U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Scott Pruitt recently announced that he won’t allow the agency to use studies that include nonpublic scientific data to set rules to protect public health. But former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy says that the studies Pruitt proposes ignoring are scientifically sound and provide crucial data to underpin policies aimed at protecting the American people from dangerous toxins.
In a March 26, 2018 op-ed in the New York Times, McCarthy, who led the EPA from 2013-17 under President Obama and is now director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and co-author Janet McCabe, who was assistant administrator of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation during the same period, wrote that Pruitt’s contention that certain studies are “secret science” is untrue.
“These studies adhere to all professional standards and meet every expectation of the scientific community in terms of peer review and scientific integrity,” McCarthy and McCabe wrote. They explained that some studies, particularly those seeking to uncover how chemicals and pollution impact health, rely on medical records that are confidential because of patient privacy policies. Such studies “are…essential to making sound public policy,” they wrote.
McCarthy also discussed Pruitt on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” on March 23. “He’s got an all-out attack on science, he’s got an all-out attack on the agency….In the end, he’s trying to get rid of a lot of rules that were put in place that were done well,” she said, adding, “We have to let scientists tell the truth, and we have to listen to it and base decisions on it.”
Read the New York Times op-ed: Scott Pruitt’s Attack on Science Would Paralyze the E.P.A.
Watch Gina McCarthy on “Real Time with Bill Maher”
Learn more
McCarthy: Science is under attack at EPA under Trump (Harvard Chan School news)