In a revolting exercise in sophistry, nonscientist Andrew Wheeler, Donald Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency, has turned the principles of science against science itself.
Recently Wheeler, a lawyer and former coal industry lobbyist, announced that the EPA would no longer consider scientific studies that form the basis of proposed or past environmental regulations unless they meet the agency’s new standards for transparency.
“Good science is science that can be replicated and independently validated, science that can hold up to scrutiny. That is why we’re moving forward to ensure that the science supporting agency decisions is transparent and available for evaluation by the public and stakeholders,” Wheeler sanctimoniously advised a congressional committee.
Sounds reasonable on the surface, but what Wheeler, continuing a campaign launched by his disgraced predecessor, Scott Pruitt, meant is that the agency now feels free to discount any scientific evidence that, to encourage participation and protect the privacy of participants, relied on confidential medical records.
Scratch studies that promised anonymity to participants who share their health history and out goes much of the evidence that justifies environmental regulations. Which is exactly the point of the proposed new EPA standard. Such studies have demonstrated that air pollution reduces life span; that lead or mercury consumption is harmful, especially to children; that certain pollutants in drinking water increase cancer risk.
Wheeler’s change, should it be permitted to stand, could harm or destroy the state of New Hampshire’s pioneering effort to limit the damage caused by PFOAs, a class of chemical compounds found in nonstick coatings, firefighting foam, stain removers and other commonly produced products. Growing evidence suggests that the chemicals, which have found their way into the groundwater in many New Hampshire communities, especially on the Seacoast, are linked to a variety of cancers. The compounds are long-lived and not removed by municipal water treatment systems. Because they are present in the sewage biosolids used as farm fertilizer they can be found far from the source of their use.
Earlier this year, New Hampshire set the nation’s lowest permissible limit of PFOAs in drinking water. That regulation is now under legal attack on a number of fronts. It’s too soon to say, but the EPA’s new policy could conceivably come into play in the debate over whether the new limits will stand.
History is replete with examples of science suppressed to protect prevailing beliefs and entrenched wealth or power. The 16th-century Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for defending astronomer Copernicus’s contention that the Earth revolved around the sun. A generation later, Galileo was imprisoned by inquisitors for the same alleged crime. Charles Darwin was vilified for contending that humans were the product of evolution. Tennessee teacher John Thomas Scopes was fined in 1925 for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution to public school students. The chemical industry attempted to suppress the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the book that launched the modern environmental movement. Now there are attempts by Trump and Wheeler, among others, to suppress or ignore evidence of global warming, and eliminate references to it in government publications.
The EPA’s newfound concern for transparency in scientific studies is a fraud concocted to reduce the influence of science on public policy. It is an attempt to poison science in pursuit of profit.