Democrats are lamenting the impending closure of an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) office that once conducted experiments that exposed people to toxic pollutants.
The EPA announced a major reorganization on Friday, which included staff reductions and shuttering of the Office of Research and Development (ORD), which was created to support “credible decision-making to safeguard human health and ecosystems from environmental pollutants.” Democrats have decried the move as an attack on environmental research and human health, despite the EPA’s plans to continue its research efforts by shifting some of those functions to other offices and launching the new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions.
Despite Democrats’ objections, the closure of ORD marks a potential reset for the EPA given the office’s controversial history of conducting dangerous experiments on humans to help justify more onerous environmental regulations.
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) determined in 2014 that ORD experiments exposed test subjects, including those with asthma and heart problems, to hazardous levels of toxic pollutants. The tests were carried out during a period when the EPA sought to justify stricter air quality regulations.
The EPA conducted five experiments in 2010 and 2011 to look at the health effects of particulate matter (PM) and diesel exhaust on humans. The OIG report found that while the EPA obtained consent forms from participants in line with agency rules, exposure risks, which include “mortality and morbidity,” were “not always consistently represented.”
“The EPA did not include information on long-term cancer risks in its diesel exhaust studies’ consent forms,” the OIG report noted. “An EPA manager considered these long-term risks minimal for short-term study exposures,” but “human subjects were not informed of this risk in the consent form.”
In five studies reviewed by the agency watchdog, participants were subjected to pollutant levels that surpassed what they had signed up for, the OIG report concluded. One individual was exposed to pollutant levels exceeding the approved concentration target, including levels that the EPA recommends that individuals with heart disease, the elderly and children avoid.
No test subject died during the studies, but multiple individuals reportedly experienced adverse effects, including one individual with a history of heart disease who went to the hospital for medical attention, a source close to the matter told the Daily Caller News Foundation at the time.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, EPA has taken a close look at our operations to ensure the agency is better equipped than ever to deliver on our core mission of protecting human health and the environment while Powering the Great American Comeback. This reduction in force will ensure we can better fulfill that mission while being responsible stewards of your hard-earned tax dollars,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in the Friday press release announcing the reorganization.
Nonetheless, Democrats have blasted the EPA’s decision, claiming the agency would no longer be able to adequately assess the impact of environmental pollutants on human health in the absence of ORD.
“For decades, the Office of Research and Development has led the way in protecting Americans from dangerous pollutants. Its work has made our air cleaner, our lives longer, and our children healthier,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the Democrats’ ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, following the EPA’s announcement. “Administrator Zeldin’s attempts to silence the science won’t erase the harms of toxic chemicals, but it will leave all of us dangerously unprepared to face them.”
Justin Chen, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 231, which represents EPA employees, said the closure of the office will “devastate public health in our country.”
The EPA did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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