Trump administration’s version of Abbott and Costello’s ‘Who’s on First?’
By Ariel Wittenberg, E&E News
Researching air quality is key to improving kids’ health, according to a new strategy from the Make America Healthy Again Commission unveiled Tuesday by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.
There’s just one problem: EPA, under Zeldin’s leadership, has shuttered the preeminent laboratory in the country studying air pollution’s impact on people. What’s more, it has proposed drastic cuts to the agency’s research staff and moved to rewrite regulations to allow more emissions.
“There will be more air pollution to study, and fewer funds and staff with which to do it,” said Laura Kate Bender, vice president of nationwide advocacy and public policy at the American Lung Association.
The so-called MAHA strategy released Tuesday includes 128 recommendations for improving heath and addressing chronic diseases. It specifically says EPA and the National Institutes of Health “will study air quality impacts on children’s health and utilize existing research programs to improve data collection and analysis.”
Both Kennedy and Zeldin spoke Tuesday about using “gold standard science” to fulfill the report’s objectives, with Zeldin saying that includes “the work of our chemicals, air, and water programs.”
EPA’s shuttering of its Human Research Facility in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, this summer undermines that promise, health experts say.
“It was one of the only places in the country where you could put humans in a chamber and measure their reaction to ozone,” Bender said. “Those studies have long informed our understanding of how much of these pollutants are safe to breathe.”
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