Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Tell Scott Pruitt's EPA: Stop war on science

The petition to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and the EPA reads:
"EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's proposal to eliminate valuable data from the EPA's decision-making process will threaten public health and ultimately cost lives. Follow the guidance of the scientific community and do not adopt this disingenuous and harmful plan."
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Tell Scott Pruitt's EPA: Stop your war on science
Scott Pruitt wants to delete decades of landmark scientific research from the EPA's decision-making process.
Trump's industry-friendly EPA administrator has proposed a dramatic change to the way the EPA handles scientific data. If he is successful, he will intentionally blind the agency to the well-documented links between pollution and public health.
Pruitt's escalating war on science has a clear goal: ending the regulations that protect us from smog, pesticides, climate change and other dangerous threats to our health and the environment.
Pruitt and the rest of the Trump regime are willing to risk human lives to make their friends a little richer. To fight back, we must stand up for science.
Pruitt's plan is sneaky. In the name of "transparency," he is proposing that when the EPA crafts regulations, it should ignore research studies that do not have publicly available data.1 The catch is that research on public health often includes confidential personal or medical histories, so researchers cannot ethically release this data to the public.
If Pruitt's proposal had been enacted in the past, the federal government would have been unable to consider groundbreaking studies that exposed the health risks of leaded gasoline and fine-particle air pollution.2 If the government had ignored that science, many more Americans would have died prematurely.
Scientists, not industry shills like Pruitt, should be the ones deciding which studies are valid. Qualified scientists can already obtain access to anonymized data from the EPA, so EPA studies have already been investigated, peer-reviewed and scrutinized.3 Instead of throwing out hallmark research, much of it funded by taxpayers through the EPA, Pruitt should be following the guidance of real scientific experts.
Tell Scott Pruitt's EPA: Stop your war on science. Drop the plan to eliminate valuable research from the EPA's decision making. Click the link below to sign the petition:
-Brandy Doyle, CREDO Action
References:
  1. Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis, "Pruitt unveils controversial 'transparency' rule limiting what research EPA can use," The Washington Post, April 24, 2018.
  2. Trevor Nace, "EPA Chief Scott Pruitt: Delete Decades Of Science In The Name Of 'Transparency,'" Forbes, April 24, 2018.

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