Ep. 100: “Sound science is not leading the decisions made by this nation.”

There have been a number of changes in how the EPA, under President Trump, uses science. It has come with much criticism, including from former EPA officials. On this episode, we hear from a veteran EPA scientist on what drove him to leave the Trump Administration. Chris Zarba worked at the EPA for close to four decades. He was an official in the administrator's office of the agency and also directed the Agency’s Science Advisory Board Staff Office.

Listen to the full episode or read the transcript below:

Reid Frazier: The EPA is a big agency and it's got a number of functions. What were your responsibilities? 

Chris Zarba:  I worked at EPA for 38 years so I had lots of jobs in many different places. For the last five years, I was the director of the Science Advisory Board Staff Office. So basically anything that EPA does of consequence that's based on science, that science needs to be independently peer-reviewed. So outside scientists need to review it. Sometimes it's actually required by law. In most cases, it's not. But so I ran an office where, in a given year, I would hire between two and 300 nationally recognized scientists, and those hires were based on their expertise. And they would do independent reviews of key science issues and science studies that the agency has done to make sure before the agency goes implementing policies and regulations that those policies and regulations are based on the best available science. And in each and every panel, there were academic scientists and scientists from industry and consulting groups. I made it a point of ensuring that there was a healthy representation of top industry scientists on all panels. They provided very unique and high-quality work, and it was important to have them in the room to share their thoughts and ideas and expertise. 

Reid Frazier: Why were you out there hiring all these scientists? I mean, what role do outside scientists play at the agency? 

Chris Zarba: Let's say the agency's coming out with a revised air standard to protect human health, and that has big impacts on both the health of the American public and the industries that may have to comply with those tougher standards. And it's important to know that science is done right. So by hiring these scientists to do reviews and they would do these reviews in a very open way. There were public comment periods. During my tenure, I started webcasting them so you didn't have to be in the room. You could actually be anywhere in the country and you could see the process to make sure that everybody that had something to say could contribute to those discussions.  And when the review was done, there would be a high degree of credibility in the findings. 

“The attacks and the changes to the SAB came immediately and with very little, if any, consultation with me or my staff about what the impacts would be.”

Earlier in my career, I was in front of the SAB on numerous occasions. I was working on ways of assessing the contamination at hazardous waste sites. And even before I did the review, I was being attacked, the science was being attacked, and it was only through those reviews that I could ensure that we had the credibility that we had earned. For example, when I would get calls from the press, they would say this organization or this person called and said that what you're doing is highly flawed, I would never quote my science team; I would never quote my management; I would always refer to the Science Advisory Board. And if there was something that the SAB would say that needed to be worked on, I could use that internally to go to my management, to go to the science side of the agency, say, look, I need time and some resources to fix these weaknesses in the science products that I was producing. 

Reid Frazier: This is, generally speaking, how the EPA managed science in its rulemaking prior to the Trump administration, is that right? 

Chris Zarba: Yeah, and this goes back for the 38 years I was at the agency. And it didn't change at all between administrations. Republicans and Democrats consistently left the science alone. They didn't tinker with it. They may have had a different emphasis. They may have wanted a different emphasis on some of the panels, but it was always well within the bounds of reasonable until this administration. 

Reid Frazier: What happened then?  

Chris Zarba: Actually, I was going to retire in 2017 and the people I had recruited - I didn't I don't get to pick my replacement, but I could propose names to my management on who would be good candidates to replace me -- well, the people that I had kind of lined up as good candidates to replace me, after the election, they dropped out of the running. They said they were not interested in the job anymore. I actually stayed over a year into the new administration because I didn't have a good replacement and I thought it would be best for the organization if I stayed another year. I'm glad I did, even though it was a very difficult year. And the attacks and the changes to the SAB came immediately and with very littlem if any, consultation with me or my staff about what the impacts would be. The first change that came is I got a directive, I had no warning that it was coming, it just showed up and I was implemented immediately. And that was  -- of the several hundred people that were hired on the SAB and the standing committees - any of them that had a grant with the Environmental Protection Agency had to be terminated. Though if you had a grant from industry, you were given an exception. So I literally had to pick up the phone and fire 30 plus scientists. Then in the solicitations for new scientists, anybody that had a grant was excluded from being considered. But if you had a grant from industry, you got to pass. 

The next thing that came down was the term limit. Typically serving on the Science Advisory Board or the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee, which I also managed, the term limits were six years which meant that we had about an 18 percent turnover every year. Well, the next directive that came down was that the term limit went from six years to three. Now we had a 33 percent turnover rate in addition to the people I had to terminate in addition to not being able to consider people that had grants for new positions. The overall impact was there was a huge exodus of top-notch, high-quality scientists from the agency. 

And then the next thing that happened, which I think was even more disturbing, is normally the process for filling those vacancies was we would run a solicitation in the Federal Register seeking new candidates with specific expertise that we needed. And then I and my staff would review those people who have submitted their names, rank them based on their qualifications, and then do detailed briefings for the administrator. For Lisa Jackson or Gina McCarthy, I'd spend an hour and a half walking through who was rotating off of the panels and what expertise we needed. And then I would give them a ranked list. So if I'd need an entomologist or a hydro geomorphologist or whatever, I'd say these are the people that are extremely well qualified and here's why we put this person at the top of the list and this person second. And to my recollection, and to the recollection of my two predecessors, none of us could remember a time where the administrator didn't go with our recommendations.

“I always wanted industry scientists who had minority opinions so that they would have a front-row seat to bring their science to the table. But there is a point where you're overwhelming the system with people who have positions that are inconsistent with mainstream science.”

Under this administration, they just wanted the list. No briefing, no discussion. Send me the list and then the list would come back with checks next to the people they wanted. I'm not sure who they were talking to or how they were coming to those decisions. All of the people that they pick I'd say were qualified to be on the panel. But it was the mix that had me concerned. I always wanted industry scientists who had minority opinions so that they would have a front-row seat to bring their science to the table. But there is a point where you're overwhelming the system with people who have positions that are inconsistent with mainstream science. Nowhere was that more apparent than on the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee (CASAC). By law, the CASAC is limited to seven people. They chose a guy as the chair who had an extreme minority opinion about the impacts of air pollution on children and human health to the point where he was saying that the problem children were having is that the air was too clean. Now, there's nothing wrong with having a minority opinion, but certainly not being a chair of an important panel like that would not be an appropriate position. And that chair of that panel shouldn't use their position to be a dictator to push their unique perspective on that issue. As a chair, you're kind of a bully pulpit. You can use that to facilitate, but you can also use it to dictate. So the process was really compromised. Any one of those pieces I just described are important. If you put them all together, there's a multiplying effect. And as a result, I think it really drew into question the credibility of the CASAC. They've even admitted since then that they don't have the basic qualifications to do some of the reviews that they did. And the panels that got fired underneath them also have clearly stated in the press that they're doing reviews, that they don't have the basic science, skills, and capabilities to do an assessment on. 

Reid Frazier: There's a lot there. So the chair of the CASAC that you're referring to is a guy by the name of Tony Cox. Let me go back to something that you said one of the first directives was to fire people with support from the EPA. Is that is that right? 

Chris Zarba: Yeah. And the reason that's important is let's say you're somebody that that has done a lot of work on the effect of pesticides on human health. There are only two ways you get to be a leading scientist in that area to get the funding. The funding comes either from EPA, because the agency had that responsibility, or it could come from the industry that produces that chemical. By saying anybody that had an EPA grant had to be fired, you've really gotten rid of some of the leading experts in very given areas that could no longer even be considered. And just for the record, that was challenged in court and it was determined that that was illegal. 

Reid Frazier: What was the stated rationale for some of these changes? For instance, the ban on scientists with EPA grants? 

Chris Zarba was set to retire from the EPA in 2017 after 37 years at the agency. He ended up staying through the first year of the Trump administration where he says he saw decisions made with little regard for science. Photo courtesy of Chris Zarba.

Chris Zarba: There was very little written about it, but it was to ensure impartiality or something to that effect. But just a sentence or two. There was no discussion about why if you were impartial because you got an EPA grant, why wouldn't you be impartial if you had a grant from industry? It just didn't make sense.

Reid Frazier: What effect have all these changes had on the work that the EPA does specifically as it's reviewing new rules or new standards and its interactions with scientists? 

Chris Zarba: There are several impacts. At the top of the list is the credibility of the reviews. I mentioned the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee fired the panels underneath with specific expertise to PM, particulate matter panel, and the ozone panel. And they did the reviews themselves. The fired PM panel - this has never happened in the history of the agency - were so outraged at the fact that the seven members that didn't have the qualifications were going to do the review, that they — on their own, with their own money and their own resources — reconvened themselves independently and did an independent review of the standards that they normally would have done that was now being done by the seven-member panel. 

And they came up with vastly different conclusions than the seven-member panel came up with. So who do you believe? Do you believe the 25 experts that really are the experts that got fired, or do you believe the seven members that claim they have limitations in their skills and abilities to do a comprehensive review? It drew lots of credibility questions around the decisions the agency was making. 

And for somebody that's done this for a while, the outside public perception of the quality of the review, I would put it in the category of ridiculous. It just didn't pass the laugh test. You're getting reviews that are claiming to be legitimate that I think don't even come close to what the scientific world would consider a quality review. And independent science organizations all across the country have stepped in on this issue and weighed in heavily. 

The other issue that I think is very important is the [reviews] the SAB and the CASAC do are not required by law. The agency scientists and science teams in the program office bring these topics to the SAB and the CASAC for them to review. It's obvious that since the career staff at the SAB has questioned the integrity of these organizations, they just stop bringing it. If you know you're not going to get a fair trial, why go? And my expectation is after a new administration comes in and if and when these panels are put back to a scientifically sound perspective, that there will be an onslaught of new reviews that need to be done.

Reid Frazier: You're talking about the review to revise the air quality standards for particulate matter, which is a particularly, pardon the pun, problematic air pollutant because it gets into the lungs and causes all kinds of damage. What the EPA did under the Trump administration, they dismissed the panel of scientists that were tasked with reviewing the latest science on how bad particulate matter is for your body, is that right? 

Chris Zarba: Yes. They dismissed that twenty-five member panel and they put in a seven-member panel that didn't have the core scientific skills and background to do a thorough review of that standard. Now, when that was brought to their attention, they decided to hire consultants. And it was a very questionable process where they could pick the consultants they wanted. They could pick the questions that would go to each individual consultant. And it was all done outside of the view of the public. I don't know how they came up with it, but where before whenever the SAB or the CASAC met, if 50 percent or more were discussing something, it needed to be in public view. And this was like a secret way of doing it. And you wonder whether they were doing it that way so they could get the answers that they wanted. 

Reid Frazier: And lo and behold, when the new rules did come out recently, the EPA decided not to enforce a stronger standard, as many scientists have said is warranted. 

Chris Zarba: Correct and the independent panel, the panel that got fired, did the review, and they clearly came to a consensus quite quickly and concluded that the standard needed to be set lower to protect human health. 

If you look at the numbers of lives that would be saved based on the higher standard, it's quite significant. And it kind of draws a correlation between what we're seeing on COVID now where we have a nation that didn't, from a national perspective, didn't take the virus seriously. And many, many lives have been lost unnecessarily because of it. And it's the same thing here. These are many, many lives. And the health of many Americans is dependent on sound science. And we're seeing that happening with PM now. Sound science is not leading the decisions made by this nation. 

Reid Frazier: Now in the waning days of this administration, the EPA has put forward some new rules around science designed to change the way the agency handles health studies, basically. One is a science transparency rule and another is a co-benefits rule. What can you tell me about those? 

Chris Zarba: On the transparency rule, this had been proposed by Congress several times in previous administrations and never passed. It was then implemented by the administrator of EPA. It sounds good - transparency in science - I mean, who could argue about that? In order for EPA to take action, the burden of proof is on the agency. The agency has to prove that this chemical or this pesticide at this concentration causes adverse effects. And in order to do that, the agency has to come up with the science that supports setting a standard. 

Now, the agency, unlike the Food and Drug Administration, when they test drugs, they can give it to a thousand people and some of them in a double-blind study, and some of them get a placebo and some of them get the real drug, and you can compare the two. Well, EPA can't expose people to lead or mercury or other chemicals. So the way they get their data is through accidents, typically. So in Flint, Michigan, you had people drinking contaminated water and there were lots of studies done on them and who got sick and what their blood and tissue concentrations were. But the scientists can't use that data unless the people who are in the study give them permission. And they typically will say, you can use my age, you can use my sex, you can use my race, you can use the tissue analysis, but you can't use my name and my address and my phone number because, you know, who wants their medical records out there for the public to see. 

Well, they have figured out that the vast majority of data that EPA uses to set standards is human subject data that has confidentiality agreements in it. So the vast majority of data can't be used. And as a result, EPA's ability to prove that certain chemicals are causing a problem goes away. And a striking example of this is with the events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two horrific events. But in the decades that followed, scientists from all over the world studied those people and got great information on the effects of radiation on human health. And those studies led to setting standards for people who work in nuclear power plants, the nuclear weapons industry and people in the medical profession. Most of those people that were in those events have died, but they all had confidentiality agreements. So you can't go back and ask them, is it all right if we use your data -- they're gone. And all of that information would go away and that would have a huge impact on those industries I just mentioned. The same thing is true with EPA. If you exclude that information, EPA's ability to take decisive action goes away. 

When this idea of the transparency and science rule came up, I couldn't figure out where it was coming from because every independent science organization on the planet was strongly opposed: American Lung Association, the Union of Concerned Scientists, American Thoracic Society. The list is as long as your arm, they were strongly opposed. So who wrote it and why? Well, it turns out it was written by a guy who in the 90s worked with the tobacco industry. Some of you may remember that the tobacco industry was pushing that the data was inconclusive as to true the true impacts of cigarette smoke on human health. Well, it was subsequently found that that was a lie. They knew it wasn't true. They were criminally charged and faced multi million dollars worth of fines for lying to the American public about the impacts of cigarette smoke. Well, the same person [Steve Milloy] who worked on that and led that effort is the person who wrote the transparency and science rule. And there's a number of articles in the press with him and the head of the EPA, in the same interview, and he talks about his writing of the transparency rule as one of his proudest achievements. Very concerning that something like that would make it to the mainstream and get as far as it has. 

Reid Frazier: Basically, the assumption is, well, if you can't see who these people are and these anonymous health surveys, how can we verify that the scientists didn't just make this up? But the flip side is you can't really do a health study and not guarantee people's anonymity, right? 

Chris Zarba: Yeah, but on that first point you just made about how can you validate, there've been numerous studies that have checked the data that have done the analysis that have shown just because you don't have somebody's name and address doesn't mean that there's any less credibility in the study. And there's no question within the scientific community on this issue. 

Reid Frazier: I guess my big question is, what has been the impact of all these changes to EPA's relationship with science in terms of outcomes for people? 

Chris Zarba: What it's done is it has compromised the nation in making informed decisions about how to protect human health and the environment. If you do the math and you talk to the experts about how many people will be affected and how bad, the numbers are significant, in the tens of thousands. It's really consequential. So the first impact is people's lives and health of being impacted. The second impact is that there's been a huge exodus and talent from the agency, many of its efforts have been slowed down, so future efforts to protect human health and the environment have been stalled or slowed down or ended. I think there's a fair amount of interest in the Biden administration to look at, OK, what are the things that we need to fix? What are the things that we need to start? And what are the things that maybe we just let die on the vine and move on and put resources somewhere else? 

Reid Frazier: Some of these rules changes that the EPA has made in these last few weeks, would you anticipate that the Biden administration could just hit reverse on those and roll those back pretty quickly? 

Chris Zarba: I would expect in the first couple days of the Biden administration that he will come up with announcements on things that he's stopping or undoing or taking on. Then when a new administrator comes to EPA, you'll probably see another round of activities that they will announce in the first days of their leadership. And the third thing is, there's a group of former agency leaders and scientists from the Environmental Protection Network.  I lead the science team on that network and we have worked very diligently to prepare a list of recommendations, both in the first 100 days and in the long term. And on the long term list, the transparency rule is number one, and rebuilding and giving the credibility of the Science Advisory Board and CASAC is number two. And we've shared this with the Biden folks and House and Senate committees have also expressed interest in it. I don't know where how it's all going to unfold, but it's very encouraging to see the energy and the excitement and the interest in these products. 

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NOTE: We reached out to the EPA about what Chris Zarba said. The agency, said in a statement the Science Advisory board is, “more balanced than ever before.” About half the members are academics, 21 percent are consultants, with the remainder evenly divided between members from industry, non-profits, and state or federal government.  

It goes on to say that the EPA remains a “transparent and efficient federal agency with impactful, well-reasoned regulations.”

And since a court ruling against the EPA last year, the agency no longer bans scientists receiving federal grants from serving on its advisory boards. 

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