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The E.P.A. regulation, known as the Strengthening Transparency in Pivotal Science Underlying Significant Regulatory Actions and Influential Scientific Information Rule, says that “pivotal” scientific studies that make public their underlying data and models must be given more weight than studies that keep such data confidential. The agency concluded that the E.P.A. or anyone else should be able to independently validate research that impacts regulations.
“It’s sunshine, it’s transparency,” Andrew Wheeler, the administrator of the E.P.A., said of the regulation on Tuesday during an online forum with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank that opposes most environmental regulation. He described the policy as an effort “to reduce misunderstanding of our regulatory decisions.”
Yet thousands of public health experts, scientific groups and medical organizations objected to the rule contending it is actually designed to block the use of studies that prove the links between increased exposure to toxic substances and impaired health in order to avoid new regulations.
The rule downgrades the use of population studies in which subjects offer medical histories, lifestyle information and other personal data only on the condition of privacy. Such studies have served as the scientific underpinnings of some of the most important clean air and water regulations of the past half century.
Critics say the agency’s leaders disregarded the E.P.A.’s scientific review system to create an additional layer of scrutiny designed to impede or block access to the best available science, weakening the government’s ability to create new protections against pollution, pesticides, and possibly even the coronavirus.
“Right now we’re in the grips of a serious public health crisis due to a deadly respiratory virus, and there’s evidence showing that air pollution exposure increases the risk of worse outcomes,” said Dr. Mary Rice, a pulmonary and critical care physician who is chairwoman of the environmental health policy committee at the American Thoracic Society.
“We would want E.P.A. going forward to make decisions about air quality using all available evidence, not just putting arbitrary limits on what it will consider,” she said.
The E.P.A. policy goes into effect immediately under an unusual procedural tactic that allows the administration to avoid a traditional 30-day waiting period after a regulation appears in the federal register. Doing so could prevent the Biden administration from immediately suspending the regulation.
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