“Ruth Etzel, the former director of EPA’s Office of Children’s Health Protection (OCHP) ousted by the Trump administration, is pursuing a whistleblower complaint that could return her to the helm of OCHP, just as she is calling for regulators to adopt a new approach to chemical risks to protect vulnerable communities from cumulative exposures.
While she did not address the possibility of her return to OCHP during the webcast, the whistleblower group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) announced April 27 that it is representing her before the federal Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) contending that her reassignment away from the children’s office in 2019 “was illegal retaliation for urging adoption of stronger lead protections.””
