“EPA has received the Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) reports on five whistleblower complaints in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention’s new chemicals program,” an EPA spokesperson said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The events covered by these reports began during the previous administration when the political leadership placed intense pressure on both career managers and scientists in EPA’s new chemicals program to more quickly review and approve new chemicals. The reports also point to the failure to provide additional resources for the increased workload in the new chemicals program that resulted when the Toxic Substances Control Act was amended.”
Kyla Bennett, director of science policy for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the organization that helped file some of the complaints, pushed back against the EPA’s assessment of the situation in comments to The Hill.
“Things under the Trump administration were horrific,” Bennett told the outlet. However, “all of these same issues are occurring under the Biden administration — both the retaliation and the underlying scientific issues.”
