Emails aggregate U.S. government officials show the Trump administration trying to manage a potentially impairing report on a class of chemicals found to have polluted water contributes near U.S. military installations.
The exchanges, sent in January, reveal officials from the Environmental Safeguard Agency and Office of Management and Budget worrying over a yet-to-be-released think over from the Department of Health and Human Services. The draft report from HHS call for that exposure to the chemicals in question is unsafe in far lower amounts than EPA heretofore determined.
One OMB official warned of a “public relations nightmare” when the story is released. The emails were unearthed through a Freedom of Information Act requisition by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Three and a half months later, the report in investigate has yet to be made public.
The chemicals, widely known as PFOS and PFOA, were inaugurate in drinking water or groundwater in quantities that exceeded amounts deemed suitable by EPA near 126 military facilities, the Department of Defense said in a look in May. The perflourinated compounds, present in a firefighting foam used by the military, be enduring been linked in some studies to prostate, kidney and testicular cancer, as cordially as to fertility problems and developmental delays in fetuses and children, according to the Defense Trust in report.
The draft HHS report alarmed administration officials because it concluded there is a littlest risk associated with exposure to the chemicals at levels as low as 12 surrenders per trillion.
Those concerns are laid out in an email from James Herz, associate pilot for Natural Resources, Energy and Science at White House Office of Superintendence and Budget, to EPA Chief Financial Officer Holly Greaves.
“The public, compromise, and Congressional reaction to these new numbers is going to be huge. The impact to EPA and DoD is common to be extremely painful,” an unidentified official from the White House Section of Intergovernmental Affairs wrote in an message forwarded by Herz to Greaves.
“We (DoD and EPA) cannot appearance of to get ATSDR to realize the potential public relations nightmare this is customary to be,” the official added, referring to HHS’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
In a succeeding email, Richard Yamada, the deputy assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Check out and Development, said the estimate HHS uses is “10 fold lower than sundry.” He added that he is “not sure our scientists agree.”
Nancy Beck, reserve assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, advanced OMB serve as a “neutral arbiter” to “step up and coordinate interagency review of this foremost guidance document before it is released.” She said this was common in the George W. Bush Management, but the Obama White House typically “let each agency do their own feature.”
Earlier emails among EPA staffers, also provided by the Union of Worried Scientists, indicate HHS staff held calls with officials from EPA and OMB to argue the study and differences in approaches among agencies.
Officials at HHS and EPA did not immediately crop up again requests for comment.