracking airborne concentrations of the 'forever chemicals,' also known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS; and managing the risks posed by toxic waste sites.
Those strategies are scheduled to run until next year. Under President Donald Trump, EPA has so far taken no public steps to revisit them.
It also has yet to stand up the Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions (OASES), which will be run out of Zeldin's office with the goal of aligning research and putting science 'at the forefront of the agency's rulemakings and technical assistance to states,' according to EPA.
Besides two scientists who have since moved on to posts outside of EPA, the paper's authors included Chris Frey, a North Carolina State University environmental engineering professor who headed ORD during much of Biden's administration.
In an email exchange, Frey expressed misgivings about the administration's plan to put OASES directly under the EPA chief, saying that step would mingle research and political policy goals, thereby 'eliminating scientific independence.'
Sending former ORD scientists to work on water, air and other individual programs, Frey added, 'is highly inefficient administratively, since the science leadership and support that ORD provided would either not convey to those offices or would be wastefully duplicated, inconsistent, and inefficient. '
'It's about time'
Some industry allies, however, have embraced the Trump administration's agenda. Even before Zeldin confirmed the breakup of ORD this month, EPA was shutting down its human studies lab, housed in leased space at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Steve Milloy, a former coal company executive, has criticized EPA's human studies lab. | Heartland Institute/YouTube
'It's about time,' Steve Milloy, publisher of the JunkScience.com blog, said in an interview this week.
In 2012, Milloy helped bring a federal lawsuit that likened the lab's use of paid volunteers in exploring soot inhalation's health effects to Nazi medical experiments. The suit was thrown out within months on procedural grounds.
A review by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine later found a low likelihood of long-term harm to participants and that human studies yielded valuable data not obtainable through other means.
While EPA maintains that all of the lab's functions are being transferred to the Research Triangle Park campus, Orme-Zavaleta said the large, mechanically complex chambers where the inhalation research is conducted cannot be moved.
The lab's work, she said, is now idled 'and it would take a very long time to get it back up and running.'
In a column last month on a conservative website, Milloy hailed the facility's closure as 'a great start' that could further the administration's goal of rolling back key Clean Air Act regulations.
A former coal company lobbyist, he dismisses the mainstream scientific consensus that soot — more technically known as fine particulate matter, or PM 2.5 — is a dangerous pollutant that contributes to tens of thousands of deaths and illnesses each year.
EPA has relied on that evidence to help justify tougher emission standards on coal-fired power plants and other industries that rely on fossil fuels. 'But EPA's PM2.5 claims were all lies,' Milloy wrote, adding that the Trump administration 'should apply the results of the human experiments controversy to shut down the EPA's many PM2.5-based regulatory abuses.'
'This is a very baffling moment in time,' said Clougherty, the Drexel University scientist who was interviewed at an event organized earlier this month by Democrats on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee to highlight federal grant cuts across a variety of agencies. 'I never would have thought we had to advocate for science.'
Asked why she thought the administration was pursuing the research cuts, 'We can't really know something until we look at it carefully,' she said.
Clougherty added, 'If we're not doing the science that documents the impacts of climate change or environmental pollution on health, then who's to know it has an effect?'