EPA employees put names to ‘declaration of dissent’ over agency moves under Trump
A group of employees of the Environmental Protection Agency published a declaration of dissenting policies of the agency under the Trump administration on Monday, saying “undermined the EPA mission to protect human health and the environment”.
More than 170 EPA employees put their names in the document, with approximately 100 more anonymously signing for fear of reprisals, according to Jeremy Berg, a former editor-in-chief of the scientific magazine who is not an EPA employee but who was one of non-EPA scientists or academics to sign. This last figure includes more than 70 winners of the Nobel Prize.
The letter represents rare criticism from the public on the part of the agency employees who could face flame return for denouncing a weakening of funding and federal support for climate, environment and health sciences. Scientists from the National Institutes of Health made a similar decision earlier in June.
“Since the agency’s foundation in 1970, EPA has accomplished (its) mission by taking advantage of science, financing and expert staff in service to the American people. Today, we are dissenting against the current administration on harmful deregulation, the bad characterization of the previous actions of EPA and contempt for scientific expertise”, the letter read.
Agency spokesperson did not immediately respond to messages on Monday asking for comments.
“I’m really sad. This agency was a superhero for me in my youth, we do not live in our ideals under this administration. And I really want us to do it, “said Amelia Hertzberg, a specialist in environmental protection at the EPA which has been on administrative leave since February of the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, while the administration strives to close its department.
Hertzberg’s work focused on pollution’s most vulnerable groups: pregnant and nurses, young children and babies, the elderly, people with pre -existing and chronic health problems and people living in communities exposed to higher pollution levels. It was not supposed to be controversial, but he became so in this political climate, she said.
“Americans should be able to drink their water and breathe their air without being poisoned. And if they don’t have it, then our government fails, “she said.
Berg, which also directed the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of NIH from 2003 to 2011, said that dissent was not motivated by partisan criticism. He said that the employees hope that this will help EPA return to the mission for which it has been established – which “only matters if you breathe the air and drink water”.
The letter describes what EPA employees consider five main concerns: to undermine public confidence; ignore the scientific consensus to benefit the polluters; reverse the progress of EPA in the most vulnerable communities in America; dismantling of the Research and Development Bureau; And the promotion of a culture of fear, forcing staff to choose between their livelihoods and well-being.
Under the administrator Lee Zeldin, the EPA has reduced the financing of environmental improvements in minority communities, has promised to reduce federal regulations that reduce air pollution in national parks and tribal reservations, wishes to cancel the prohibition of a type of asbestos and proposed rules of the programs that limit From food power plants powered by coal and natural gas.
Zeldin began to reorganize the EPA Research and Development Office as part of its efforts to reduce their budget and interfere their study on climate change and environmental justice. And he seeks to reduce the pollution rules that an Associated Press examination found was estimated to allow 30,000 lives and $ 275 billion each year.
“People will die,” said Carol Greider, Nobel Prize winner and professor of molecular and cellular biology at the University of California in Santa Cruz, who also signed the letter. She described the heat wave of the coast is last week as proof of how people feel the effects of climate change. “And if we do not have scientists at EPA to understand how what we do that goes in the air affects our health, more people will die,” she added.
Berg has said that the dissenting statements of NIH and EPA employees are remarkable because they represent scientists who are expressed as their career is at stake. Even non -agencies must determine whether the government will withdraw funding for research.
Greider, asked questions about fears of repercussions or reprisals, said that it “lived the repercussions of everything”. She regularly meets graduate students who fear pursuing scientific careers while laboratories lose funding.
This is a long -term problem if we do not support the next generation of scientists, she said: “It’s decades of loss.”
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