The EPA’s inspector general office, in a string of partially redacted reports, found managers in the EPA’s New Chemicals Division, part of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, retaliated against employees who raised concerns about chemicals being approved for commercial release.
Kyla Bennett, the director of science policy for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), said the EPA employees who faced retaliation worked as chemists and toxicologists.
“They would do these risk assessments on new chemicals, and they’d say, ‘OK, we found that this one causes cancer,’ for example. And the managers would say, ‘No, no, we don’t want to say that,’ and they’d delete the cancer designation. And it was happening over and over and over, and then they started getting retaliated against when they were pushing back,” Bennett said.
