Over the past five years, the EPA has not rejected any new chemicals submitted by industry despite agency scientists flagging dozens of compounds for high toxicity. Four EPA whistleblowers and industry watchdogs say a revolving door between the agency and chemical companies is to blame, and that the program’s management has been “captured by industry”. The charges are supported by emails, documents and additional records that were provided to the Guardian.
“The depth of it is pretty horrifying,” Kyla Bennett, New England director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a non-profit organization representing the four scientists, told the outlet.
“I don’t sleep at night knowing what I know from the whistleblowers," she said in a dramatic admission and indication of the severity of the problem and the depth of the EPA's corruption.
The allegations, which were leveled in July, were sent to some lawmakers and federal oversight entities. The disclosures spurred a probe by the inspector general of the EPA, who is looking at the office of chemical safety and pollution prevention.
Additionally, the House earlier this month requested materials from Michael Regan, the new EPA administrator after whistleblowers said the problem originated during the Obama administration, gained traction during President Donald Trump's administration and is continuing under President Joe Biden.
"Congress enacted legislation in 2016 designed to tighten oversight of the toxic chemical approval process. Instead, career EPA managers have worked to sabotage the process by altering risk assessments, waging harassment campaigns against employees, internally accelerating the approval process and retaliating against staff who raise concerns, according to the four agency scientists," The Guardian notes.
The allegations also disclose how managers have worked to regularly undermine scientists as they work to rapidly rubber-stamp chemicals for industry and consumer use even though they are reportedly dangerous.
The managers involved are careerist federal bureaucrats, not political appointees, so they survive like roaches in nuclear war from administration to administration, padding and feathering their nests as they amass more power while incurring less accountability, Bennett noted.
Mostly, according to the whistleblowers, the changes to risk assessments deal with deleting health hazards without the authors knowing it after assessments are submitted to managers.
"Documents show that in one file managers deleted all references to a chemical’s carcinogenicity. In other cases, managers asked scientists with less expertise on a subject to sign off on changes without informing the assessment’s author," The Guardian reported.
Typically, chemical companies object to EPA risk assessments of their products when scientists conclude that they are dangerous. The whistleblowers revealed that companies pressure managers to make changes to the assessments.
In one case, a manager reportedly yelled that one company "went apes**t" over a risk assessment that listed the carcinogenicity of a chemical, demanding that the scientist who wrote it delete that portion, though that request was ignored.
But soon, the scientist was nevertheless transferred out of that division.
“Managers seem to think their job is to get as many new chemicals on the market as fast as possible,” Bennett said.
Added one whistleblower scientist with a PhD in toxicology: “It’s frustrating because the majority of people who I work with, including myself, came to the EPA to carry out the agency’s mission of protecting human health and the environment, and to have this kind of pushback in the agency – it makes no sense."
Sure it does, if you follow the money and the power structure.
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By Arsenio Toledo // Share
