The House Science committee will be holding a hearing tomorrow to talk about the status of the government’s advisory committees, which is extremely timely considering the Trump administration is attempting to get rid of them altogether.
Genna's Latest Posts
Photo: Cory Doctorow/Flickr
Drilling Down on the Attempted Takedown of the Government’s Advisory Committees
July 15, 2019 4:00 PM EDT
PFAS Amendments Form a Blueprint for Remedying National Toxic Threat
July 11, 2019 1:42 PM EDT
The House of Representatives will vote today on the inclusion of several PFAS-related amendments to the House National Defense Authorization Act that will help us to understand the extent of the PFAS public health threat and its health impacts, limit current PFAS pollution, and clean up legacy contamination on DOD and Superfund sites and nearby communities. These are all commonsense measures that should have already been in place to protect us from these chemicals, but because of a failure of our regulatory system and industry hiding scientific data on its products, we have waited too long for policy remedies. Read more >
Shealah Craighead/The White House
The Trump Administration’s Hostility Toward Independent Expert Advice Spirals Out of Control
June 15, 2019 8:31 AM EDT
This is an attack on the way that facts and verified information feed into our government. Its very premise threatens our democracy. Read more >
Photo: Genna Reed
Three Times EPA Administrator Wheeler Failed His Science Advisors This Week
June 7, 2019 10:01 AM EDT
I told E&E News before this week’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) meeting that my concern was that Administrator Wheeler was using the board “as a box he needs to check off” on his path to deregulation. He called out my quote in his statement to the SAB on Tuesday morning and refuted the underlying assumption that he didn’t value his science advisors. I didn’t have to wait long before the proceedings of the meeting proved my very point and illustrated exactly how little Administrator Wheeler cares about the scientific underpinnings of regulations, the opinions of his own scientists and science advisors, or even in getting basic scientific facts correct. Here are just a few anecdotes from this week’s SAB meeting that made this clear:
Photo: sharply_done/iStockphoto
Put Them In, Coach: Why Sidelining the EPA’s Science Advisory Board Is a Disservice to Us All
June 4, 2019 1:58 PM EDT
The EPA’s key scientific sounding board, the Science Advisory Board (SAB), will be holding its first full public meeting of 2019 this week. And as Administrator Wheeler’s EPA continues to roll back policies that were informed by science or devise new strategies to restrict the way that science is used in agency rulemakings, the committee formed to help review the agency’s science should have a very long to-do list. Read more >