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Showing posts with label Michael Dourson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Dourson. Show all posts
Thursday, April 19, 2018
No Dow Chemical shills at the EPA
Saturday, November 11, 2017
Keep Toxic Michael Dourson away from our EPA
Michael Dourson, President Trump's pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, has served as a champion for polluting chemical plants hoping to avoid any responsibility for health impacts. He's peddled counterfeit science for industries from tobacco to pesticides. And he's fought science-based safeguards that keep families safe from toxic chemicals.
We cannot allow Dourson, who spent his career using all the tricks in the corporate playbook to protect chemical industries from accountability when they put our health at risk, to be put in charge of protecting us from toxic pollution.
Dourson's conflict of interest and suspect history has caught the public's attention—and has fostered caution from senators, who are hearing from their constituents just why this nomination poses real danger to their state's safety. But special interests who would profit from Dourson's proposed position are pushing to get him in power at the EPA. That's why we need to keep the pressure on our senators to vote NO.
With a possible vote coming up to confirm or reject his nomination, it's important that your senators hear from you today.
Urge your senators to oppose this toxic nomination. It could mean the difference for true protection from toxic chemicals and pollution for communities throughout the United States.
Your letters matter! More than 50 percent of Congress members report that form emails into their offices have some or a lot of influence over their position on an issue. But 92 percent report that individualized email letters have some or a lot of influence! Want to have more impact? Make your letter personal.
Learn more about Michael Dourson's alarming history and conflict of interest.
- Union of Concerned Scientists
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Send the following message to your senators by clicking this link.
(personalize it for more impact)
As your constituent, I am asking you to oppose the nomination of Michael Dourson as the lead of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.
Mr. Dourson has a clear conflict of interest, industry ties, and an alarming history of weakening accountability for chemical plants’ negative impacts on public safety. These dynamics make him completely inappropriate for the job.
Monday, November 6, 2017
Tell your senators John McCain and Jeff Flake to reject all of President Trump's pro-polluter nominees for key positions in the EPA
Trump wants to install four big polluter allies in key positions at the EPA and the White House — and the Senate could move forward with these toxic nominees at any time. Tell your senators to say NO!
Take Action
A coal lobbyist. A tobacco industry consultant. An energy industry attorney. A climate change denier.
What do they all have in common?
They could all soon hold key environmental positions at the EPA and the White House.
How can anyone entrust protection of our environment or health to these individuals who've spent their careers working for big polluters?
But before these anti-environment nominees can take office, they have to get past the Senate.
Tell your senators — John McCain and Jeff Flake — to reject all of President Trump's pro-polluter nominees for key positions charged with defending our environment.
Trump's EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, has already been hard at work eviscerating the common-sense safeguards that protect our clean water and air, and stalling our progress in fighting climate change. Now, these new nominees have the potential to wreak even more havoc on our environment and public health:
Andrew Wheeler, nominated to be Pruitt's EPA deputy, has spent the past eight years as a lobbyist for the coal industry and other industrial polluters, fighting against efforts to limit dangerous carbon pollution. Tell your senators: Vote NO.
Michael Dourson, Trump's pick to oversee chemical safety and pollution prevention at the EPA, has spent decades as a consultant doing the bidding of chemical and tobacco companies. He's built a career out of making it easier for companies to expose people to unsafe levels of toxic chemicals linked to cancer — and even fought to allow them in municipal drinking water supplies. Stop Trump's toxic nominees.
Bill Wehrum served as acting head of the EPA's clean air office under President George W. Bush. Courts found that, under his leadership, his office violated the Clean Air Act over 30 times, and increased dangerous air pollution. But Trump has nominated him to take control of the office again. Tell your senators to stand up for clean air and water.
Kathleen Hartnett White, Trump's nominee to serve as chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality is a career fossil fuel apologist and oil industry shill. Not only does she deny the threat of climate change, she has dismissed the promise of renewable energy as "diffuse, unreliable, and parasitic" — in total opposition to all science and evidence. Don't let these anti-environment extremists set environmental policy.
The protection of our environment and health is not a game for hucksters and fools.It's one of the most serious responsibilities of government. And it can't be left to Trump and his climate denying, pro-polluter allies.
The Senate could move forward with these nominees at any time, so we must act now: Tell your senators to vote NO on all four of these toxic nominees, and to pressure their colleagues to do the same.
- Rhea Suh, NRDC Action Fund
Thursday, October 5, 2017
Sign the petition: Reject chemical industry shill Michael Dourson to head EPA chemical safety office
The petition to the U.S. Senate reads:
"Reject the nomination of long time chemical industry ally Michael Dourson to head the EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention."
Add your name:
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Michael Dourson may be the most dangerous Trump administration nominee you've never heard of.
Picked to oversee the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) chemical safety division, Dourson is a long time chemical industry shill who has deep ties to Dow, DuPont, Monsanto and the Koch brothers.
He has a long history of greenwashing the deadly effects of toxic chemicals to protect corporate profits and runs an industry-funded "science-for-hire" consulting firm charged with undercutting environmental regulations.1
A man bought and paid for by the chemical industry who has put the health and safety of American families at serious risk should not be in charge of overseeing chemical safety and pollution. We must immediately urge the Senate to reject Dourson's nomination before it comes up for a vote.
For more than two decades, Dourson has been the go-to "voice of the chemical industry" when corporate polluters and chemical manufacturers need misleading research to minimize the effects of toxic chemicals.2 In the 1990s, tobacco giant Philip Morris hired Dourson's firm to generate research downplaying the negative effects of secondhand smoke. He justified his decision to work with Big Tobacco by saying "Jesus hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors. … Why should we exclude anyone that needs help?"3
Dourson has since made a career of shamelessly defending the chemical industry with shady science and questionable research.4 Multinational chemical manufacturers like Dow, Monsanto and DuPont have routinely hired him to downplay the effects of highly toxic substances found in pesticides and everyday products like cosmetics and shampoo that are linked to birth defects, developmental problems and cancer.5 A now-defunct website his firm built for the chemical industry once claimed that toxic chemicals in children's toys weren't so dangerous since water can be toxic, too, at a high enough volume.6
Dourson's nomination is an extremely dangerous example of putting the fox in charge of guarding the henhouse. Dourson will likely work to roll back critical environmental and chemical safety regulations to benefit his friends in the chemical industry at the expense of the health and well-being of Americans across the country.
As Ken Cook, the head of the Environmental Working Group, put it, "Handing the keys to EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention to Dourson, who has spent a career opposing both, makes about as much sense as letting the CEO of Philip Morris run the American Lung Association."7
The Senate is set to vote on Dourson's nomination any day now. We must sound the alarm now before the Trump administration quietly installs another industry hack to undermine the EPA and put public health and lives at risk.
Tell the Senate: Reject Michael Dourson's nomination to head the EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. Click the link below to sign the petition:
- Josh Nelson, Deputy Political Director
CREDO Action from Working Assets
Add your name:
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