EPA Toxicologists Retaliated Against by Agency, Watchdog Report Reveals

A new report by a watchdog has found that EPA chemists and toxicologists were retaliated against for declaring the safety hazards of chemicals during the review process. According to Kyla Bennett, the director of science policy for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the agency’s employees are rewarded for completing evaluations within 90 days and feel pressure from the agency to prevent files from going into a backlog.

The 90-day deadline is difficult to meet and it’s even harder when the companies dispute the initial assessment given by the EPA. When the EPA states there are certain concerns or risks with a chemical, the company is likely to dispute that determination.

According to Bennett, assessors can pause the clock while asking for more information from companies to properly evaluate the safety of a chemical. Doing so, however, was frowned upon by the agency. The Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT) deputy director complained in 2020 that the “worst conservationist[s]” were “trying to indict every chemical.”

A human health assessor told the Inspector General (IG) that it is “somewhat impossible” to fully evaluate a chemical within 90 days as required by the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which was amended in 2016. An anonymous person told the IG office that employees could be labeled as “problematic” if they disagreed or delayed assessments from being completed.

One EPA official told the IG office that the pressure from the agency to complete backlogged requests was “pushing us like animals in a farm.”

Three specific EPA managers that were significantly contributing to the problem have since left the agency according to Bennett, but she said the problem still isn’t resolved. “There are others there that are still horrific and who are still deleting hazards or ordering these employees to delete hazards and siding with industry, and it’s really despicable,” Bennett said.

The EPA has received criticism for siding with industry during chemical disasters in East Palestine, OH, Akron, OH, and more recently in Conyers, GA. A new chemical fire occurred in Rogers, Arkansas, but details on the specific chemicals involved have not been disclosed. The EPA frequently allows the company responsible for the chemical disaster to conduct the testing in the area, which local residents reasonably consider to be a conflict of interest.

A June report from Peer.org found that EPA is using a secret backchannel to communicate with representatives from the chemical industry.

Scott Smith, an independent evaluator, has been going to these disaster sites to get testing data without relying on the EPA. Smith has said the agency always follows the same playbook, and he refers to the dozens of disaster sites he has visited since he started doing this work. He has also accused EPA of “cherry-picking” testing locations to get the results they want. “You can’t find what you don’t look for,” is Smith’s motto as he travels around to conduct safety testing in neighborhoods that have been exposed to toxic chemicals.

During a conversation with The HighWire in June, Smith said, “Basically the EPA is a captured and corrupted agency that is functioning as the public relations arm of Norfolk Southern. That’s how they exert their undue influence. I started to see such corruption with the EPA that I’ve never seen in my life. I think it’s a turning point in what’s going to be exposed here. The EPA is a completely captured and corrupt agency with $12 billion of taxpayer funds. Everyone needs to be terminated and it needs to be shut down and restarted.”

Lesley Pacey, the Senior Environmental Officer of the Government Accountability Project, told The HighWire, “Nearly 78 percent of lobbyists for Norfolk Southern are considered “revolving door” lobbyists, meaning they formerly worked for government agencies or Congress. That being said, it is extremely difficult to hold accountable corporations that wield that kind of political power, especially when the EPA allows them through CERCLA to use all their own paid contractors to determine the safety of the environment and the public. This conflict of interest is a recipe for disaster as corporations that do harm simply hire consultants that find that contaminants are at low or safe levels.”

A report by the Intercept found that all seven of the directors for the EPA pesticide division left the government position to work for the pesticide companies they were regulating. EPA was also found to be using Monsanto’s research when it determined that there was “no convincing evidence” that glyphosate is an endocrine disruptor. Glyphosate is the primary ingredient in Roundup. As of 2019, there were 28 countries that had banned glyphosate, but it is still being used commercially in the United States.

In more EPA news from this week, the agency approved Mosaic Fertilizers, LLC to use radioactive material for a test section of the road. The material is phosphogypsum, which includes radium. When radium decays, it becomes radon gas. Both radium and radon gas are radioactive and have the potential to cause cancer. The EPA has signed off on the project that gives Mosaic the green light to build three 200-foot sections of road.

In 1992, the EPA said using this material for road construction is unsafe for construction workers and people who build a home in the neighborhood. Mosaic was ordered to pay a total of $8 million in 2015 for “mixing certain types of highly-corrosive substances from its fertilizer operations, which qualify as hazardous waste, with the phosphogypsum and wastewater from mineral processing, which is a violation of federal and state hazardous waste laws.”

Jeffrey Jaxen recently reported about EPA’s first emergency order in 40 years to remove the pesticide Dacthal from the market. This chemical was banned in European countries 15 years ago.