EPA Cancels Key Science Advisory Board Meeting

In what appears to be the latest attack on the science and regulations that protect public health and the environment, the Trump administration notified top advisors to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific research arm that their first meeting of Trump’s second term was canceled. The advisors received no explanation for why the meeting was canceled or any information about when, or if, it would be rescheduled. The cancellation follows news that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin plans to dismantle the agency’s Office of Research and Development, or ORD, and lay off most of its scientists, as first reported by The New York Times last month.  The Board of Scientific Counselors, or BOSC, is an independent federal advisory committee established in 1996 to serve the public interest by providing advice and recommendations “on all aspects” of the ORD’s research programs. The last time the BOSC Executive Committee met was last April, under the Biden administration.  Scientists and policymakers see the move as part of the administration’s efforts to dismantle the regulatory infrastructure of government and remove the experts who formulate and enforce the laws and rules designed to safeguard health and the environment. “Lee Zeldin is allergic to science,” said Jeremy Symons, a former EPA climate advisor who leads the Save EPA campaign at the Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit formed by former EPA staff during the first Trump administration to defend scientific integrity. “He wants the science to go away because it shines a light on the very real public health costs of the regulatory rollbacks that he’s planning.” The scientific board was initially established to help evaluate how the Office of Research and Development operated and then oversaw their research programs and the science that they were doing, said Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, who served as EPA’s science advisor and ran ORD under Trump’s first term. She thinks the administration is trying to streamline and reduce the number of federal advisory committees under the executive branch. “Then, of course, more recently, about a month ago, we learned of a leaked plan to eliminate ORD as an organization,” Orme-Zavaleta said. “If you don’t have an ORD, then you don’t need an independent peer-review body to evaluate them.” The administration directed agencies to prepare massive reductions in their workforces in February. The next phase of the reductions-in-force are due Monday, she said, so the fate of ORD and other agencies is still unclear. The Office of Research and Development is the agency’s only technical and scientific research arm. It is charged with helping to answer scientific questions arising from program offices, regions, states and tribes, Orme-Zavaleta said. It was supposed to help drive the kind of research that serves the public interest because Congress appropriates ORD’s research funds.  As an independent advisory board, BOSC provides peer reviews to make sure ORD is doing the right science and doing the science right, she said. That includes the investment ORD makes in funding research grants at universities and supporting scientific research done by students and contractors. Now, university professors who’ve taken advantage of these programs worry that all the work they’ve done, for example, to sample contamination and pollution in their communities, which they sent to ORD labs to test and evaluate, will be lost. For an administration to come in under the guise of eliminating waste, fraud and abuse, it seems like the administration is generating more waste and abuse and finding very little fraud, if any, Orme-Zavaleta said. “And there are a lot of taxpayer dollars that run the risk of being wasted. Whether it’s in shuttering organizations or eliminating staff, it’s an overly disruptive process that there’s no rhyme or reason for.”

“It just shows the lack of interest or respect that this administration has for science.” — Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, former EPA science advisor

Asked to comment on why the EPA canceled the meeting of top BOSC advisors, its press office said there was no meeting scheduled and all BOSC meetings are announced by a Federal Register notice.

Nonetheless, Inside Climate News reviewed an email sent to top advisors with the subject heading “Canceled: BOSC EC Meeting,” which was scheduled for April 15. EPA’s efforts to power the “great American comeback” and “unleash American prosperity” under the Trump administration include an offer for industry to submit requests for exemptions under the Clean Air Act and a portal to suggest regulations to rollback. “It just shows the lack of interest or respect that this administration has for science,” said Orme-Zavaleta. And if ORD is eliminated, she said, “you run into all kinds of conflicts with statutory requirements for EPA and ORD to conduct research. But, of course, this group doesn’t seem to care about the Constitution or laws.” It’s typical to see a change in policy directions with each administration, she said. But the current administration is launching an attack on federal employees, on public servants that are dedicated to the missions of the organizations.  “So no work that Congress has asked them to do is getting done,” Orme-Zavaleta said. “The American public is not going to benefit by any of those dollars that were appropriated to the organizations, and particularly without having that work done, then the American public is not going to be served by health protections or environmental protections.” George Thurston, an expert on the health effects of air pollution and professor at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, served on the BOSC executive committee during the Biden administration. He said he was asked to submit information to renew his service in February but never heard back.  “From the EPA web page, it looks like my membership on the executive committee was not renewed,” said Thurston, who directs NYU’s Program in Exposure Assessment and Human Health Effects. “It’s unfortunate that they’re clearly winding down the good work that EPA was doing to support our knowledge about what the human health effects of air pollution and other pollutants are and how best to protect public health,” Thurston said. “We’ve seen such great improvement in public protections from environmental factors since the creation of EPA in 1970,” Thurston said. “And there’s still challenges to be met.” Thurston believes the public is not as aware as it should be about the exposures they get every single day from fossil fuel combustion, especially in city traffic. “We’re walking around in a bubble of pollution,” he said. “We really need to maintain EPA,” he said, to address the significant adverse health effects of things like air pollution.  The American Thoracic Society, of which Thurston is a member, shared a statement Friday in support of EPA scientists, focusing on the Integrated Science Assessment, or ISA, updating the latest science on air pollution.

“It’s easy to take for granted a cleaner and healthier environment, but Americans will miss it when it’s gone,” the statement read. “Firing scientists and dismantling the EPA ISA process will not make air pollution go away. But it will make it harder to breathe.” Most people don’t appreciate how federal scientists and regulations touch their lives, Orme-Zavaleta said. They don’t think twice about turning on a tap and having water that’s safe to drink or having air that’s safe to breathe or food at a grocery store that’s safe to eat,” she said. “They don’t think about how that came to be. And it’s really because of the public servants that work for the government to ensure health and safety for everyone.”