Bob Marshall: Losing track of environmental health matters | Guest Columns

What would you do if your primary care doctor said you were in perfect health but had just canceled annual tests including bloodwork, an EKG, X-rays and even the biopsy a concerned oncologist had ordered?

You’d change doctors, of course, and quickly.

Unfortunately, we must wait three years to change the person in charge of the nation’s environmental health — President Donald Trump — even though he’s been guilty of malpractice since reclaiming the presidency in  January.

I say that because Trump has been canceling research programs at federal agencies needed to monitor the nation’s environmental health and provide needed regulations. These are the medical checkups the nation has long relied on to keep you and your children safe from a growing list of environmental risks, from toxic cancer-causing pollution to the rising impacts of climate change.

Trump’s attacks began when his EPA director, Lee Zeldin, announced he was disbanding that agency’s Office of Research and Development and laying off as many as 1,000 chemists, biologists and other researchers. That office does the independent research that uncovers threats to human health and provides the legal justification for environmental regulations. Under Trump’s EPA reorganization, research will now be directed by different offices led by political appointees who decide what can be investigated and how.

According to Zeldin, this new EPA will adhere to the long-held desire by many industries that their profits and the nation’s economy should have equal status with pollution control in deciding environmental regulations. He will oversee “commonsense policies supporting clean air, land, and water for all Americans while unleashing American energy, revitalizing domestic manufacturing, cutting the cost of living for families, and growing innovation and entrepreneurialism.”

As just one example of the philosophy in action, federal officials have not made public the list of hazardous materials present at Smitty’s, a petroleum products plant in Tangipahoa that caught fire last month, citing a concern over revealing “confidential business information.”

But Trump was just getting warmed up and quickly turned his attention to eviscerating climate research — knowledge critical to coastal areas struggling to adapt to rapidly rising sea levels, such as south Louisiana.

To that end, Trump’s EPA is preparing to rescind the agency’s 2009 finding that six greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride are harmful to human health. That finding, which survived court challenges, provided the authority for a whole range of air pollution regulations as well as grants for industries to begin shifting to renewable energy. By eliminating that scientific finding, Trump can put an end to most of the progress the nation has made to reduce emissions — something critical if we have any chance of slowing the sea level rise threatening to swallow our sinking coastal zone. Incredibly, EPA staffers told The New York Times “climate regulations are what pose the true threat to public health and welfare, because they increase the price of new vehicles and leave fewer choices for car buyers.”

Trump continued his war on climate research by:

• Ordering the end of more than 100 climate studies.
• Telling NASA to end programs using satellites to measure carbon dioxide. 
• Stripping previous National Climate Assessments from the NASA website. These reports are required by Congress to be presented every four to five years, but the Trump administration has been ignoring many rules. 
• Removing years of climate research from government websites, sending scientists around the world rushing to download and save reports and data.

Trump’s administration and his congressional allies are actually celebrating what critics are calling a “war on science,” painting researchers as left-leaning environmentalists looking for ways to stifle industry. But this is much worse.

It is an unprecedented war not just on science, but the facts that science produces and that a democracy needs to gained consensus for important decisions.

It’s a classic tactic by authoritarians and dictators to silence any critics by controlling the flow of facts.

By canceling the research, he can tell us our environmental health is fine and we’re facing no threats, even that regulations are the problem, not the solution.

And he has made sure we won’t have the facts to disagree.

Bob Marshall, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Louisiana environmental journalist, can be reached at [email protected], and followed on Twitter @BMarshallEnviro.