Much of the
country has been watching in horror as Donald Trump has made good on
his promises to eviscerate the Environmental Protection Agency —
delaying 30 regulations, severely limiting the information staffers
can release, and installing Scott Pruitt as the agency’s
administrator to destroy the agency from within. But even those
keeping their eyes on the EPA may have missed a quieter attack on
environmental protections now being launched in Congress.
On Tuesday,
the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology is expected to
hold a hearing on a bill to undermine health regulations that is
based on a strategy cooked up by tobacco industry strategists more
than two decades ago. At what Republicans on the committee have
dubbed the “Making EPA Great Again” hearing, lawmakers are likely
to discuss the Secret Science Reform Act, a bill that would limit the
EPA to using only data that can be replicated or made available for
“independent analysis.”
The proposal
may sound reasonable enough at first. But because health research
often contains confidential personal information that is illegal to
share, the bill would prevent the EPA from using many of the best
scientific studies. It would also prohibit using studies of one-time
events, such as the Gulf oil spill or the effect of a partial ban of
chlorpyrifos on children, which fueled the EPA’s decision to
eliminate all agricultural uses of the pesticide, because these
events — and thus the studies of them — can’t be repeated.
Although it is nominally about transparency, the bill leaves intact
protections that allow industry to keep much of its own inner
workings and skewed research secret from the public, while
delegitimizing studies done by researchers with no vested interest in
their outcome.
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