"Trump nearly broke the EPA. Can the Biden administration repair the damage?""
"The Environmental Protection Agency recently acknowledged what was plain to most outside observers throughout the Trump era. “Over the past few years, I am aware that political interference sometimes compromised the integrity of our science,” Michal Freedhoff, acting assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, wrote it in a March 10 internal memo. Freedhoff pointed to a 2020 risk evaluation of the chemical trichlorethylene, which she said was altered at the direction of White House staff; the 2018 decision to re-register the carcinogenic pesticide dicamba, for which senior leadership directed career staff to discount scientific information on negative impacts; and an assessment of the toxic compound PFBS, which the EPA released on Trump’s last day in office and Freedhoff described as containing conclusions that were “the product of biased political interference.”
“That interference undermined the agency’s scientific integrity policy and eroded the trust that the American public has in EPA, the quality of our science, and our ability to protect their health and the environment,” Freedhoff wrote.
The internal reckoning within the EPA is part of the Biden administration’s effort to recommit to scientific integrity throughout the federal government. On his first day in office, the new president issued an executive order in which he pledged “to listen to the science; to improve public health and protect our environment; to ensure access to clean air and water; to limit exposure to dangerous chemicals and pesticides.” A week later, the White House issued a memorandum that laid out a plan for how federal agencies should go about restoring trust in scientific integrity."
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