EPA transparency rule may weaken public protection

Three scientists criticized the new transparency rule proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency, arguing that the rule could stifle the science needed to enact regulations protecting the public. The rule, titled “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science,” would apply retroactively to regulations already in place,” wrote the scientists. “It would make it harder to enact new regulations, because many studies from the past rely on personal medical information that was collected under confidentiality agreements and include consensus from reports that may not have shared all of the data according in ways compliant with the proposed rule.” (STAT, December 9, 2019, by Lenny Teytelman, William Gunn and Joanne Kamens)

While the rule seems worthy in requiring the EPA to only use research “publicly accessible, reproducible and independently verified,” the rule would eliminate certain types of vital data. Writes Eric Niiler in WIRED, November 11, 2019, “That [the rule] would mean limiting studies on the effects of air pollution on lung disease or toxic chemicals’ effects on Parkinson’s disease and cancer, for example. Scientists also argued that some data, by its nature, can never be reproduced. That would include, for example, the collected particles spewed out by erupting volcanoes, or oil-stained creatures from the Deepwater Horizon spill, or tissue samples taken from soldiers exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.”

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