There has been condemnation of a leaked plan to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Research and Development (ORD) by former senior agency staff. The plan would see 50–75% of its 1540 employees laid off and the remainder could be relocated. The office, which has served as the foundation for science-based regulations and policies at the EPA for decades, could be dissolved and some of its functions transferred elsewhere in the agency.
This EPA scheme is set to be officially relayed to the White House by 14 April. But researchers like Paul Anastas, a chemist at Yale University who headed the ORD from 2009 to 2012 and served as the agency’s science adviser, says the Trump administration has already killed the office, which acts as the agency’s scientific research arm and conducts research that informs its decisions.
‘Research and science at the EPA [are] being dismantled now, they are being shut down now,’ says Anastas, who is known as the ‘father of green chemistry’. Even before this plan to gut ORD, he says scientific staff at the agency weren’t even allowed to communicate with the public or other scientists. When Anastas has tried to engage with ORD employees on scientific questions or issues of accessing data in recent months, he says they have told him that they aren’t permitted to respond.
‘We have symposia all the time and a number of EPA people within ORD who have relevant expertise are invited to take part in these important scientific meetings, conferences, deliberations, workshops and they have had to cancel saying they are not allowed to attend or present, and that’s been since January 20,’ he continues.
Anastas also expresses concern about the future of his own funding and green chemistry in general, but stresses that he is most worried about how gutting the EPA’s science base could harm people’s health and well-being.
Concerns beyond grants
‘Am I worried about grant funding, yes, but everybody who cares about science for protecting human health and the environment cares about its impacts on people and the planet first,’ Anastas tells Chemistry World. Although refusing to say whether any of his own federal research grants have been flagged, paused or defunded recently, he notes that many colleagues at Yale and beyond have had ongoing studies ‘curtailed and cancelled’ in recent weeks.
The top Democrat on the House Science, Space, and Technology committee and seven other Democratic members of Congress wrote to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on 26 March and demanded that he cease any plans to weaken or shutter ORD. ‘Virtually since the creation of the EPA itself, ORD has served as the cornerstone of science-based decision-making at the agency, which is required to use the best available science to protect human health and the environment,’ the Democrats wrote.
They directed Zeldin – an attorney turned politician who beat Stony Brook University chemist Nancy Goroff when she tried to unseat him in Congress in 2020 – to provide the plan to the committee as soon as it is forwarded to the White House. The lawmakers also requested a briefing from Zeldin on how the EPA created the plan, any analysis conducted to inform the plan and the projected impact of the plan on the agency’s workforce and activities.
They maintained that the executive branch demolishing ORD in this manner is illegal because it would necessitate a change to the statute that established the EPA, which requires congressional approval, and Anastas agrees. ‘I expect that there will be lawsuits challenging this,’ he states, pointing out that the scientific data supplied by ORD is used as the basis of state regulations.
This is the latest step in a series of major environmental rollbacks initiated by Zeldin in recent weeks. Perhaps most noteworthy, he announced 31 specific environmental deregulation actions in rapid-fire succession on 12 March, including a formal reconsideration of the EPA’s so-called ‘endangerment finding’ from 2009 that says current and projected concentrations of the six key greenhouse gases in the atmosphere threaten public health.
‘What we are seeing is a systematic dismantling of science across the administration that is putting the health of all Americans at serious risk,’ warns Christine Todd Whitman, who led the EPA under former president George W Bush. ‘If there is an endangerment finding to be had on things that threaten our well-being, it should be against this administration,’ she continues. ‘Without the ability to do the research identifying health and environmental threats, we will be subject to contamination from chemicals and particulates in our food, water and air.’
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