AS THE AMAZON BURNS - Brazil's President Bolsonaro

"As Brazilians struggle to breathe through Amazon’s smoke, Bolsonaro rejects foreign aid" PBS NewsHour 8/27/2019

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The Amazon's raging fires are leaving some Brazilian children unable to breathe.  Heavy levels of smoke in the air are harmful to anyone but especially dangerous for babies and those with underlying respiratory issues like asthma.  Despite the health risks, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro rejected $22 million in foreign aid to fight the fires.  Emma Murphy of Independent Television News reports.

"What Bolsonaro’s presidency means for Brazil and the Amazon" PBS NewsHour 8/27/2019

Bolsonaro, the Trump of the tropics.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In the Amazon rainforest, historic levels of deforestation and fire have prompted global outcry.  But what’s driving the devastation?  Amna Nawaz and producer Mike Fritz traveled to Brazil to better understand both the physical and political dynamics at play.  The series' first report focuses on the influence of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, an advocate for logging and developing the Amazon.

ON THE HOT SEAT - Scott Pruitt

Scott Pruitt, Trump's (anti-science, anti-regulation) servant trying to dismantle the EPA.

"On the hot seat at the House, Scott Pruitt makes few concessions" PBS NewsHour 4/26/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Now, we turn to one of the President’s top cabinet members who’s been under fire himself, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt.  His appearances before two House committees today were ostensibly about budget matters.  But lawmakers put him on the hot seat for all sorts of different reasons.

In a moment, Jeffrey Brown talks with Lisa Desjardins about the politics and the policy at issue.  But we begin with Lisa’s look at Pruitt’s day on Capitol Hill.

SCIENCE - The Battle Over Fact vs Politics

"In 2017, politics overshadowed science and scientists fought back" PBS NewsHour 12/20/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Scientists taking to the streets, enormous icebergs rupturing, a solar eclipse that captured the nation's attention, and new insights into the workings of the universe.  2017 has been quite a year in science.  Science correspondent Miles O’Brien joins William Brangham to look back and add some context.

CENSORSHIP - At a Public Health Journal?

"Sudden Shift at a Public Health Journal Leaves Scientists Feeling Censored" by Lisa Song, ProPublica 11/20/2017

Claiming overreach by a new publisher, the journal’s editorial board asks for disciplinary action from the National Library of Medicine.

For much of its 22-year existence, few outside the corner of science devoted to toxic chemicals paid much attention to the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health.

But now, a feud has erupted over the small academic publication, as its editorial board — the scientists who advise the journal’s direction and handle article submissions — has accused the journal’s new owner of suppressing a paper and promoting “corporate interests over independent science in the public interest.”

More is at stake than just the journal’s direction.

IJOEH is best known for exposing so-called “product defense science” — industry-linked studies that defend the safety of products made by their funders.  At a time when the Trump administration is advancing policies and nominees sympathetic to the chemical industry, the journal seems to be veering in the same direction.

“There are many scientists who work for corporations who are honest scientists,” said David Michaels, the former head of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration under President Obama.  “What we’re concerned about here is the ‘mercenary science’ … that’s published purely to influence regulation or litigation, and doesn’t contribute to public health.”

“I think the IJOEH articles were threatening to that whole industry,” said Michaels, now an environmental and occupational health professor at George Washington University.  While Michaels has never served on the journal’s editorial board, he has published an article in the journal and peer-reviewed others.

The journal was one of the relatively few places that provided an outlet for “scientists whose work is independent of the corporations that manufacture chemicals,” he said.  “The silencing of that voice would be a real loss to the field.”

Last Thursday, the journal’s 22-member editorial board, along with eight former board members and the journal’s founding editor-in-chief, wrote a letter to the National Library of Medicine requesting disciplinary action against the academic journal’s new publisher, Taylor & Francis Group.  In particular, they asked the Library of Medicine to rescind the journal’s listing in the Medline index, which could drastically reduce its scientific influence.

Academic journals are often judged by the reputations of those on their editorial boards, and this list includes a Columbia University dean, the president of the International Commission on Occupational Health and a scientist who helped establish the cancer classification system used by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

UK-based Taylor & Francis, one of the largest publishers of academic journals, acquired IJOEH and 169 other journals in 2015 by purchasing the journal’s original owner and publisher, Maney Publishing.  According to the board’s letter, Taylor & Francis has done the following since taking over:

• Selected a new editor-in-chief, Andrew Maier, without consulting the editorial board.  Board members said it’s “highly unlikely” that they would have approved of Maier.  Their letter said he had a tendency to reach scientific conclusions “highly sympathetic to parties with an economic interest in favorable outcomes,” which is at odds with the journal’s mission.
• Withdrew a peer-reviewed article by the journal’s former editor-in-chief David Egilman that criticized Union Carbide Corporation’s efforts to oppose workers’ claims of asbestos exposure.  “Suppression of an accepted paper is a direct assault on academic freedom,” the board members wrote to the Library of Medicine.
• Flagged three additional studies approved for publication under Egilman as “raising potential concerns,” according to a May 8 email the publisher sent to the board.

A Library of Medicine representative said they’re reviewing the board’s appeal.

Officials at Taylor & Francis declined to speak with ProPublica about the accusations in the letter and did not answer most of the questions we submitted in writing, referring us instead to two emails the publisher sent to the board in May.

In one, Ian Bannerman, manager director of Taylor & Francis Journals, insisted the company had no obligation to consult the board in choosing the journal’s new editor.  “The responsibility for selecting and appointing an Editor-in-Chief lies with Taylor & Francis as the owner of the journal,” he wrote.

In the other, Bannerman responded to a question from the board about the publisher’s plans for “repositioning” the journal by saying Taylor & Francis would aim to boost its online readership, citation levels and “rapidity of publication.”

“We do not see this as ‘repositioning’ the journal as such,” Bannerman wrote, “but we do see it as a change of tack — putting in place long-term plans and goals for the journal’s future development, enhanced by our expertise in marketing, online publishing, and bibliometric analysis.”

A Struggling Endeavor

Joseph LaDou, the founding editor-in-chief of IJOEH, launched the journal in 1995 after years of struggling to publish his own research.  While studying the health hazards of workers making microelectronics for Silicon Valley in the 1980s, he couldn’t find a single U.S. journal to take his paper, he said, and ended up publishing in a Scandinavian public health journal.  So when a Philadelphia-based publisher offered him a chance to start a journal for similar types of studies, he jumped on board.

The journal’s financial situation was always precarious.  LaDou said he put $50,000 to $75,000 of his own money into IJOEH each year.  Egilman, who became editor-in-chief in 2007, said he also paid out of pocket to keep the publication going.  (Both editors worked on the journal part time and earned their income from university positions or from private practice as occupational health experts).

One of the biggest expenses was paying for help writing and editing manuscripts from developing countries, LaDou said.  Among the international studies IJOEH published were a paper on how cooking fuel smoke affects respiratory health for women in Cameroon and another on a worker safety program for stevedores working in Cuba’s Port of Havana.

“I can’t think offhand of [another] pro-worker occupational safety and health journal,” LaDou said.  “Some are better than others — less controlled — but there’s nothing to replace what IJOEH was doing, particularly on an international scale.”

Most occupational health experts work for industry in some way because there’s little independent funding, said Celeste Monforton, an environmental and occupational health lecturer at Texas State University.  There are few academic positions, and the collapse of workers’ unions over the past few decades further decimated the number of labor-related jobs.

“There’s very little investment in occupational health research or looking at exposure to toxics,” said Monforton, who has never published in IJOEH or served on its board.  Most of what’s known about toxics comes from original research funded by the federal government in the 1970s and 1980s, when scientists could coordinate with unions to study large groups of workers, she said.

Those studies focused on long-known hazards such as benzene, asbestos or beryllium, setting the stage for stronger workplace regulations.  The results prompted a backlash from scientists working in “product defense,” who re-analyzed individual studies to conclude the product was less harmful than the government determined, Monforton said.

If journals are judged by the size of their readership, LaDou’s was a perpetual underdog.  “It was never a large subscription,” he said.  “You’re up against such a powerful machine in the industry-supported journals …  I think the reputation of the journal was that of a non-industry publication that was widely respected, but only by a small segment of the readership community.”

Taylor & Francis has finally figured out a way for this journal to make money, he alleged.  “By selling its soul.”

‘A Change of Tack’

In the first months after Taylor & Francis purchased the journal in June 2015, neither the editorial board nor its editor-in-chief noted a major change.

Then, in early 2016, former board member Barry Castleman learned the publisher hadn’t renewed Egilman’s editing contract, which expired in December 2016.

Taylor & Francis hired Maier in early 2017 without consulting board members for their input, as is customary for scientific journals.

Maier is an environmental health professor at the University of Cincinnati and runs a program for research fellows at TERA (Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment), a consulting firm that analyzes chemical safety.  TERA often works for industry clients such as the American Chemistry Council.  Concerns about its conflicts of interest gained national attention after President Trump nominated Michael Dourson, TERA’s founder, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency’s chemical safety program.

In 2010, Maier co-authored a study on the risks of diacetyl, a butter flavoring that can cause lung damage in workers.  Maier’s paper recommended an exposure limit of 200 parts per billion — up to 40 times higher than federal guidelines recommend.  Egilman criticized Maier’s results in a 2011 IJOEH paper for not being protective enough.  Maier has said that he has a research partnership with the federal scientists who suggested the lower limit.  “This ongoing close relationship …does not suggest that government parties find my work lacks scientific credibility,” Maier said in a letter to the board.

Egilman said he didn’t expect to continue as editor-in-chief once his contract expired, but he and the board should have helped choose the new editor.

The publisher disagrees.  Bannerman said Taylor & Francis sought advice from “a number of people we know in the field,” including one member of the IJOEH board.  Bannerman explained the conversation with the board member occurred before the publisher began considering Maier.

The dispute over Maier’s hiring was first reported by Retraction Watch, a publication that tracks retractions in the academic publishing world, which went on to publish several items about unrest at the journal this spring.

Maier didn’t respond to a request for comment, but he wrote to the editorial board in May to address their concerns.  He said more than 80 percent of his research funding comes from his university and the government.

“As for the future, I do not suggest any major changes in mission or scope of the journal,” he wrote.  “The same types of scientific articles should continue to find a home in IJOEH.”

‘In-House Review’

Taylor & Francis’ decision in March 2017 to withdraw Egilman’s paper, published about a year earlier, was just as controversial as appointing Maier — possibly more.

Journal publishers rarely interfere in editorial decisions, said Arthur Frank, an IJOEH board member and professor at Drexel University’s School of Public Health.

“I have never, ever been in a setting where the publisher, without engaging the editorial board, made a decision unilaterally to appoint a new editor, and also made decisions to retract an article,” he said.  “Publishers are in the business of printing the journal.  They’re not in the business of deciding what goes into the journal.”

Egilman’s paper critiqued consulting firms that conduct research that attempts to re-create historical worker exposure data for use in toxic tort litigation.  Such studies are expensive and are typically commissioned by companies to defend themselves in court, said Michaels, the former OSHA administrator.

Part of Egilman’s article examined a 2005 study co-authored by consultant Dennis Paustenbach, which simulated historical exposures to conclude that the workers who manufactured Bakelite (an asbestos-containing plastic) for Union Carbide would not have been exposed to asbestos levels that violated health guidelines.  Egilman also focused on Paustenbach’s role in promoting similar types of studies, pointing to a conference speech in which Paustenbach said they often made the difference between winning and losing court cases.

“My point was that OFTEN, litigation in the United States is scientifically unwarranted,” Paustenbach wrote in regards to his speech.  “When anyone is inappropriately accused of a wrongdoing, they deserve a defense …  We are only hired in cases that border on being ‘almost without foundation.’ So it is not surprising that most of our results show that the plaintiff claims are incorrect.”

While Egilman has served as an expert witness for plaintiffs injured by asbestos products — and is well-known for having leaked pharmaceutical company documents to a lawyer representing plaintiffs who alleged an antipsychotic drug gave them diabetes — he has also worked on the defense side.  In his paper’s disclosure, he said he consulted for Union Carbide in the company’s 1984 toxic gas leak that killed thousands of residents in Bhopal, India.

It’s unclear what prompted Taylor & Francis to withdraw Egilman’s paper.

Egilman provided ProPublica with a copy of an August 2016 email a Taylor & Francis employee sent to a third party that said Paustenbach “has been in touch to request that we retract Egilman’s critique article.” It was part of a longer email chain that discussed Paustenbach’s 2005 paper and Egilman’s 2016 paper.

In an email to ProPublica, however, Paustenbach denied requesting the retraction, and copied a Taylor & Francis manager in his response.  Paustenbach said the publisher began considering a withdrawal months before that August 2016 email, and that he had been primarily concerned with correcting falsehoods in Egilman’s paper.

“I have no axe to grind with Dr. Egilman,” Paustenbach said.  “I believe in the importance of a lively discussion of legitimate scientific facts or beliefs.  At times, I find that Dr.  Egilman doesn’t deal in facts …  Egilman’s article was so flawed as to be an embarrassment to any scientist; and perhaps that is why they did not publish it.”

ProPublica reached Sara Shuman, the journal’s former deputy editor who handled the paper’s submission process.  She said Egilman’s paper was peer reviewed by at least two scientists.  The journal uses a double-blind system to ensure that the author and peer reviewers don’t know each others’ identities, and Shuman acted as the intermediary.

Egilman was informed about the decision to withdraw his article in a March 2017 email from the publisher: “Due to an omission of oversight, the manuscript was not subject to our in-house review prior to its publication.  Subsequently we have reviewed the content, and decided to withdraw it from publication.”

In a May 25 email to the board, Bannerman, the Taylor & Francis director, said the paper “was inadvertently published before the review process was completed, and was subsequently decided to be unsuitable for publication.”

The publisher declined to define “in-house review” or comment further.

“We have said all that we can about our reasons for withdrawing this article,” a company spokesperson said.  The company publishes more than 2,500 journals, and our “role is to give the communities these journals serve a voice and a space to engage in debate about their research fields.  We do not have any strategy to align our titles to be for or against any particular agenda.”

Egilman said the publisher never contacted him to discuss their concerns.

Maier, the new editor-in-chief, told the board he wasn’t involved with the decision.  “I have no involvement or decision authority on any manuscripts that were accepted or published prior to my tenure with IJOEH,” he wrote in a letter.

Board members said the incident, compounded by what they considered the unsatisfying explanations for it, had spurred them to action.

“The idea of summarily withdrawing a paper that’s already been reviewed and published without any explanation is outrageous,” said Castleman, the former board member.  “The implication is there was some kind of horrible scientific conduct that must have happened.”

Pressing On

In addition to its complaint to the National Library of Medicine, the board has appealed to the Committee on Publication Ethics, a UK-based charity that sets journal ethics guidelines.

The board’s letter alleged instances in which Taylor & Francis violated COPE guidelines, including one that states, the “relationship of editors to publishers … should be based firmly on the principle of editorial independence.”

COPE’s co-chairman Chris Graf, director of research integrity and publishing ethics at a large journal publisher called Wiley, said COPE doesn’t comment on individual cases.  COPE has no regulatory authority and doesn’t conduct investigations, but can advise publications facing ethical issues.

On Thursday, the president of the Collegium Ramazzini, an international academy of occupational and environmental health experts, said his organization “strongly supports” the board’s letter to the Library of Medicine.  The academy is an invitation-only group of 180 scientists who work to bring public health research to policymakers.  Nearly half of the IJOEH board members are part of the academy, as are Michaels and Monforton.  The group also includes Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and former OSHA administrator Eula Bingham.  The organization is named after Bernardino Ramazzini, a 17th-century physician who’s often called the “father of occupational medicine.”

Taylor & Francis has offered to hold a teleconference with the editorial board, but Castleman said the board first wants more answers in writing.

“Had they been more forthcoming, we would have certainly been willing to talk to them,” he said.  “It’s very cumbersome trying to find a convenient time for so many people all over the world to agree to be available for such a conference.  I felt that they were just fobbing us off, stonewalling our plain questions.”

When ProPublica inquired about the status of the three other articles Taylor & Francis had considered withdrawing, the publisher said those studies “are no longer on hold and the authors are aware of their status” — but didn’t explain whether that meant the articles had been withdrawn.  Egilman said one of them was a separate article he wrote on Union Carbide, and that he withdrew that paper from IJOEH two months ago so he could submit it to another journal.  He said something similar had happened to another paper, about cigarette filters that contained asbestos.

Through the tumult, the journal has continued to publish, though the rate has slowed considerably this year.  The IJOEH website shows the journal publishes four issues a year, with 10 to 12 articles per issue.  Yet only five papers have been published in all of 2017.  Three of the five were approved by Egilman and the other two by Maier.  Both are about how employees’ mental health affects stress and well-being.

The journal’s “first full issue of 2017 will be published before the end of the year,” said a Taylor & Francis spokesperson, “with other issues to follow in early 2018.”

ANTI-SCIENCE - Senator Rand Paul

"Senator Misleads on 'Absurd' Science" by Vanessa Schipani, FactCheck.org 11/2/2017

Excerpt

Sen. Rand Paul misrepresented two studies supported by federal grants, while advocating legislation he introduced to change the federal grant funding process.

In both cases, Paul, a 2016 presidential candidate and Republican from Kentucky, confused the means the researchers used to conduct their experiments with the studies' ends, or purpose.  Paul also ignored the broader implications of the research.

• Paul characterized one study funded by the National Science Foundation as “bad science” because it looked at “shrimp on a treadmill.”  But the scientists developed the treadmill as a means of studying how bacterial infection affects shrimp respiration during activity.

• Paul also left out the broader goal of the shrimp research: To understand how the recent decrease in water oxygen levels where shrimp and other seafood live might affect how they handle infections.

• Paul said it's “absurd” that the National Institutes of Health provided $2 million for a study on whether “kids don't like food that has been sneezed on.”  But that money went to a six-year project, composed of multiple studies, on children's reasoning about foods.  One study used a video of an actor sneezing on food as a means of understanding if young children can pick up on subtle cues about contamination.

• Paul also ignored the ultimate aim of the NIH research: To contribute to developing ways to nudge kids to make safer and more healthy food choices by understanding why they make certain choices to begin with.

Paul, who worked as an ophthalmologist before entering politics, made his remarks on Oct. 18 during a hearing on federal support for research.  A day earlier, Paul introduced the BASIC Research Act, which, if passed, would make a number of changes to the way federal agencies fund basic research.

Paul mentioned his legislation multiple times during the Oct. 18 hearing, arguing it would help take the “bias” out of the grant review process.

Among other things, the bill would require grant review panels to include a “taxpayer advocate.”  The bill defines this person as “someone whose main focus is on the value proposed research delivers to the taxpayer.”

Paul's bill would also require panels to include a least one person who is an expert in an unrelated field to the proposed grant project and hasn't been affiliated with any academic or research institution for 10 years.

To be clear, we take no position on whether or not the federal government should have funded these two research projects – that's a matter of opinion.  Paul has the right to his opinion that the government shouldn't have funded them.  But in advocating his legislation, he mischaracterized the purpose and scope of the two research projects.

Details of bullited items in full article.

CLIMATE CHANGE - The Government Report Not Officially Released?

Part of Trump's anti-science agenda to block what his 5th grade mind cannot understand.

"Why some scientists are concerned a government climate change report won't be released" PBS NewsHour 8/8/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  A draft climate change report is making headlines as scientists reportedly express concerns about how the Trump administration will respond.  The New York Times reported on key findings in the preliminary document, including that "evidence for a changing climate abounds" and that human activities are primarily responsible for the changes.  Lisa Friedman of The New York Times joins Judy Woodruff.

REPUBLICAN AGENDA - Anti-Science and Anti-Regulation

From the Alternate Universe

"Trump Administration Says It Isn't Anti-Science As It Seeks to Slash EPA Science Office" by Lisa Song, ProPublica 5/24/2017

The Office of Research and Development has been at frontlines of virtually every environmental crisis.  Trump wants to cut its funding in half.

When the city of Toledo temporarily lost access to clean drinking water several years ago after a bloom of toxic algae, the Environmental Protection Agency sent scientists from its Office of Research and Development to study health effects and formulate solutions.

The same office was on the front lines of the Flint water crisis and was a critical presence in handling medical waste from the U.S. Ebola cases in 2014.

Thomas Burke, who directed ORD during the last two years of the Obama administration and was the agency's science adviser, calls the office the nation's “scientific backstop in emergencies.”

President Trump's 2018 budget would slash ORD's funding in half as part of an overall goal to cut the EPA's budget by 31 percent.

A statement from EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt did not directly address the cuts to ORD, but offered broad defense of the proposed agency budget, saying it “respects the American taxpayer” and “supports EPA's highest priorities with federal funding for priority work in infrastructure, air and water quality, and ensuring the safety of chemicals in the marketplace.”

ORD has no regulatory authority, but it conducts the bulk of the research that underlies EPA policies.  ORD scientists are involved in “virtually every major environmental challenge the nation has,” Burke said.  Diminishing the role and input of the office, he said, risked leaving the country “uninformed about risks and public health.”

“In time, you're flying blind,” he said.  “Everything becomes a mystery.”

Trump's budget, released Tuesday, reflects the president's wish list.  The numbers likely will change by the time it goes through the congressional appropriations process, but the proposed cuts are consistent with the administration's push against environmental regulation and scientific funding.  Many of the cuts fall on agencies involved with climate change research, including the EPA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told reporters in a Tuesday briefing that the budget reduces climate science funding without eliminating it.

“Do we target it?  Sure,” Mulvaney said in response to a reporter's question.  “Do a lot of the EPA reductions aim at reducing the focus on climate science?  Yes.  Does it mean that we are anti-science?  Absolutely not  (WTF! my comment).  We're simply trying to get things back in order to where we can look at the folks who pay the taxes, and say, look, yeah, we want to do some climate science, but we're not going to do some of the crazy stuff the previous administration did.”

Much of the EPA's climate research takes place in the Office of Air and Radiation, which is separate from ORD.  But ORD studies the strategic, long-term effects of climate change, including the effects on agriculture and the oceans, Burke said.

Christine Todd Whitman, a former EPA administrator who worked for George W. Bush from 2001 to June 2003, said the proposed ORD cuts are more drastic than anything she can remember.

Whitman said she expects Congress will restore much of the funding, but she worries about the message behind the budget.

“A budget to me was always a policy document,” she said.  Regardless of what Congress does, this administration's policy “indicates to me [that] they'll be looking for other ways to … stifle the research and slow it down,” she said.

OMB and the EPA did not return requests for comment about the ORD cuts.

ORD is one of several EPA programs listed under a section of the budget called “2018 major savings and reforms.”  The others include EPA enforcement (24 percent cut); Superfund, which cleans up toxic waste sites (30 percent); categorical state grants (45 percent); and funding for watershed protection, energy efficiency and voluntary climate programs, which would be eliminated.

The budget states the ORD reductions would allow the EPA to “focus on core Agency responsibilities … At lower funding levels for the Office of Research and Development, the Agency would prioritize intramural research activities that are either related to statutory requirements or that support basic and early stage research and development activities in the environmental and human health sciences.”

Whitman and Burke said ORD already does that — and halving the budget would make it virtually impossible to meet EPA's regulatory mandate.

ORD is “the backbone of the scientific research that goes on,” Whitman said.  “Every regulation promulgated by EPA is based in science.”

Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said he worries Congress will use the budget to justify serious but less drastic cuts to the agency.  This administration's philosophy seems to be “if you don't measure it, you don't have to be held accountable for it.”

ORD also helps regional EPA offices.  Michael Mikulka, president of AFGE Local 704, a union representing scientists, engineers and attorneys at EPA's Region 5 office (in the Great Lakes area), said he relies on ORD's Cincinnati lab for advice on toxic waste cleanup.  “If their staff is cut significantly, there would be less people to advise us.”

Burke said ORD was always going to be a target.  The office came under fire from environmentalists in 2015 when it released a draft study that said hydraulic fracturing had no “widespread, systemic impacts” on drinking water.  After considering comments from the EPA's independent Science Advisory Board, the report authors reversed their findings, concluding there was insufficient evidence to support their previous statement.  This time, the report was widely criticized by the oil and gas industry.

ORD is also home to the IRIS (Integrated Risk Information System) program that sets exposure guidelines for chemicals.  The program has been criticized for dragging its feet and bowing to the interests of the chemical industry.

“I'm very concerned the IRIS program will be zeroed out,” Burke said.  “There's an endless challenge by polluters to delay the science.”

But aside from a few high-profile issues, much of ORD's work takes place under the radar.  The office has laboratories all over the country, working on air pollution, ocean acidification and vehicle emissions.

One of ORD's lesser-known responsibilities is dealing with homeland security.  “God forbid, if we have to clean up a water supply after a terrorist activity, it [would be] in this office,” Burke said.

Whitman said the EPA was tasked with cleaning up the Hart Senate Office Building in 2001 after then-Sen.  Tom Daschle received an envelope containing anthrax powder.  Whitman remembers asking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for a safe standard of anthrax exposure.  The CDC didn't know, she said, so ORD did the research and set it at zero.

“These are the kinds of things you lose” when you de-fund the “national nerve center of the science challenges facing not just the EPA, but all the states and all the communities,” Burke said.