The Top 7 Ways the Trump Administration Is Attacking Science at the EPA.
The EPA is full of climate science deniers, starting at the top Despite the overwhelming scientific consensus to the contrary, EPA Administrator Pruitt has questioned whether carbon dioxide causes climate change and the magnitude of humans’ role in driving it.
Pruitt also has staffed the EPA with a litany of climate change science deniers, drawing particularly heavily from the office of Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK)—who famously threw a snowball on the Senate floor to prove that climate change is a hoax—to fill senior leadership positions.
President Trump determined that climate change has no cost On March 28, President Trump signed an executive order nullifying much of former President Barack Obama’s Climate Action Plan.
The EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act, which passed the House in March, could prevent the nation’s top scientists from participating in the SAB if, paradoxically, they would be advising the SAB on matters related to their own expertise.
Rep. Lamar Smith wants to block the EPA from using sound science to set pollution standards Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), an ardent climate denier who has been leading the congressional attack on science, introduced the Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act, or HONEST Act.
As such, the bill could block the EPA from using the best available scientific evidence to set pollution limits or develop ambient air quality standards.
President Trump has failed to hire scientists throughout the government President Trump has kept many critical science positions vacant since he took office in January.
President Trump, Administrator Pruitt, and their allies in Congress want to obscure the science that clearly demonstrates the need to cut air and water pollution by the powerful corporate interests that offer them the greatest political support.
Myriam Alexander-Kearns is a Policy Analyst for the Energy and Environment Policy team at the Center for American Progress.

The petitioners, Pesticide Action Network and the Natural Resources Defense Council, cited studies show that Chlorpyrifos can have serious health consequences, such as damaging the nervous system of infants and children.
What is Chlorpyrifos?
This is why in 2007, environmental groups petitioned the EPA to ban its use in agricultural use as well.
The EPA denied the petition to ban Chlorpyrifos.
As Pruitt noted: “we need to provide regulatory certainty to the thousands of American farms that rely on Chlorpyrifos, while still protecting human health and the environment … By reversing the previous Administration’s steps to ban one of the most widely used pesticides in the world, we are returning to using sound science in decision-making – rather than predetermined results.” While Pruitt emphasized “sound science,” the EPA’s own internal research notes the harmful effect of this pesticide.
As much scholarship has found, poor and marginalized communities tend to be disproportionately exposed to pollution.
Consequently, they have less political power and this means that firms and the EPA may be less attentive to the harmful consequences of pesticide use on their health.
Less visible environmental problems tend to receive less attention from companies and regulators.
The slow effort to remove lead from drinking water is a case in point.
Aseem Prakash is professor of political science, the Walker Family Professor and the founding director of the Center for Environmental Politics at the University of Washington.