EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is facing more than a dozen federal investigations into his questionable spending and ethics. But the biggest and most consequential scandal of all may be Pruitt’s effort to censor science at EPA.
A new proposal compels EPA to subject high quality research to extreme, unnecessary, and untenable levels of disclosure — but it also includes loopholes that would allow Pruitt’s administration to exempt industry from having to disclose details of their own studies.
We call it the Censored Science Proposal. It is designed to favor the fossil fuel and chemical industries, chipping away at EPA’s ability to protect us from toxic pollution and chemicals.
High quality science is crucial to understanding the risks our families face every day, especially when it comes to air pollution and toxic chemical exposure.
This proposal is an enormous gift for corporate polluters. It would prevent EPA from even considering some of the most compelling research about how pollution impacts people over time, based on the premise that government policymakers should consider only research based on publicly available data. This is unprecedented and unscientific.
When scientists study people, the data needs to be kept confidential. This is a bedrock principle of research into the causes of disease — like the research that helped us understand links between cigarettes and cancer. Pruitt wants to ignore ALL that data — research that links air pollution to strokes and heart and lung disease.
EPA has issued this far-reaching proposal with an unusually short public comment period and no public hearing. We have only until May 30th to join scientists and health professionals in raising our voices against this cynical proposal.
Make no mistake. This proposal puts our children’s bodies on the line. Pruitt is trying to censor inconvenient research linking even low levels of pollution with significant health impacts. Instead of cleaning up their act, polluting industries want these kinds of studies to simply disappear. Pruitt is only too happy to comply.
TELL SCOTT PRUITT: PROTECT SCIENCE THAT KEEPS OUR KIDS SAFE