EPA Scientists Said They Were Pressured to Downplay Harms From Chemicals. A Watchdog Found They Were Retaliated Against.
www.propublica.org
Three reports issued by the agency’s inspector general detailed personal attacks suffered by the scientists — including being called “stupid,” “piranhas” and “pot-stirrers” — and called on the EPA to take “appropriate corrective action” in response.

Archived version

More than three years ago, a small group of government scientists came forward with disturbing allegations.

During President Donald Trump’s administration, they said, their managers at the Environmental Protection Agency began pressuring them to make new chemicals they were vetting seem safer than they really were. They were encouraged to delete evidence of chemicals’ harms, including cancer, miscarriage and neurological problems, from their reports — and in some cases, they said, their managers deleted the information themselves.

After the scientists pushed back, they received negative performance reviews and three of them were removed from their positions in the EPA’s division of new chemicals and reassigned to jobs elsewhere in the agency.

In September, the EPA inspector general announced that it had found that some of the treatment experienced by three of those scientists — Martin Phillips, Sarah Gallagher and William Irwin — amounted to retaliation.

  • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
    5·
    3 months ago

    Republicans have such narrow and shortsighted vision. Sure, removing regulations and faking safety data makes someone a quick buck today, but the reasons for the regulations and standards haven’t gone away and people will suffer.

    Actually, as I type that I realize it may not be short-sightedness so much as just not caring about anyone’s suffering but your own. Or maybe the one gives rise to the other. For many of us, to live in a world with so much suffering is tangibly our own suffering too, so we’re motivated to reduce others’ suffering even if we are selfish. But a very extremely selfish and egotistical person may hardly feel others’ suffering at all compared to the pleasure they feel from their own short-term profit.

    They make their own world worse but they’re too blinkered to see it or care. I guess that’s the mindset of many Republicans.

  • Midnitte@beehaw.orgEnglish
    3·
    3 months ago

    Sort of ironic that a republican president (Nixon) created the EPA, only for a republican attempt to destroy it.

    If Trumo had his way, we’d all be paying Nestlé for PFAS-free water.

  • Ephoron@lemmy.kde.social
    1·
    2 months ago

    What? A group of scientists can be pressured by government agencies to make a chemical sound safer than it is?

    But, but, but… It’s The Science™…

    Thank goodness there was never anything shady going on at the NIH, or CDC during Covid, like them covering up funding for the lab that might have been responsible for the entire pandemic…

    Thank goodness any question of The Science™ being influenced by government was tinfoil-hatwearing conspiracy theory, just at that specific moment.