Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility

September 14, 2023

New scientific integrity policy lacking teeth, critics warn

A draft policy meant to curtail improper interference in federal scientific work falls far short of what is needed, according to a warning issued this month by a group of public health and science advocacy groups.

The draft issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is the first to come from a key federal agency in answer to a call by President Joe Biden for federal agencies to strengthen policies meant to protect the integrity of their research. HHS is expected to release its final policy by February 2024.

The HHS oversees government entities that play critical roles in evaluating harmful chemicals, tracking and analyzing data on important public health threats, and conducting research into human health and disease, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

The HHS works to “enhance the health and well-being of all Americans depends on the development and use of accurate, complete, and timely scientific and technical information,” HHS states in the draft policy.

But according to a letter sent to HHS this month by 11 advocacy organizations, the draft policy would do little to stem what has become a systemic problem in key federal agencies whose work is supposed to protect the public but too often is swayed by political and/or corporate interests.

“Under this proposed policy, every aspect of enforcing scientific integrity principles would remain a captive of the political process inside the agencies,” Jeff Ruch, the Pacific director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), said in a press release.

February 22, 2023

Citing birds and bees, groups petition EPA to close pesticide loophole

By Carey Gillam

The US should overhaul regulation of a class of insecticides tied to excessive honeybee and bird deaths, according to a citizen petition filed Wednesday with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by a coalition of more than 60 nonprofit groups.

Specifically, the groups are demanding the EPA revoke a nearly 40-year-old waiver that allows pesticide companies to bring their products to market without first providing data that proves the product benefits. The groups say the waiver dates back to a 1984 EPA declaration that stated: “rather than require efficacy data the Agency presumes that benefits exceed risks”.

The petition, which was submitted by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and the American Bird Conservancy, is aimed at turning back the use of insecticides known as neonicotinoids, or neonics, which many studies have shown to be exceptionally harmful to hundreds of species.

Environmental advocates say numerous studies show neonics are not necessary and are so detrimental to the environment that they should be banned.

“This stuff is causing all sorts of environmental problems and the environmental tragedy is multiplied because in many cases these insecticides provide farmers no benefit but at the same time they’re doing all this damage,” said Peter Jenkins, a lawyer with PEER.

The European Union has banned the outdoor use of certain types of neonics, and the United Nations has said neonics are so hazardous that they should be “severely” restricted. But in the US, the pesticides remain widely used, typically as coatings on corn and soybean seeds planted by farmers to protect crops from insects and disease. Neonicotinoids are used across on an estimated 150m acres of US farmland annually.

When used as seed coatings, neonics are absorbed through the roots of plants as they grow. Residues of the chemicals can persist for years in the environment and are blamed, along with other pesticides, for a so-called “insect apocalypse.”

November 16, 2022

Guest column: EPA has lost its way

By Tim Whitehouse

It has been more than 20 years since I worked as a senior attorney at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), using my legal training to help enforce the Clean Water Act, and advise agency managers on a range of hazardous waste issues.

When I joined the regulatory agency in 1992, I felt my work would matter; that I would play a small role in protecting public and environmental health. And during the ten years I worked there, I always felt I was making a positive difference and my managers were usually able to apply the law in ways that balanced the interests of various stakeholders.

Over the years, however, it has become more apparent that this is often no longer the case, and that powerful corporate interests have taken too much control over EPA’s decision-making processes. Nowhere is this more apparent than in EPA’s chemicals and pesticides programs.

The last 30 years have brought countless examples of EPA’s appalling incompetence and willful corruption as the agency routinely capitulates to the interests of the chemical industry and ignores or minimizes human health and environmental risks.

Newly unearthed documents regarding one such chemical – the weed killer paraquat – provide just the latest example of how inept the agency has become in protecting public health.

At the organization I work for now – Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility – we are currently representing EPA scientists who have bravely put their careers on the line to speak out publicly about the wrongdoing they’ve witnessed with the agency.

Through a series of disclosures to EPA’s Inspector General and Congress these scientists have provided extensive evidence of a system that operates in a black box where threats to human health from chemicals are routinely deleted from risks assessments, where agency managers routinely bow to industry wishes, where key managers move back and forth between jobs at the EPA and the chemical industry with scant scrutiny, and where managers ignore risk indicators and intimidate staff into signing off on assessments with insufficient data to reach a conclusion.

September 12, 2022

EPA confirms PFAS can leach from shipping containers into food, other products

By Shannon Kelleher

Toxic chemicals knowns as PFAS leach from the walls of shipping containers into the products they contain, potentially contaminating food, pesticides, and other products transported all over the world, according to study by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The findings provide fresh evidence backing concerns that per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances used to coat the insides of shipping containers can contaminate the contents of those containers. The EPA analysis found that 8 types of PFAS compounds leached into water and methanol samples stored in fluorinated high-density polyethylene (HDPE) containers after just one day.

The EPA said the analysis provided “a clear indication” of the migration of PFAS from container walls to the liquid solutions in the container. The agency said the amount of PFAS leached into the solutions generally increased with time during the agency’s 20-week testing period.

The levels of contamination the EPA found were higher than the health advisory threshold of about 0.004 parts per trillion (ppt) EPA recently set for PFOA, one of the PFAS chemicals identified in the barrels.

August 31, 2022

NOAA is damaging marine life by bottom trawling Gulf of Mexico

By Shannon Kelleher

A U.S. government agency that is supposed to protect ocean resources is instead endangering coral reefs, fish, and other marine life as it collects data from the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental watchdog group alleged this week.

In an Aug. 29 letter, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) called on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to stop scraping the ocean floor in the Gulf of Mexico with heavy nets for fishery studies. PEER is a Washington, DC-based group that works to expose improper government actions related to the environment.

Peer said it received concerning information from a NOAA scientist about the practice, and a review of NOAA’s own data demonstrates that the “bottom trawling” may inflict irreparable damage on sea floor habitats that can last for years.

“Ironically, NOAA’s own marine protection policies are designed to minimize the very type of damage these research trawls cause,” PEER Executive Director Tim Whitehouse said in a press release. “We believe that that the damage caused outweighs the marginal research value of these trawls.”

PEER said the trawls involve dragging heavy nets, large metal doors, and chains over the sea floor to catch fish, similar to industrial fishing. The trawls sometimes result in nets abandoned in the ocean, where they can entangle sea turtles and other marine animals, PEER said.