“The Environmental Protection Agency recently acknowledged what was plain to most outside observers throughout the Trump era. “Over the past few years, I am aware that political interference sometimes compromised the integrity of our science,” Michal Freedhoff, acting assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, wrote it in a March 10 internal memo. Freedhoff pointed to a 2020 risk evaluation of the chemical trichlorethylene, which she said was altered at the direction of White House staff; the 2018 decision to re-register the carcinogenic pesticide dicamba, for which senior leadership directed career staff to discount scientific information on negative impacts; and an assessment of the toxic compound PFBS, which the EPA released on Trump’s last day in office and Freedhoff described as containing conclusions that were “the product of biased political interference.”
An EPA scientist who filed a scientific integrity complaint with Grifo’s office said they, too, feel it is imperative to hold corrupt actors responsible. “I can’t sleep at night. I am under so much mental strain, I couldn’t get out of bed for a while.” That unnamed scientist isn’t suffering alone, according to Kyla Bennett, director of science policy at PEER, an organization that supports environmental whistleblowers. “Some of my clients who are involved in the scientific integrity process regularly call me sobbing on the phone because they’re so afraid that their inability to stop the agency from doing what it’s doing will harm the American public,” she said.”
