Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientists told the agency’s internal watchdog that scientific analyses were changed in favor of top officials’ policy choices in the 2018 reapproval of a pesticide, according to a new report.
A scathing report released today by a federal oversight agency revealed that high-ranking officials in the Trump Environmental Protection Agency purposely excluded scientific evidence of dicamba’s drift risks before reapproving its use in 2018.
The Office of the Inspector General found that the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs failed to include the required internal peer reviews of scientific documents and that “senior-level” staffers “changed” and “omitted” research-based evidence of the drift risks of the pesticide that has already damaged millions of acres of crops.
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Senior management demanded modifications to scientific conclusions that did not make sense, career employees said.
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Senior leaders at the Environmental Protection Agency improperly meddled in the work of career scientists when reviewing the approval of certain pesticides in 2018, according to a new report and the agency’s own admission.
The top officials changed and omitted items from documents related to the decision to grant licenses to three dicamba pesticides, the EPA inspector general found, and created a culture in which career employees felt “constrained” and “muted” from speaking up. In addition to violating EPA’s scientific integrity policies, the tampering left the agency vulnerable to lawsuits. The IG report followed widespread allegations of political interference in the work of career scientists under the Trump administration and comes amid a governmentwide Biden administration review into ins
Three mid-level EPA officials altered scientific documents to support their 2018 decision to keep the weed killer dicamba in use, reported the office of inspector general at EPA on Monday.
Amy L. Babcock, MPH, DABT®, ERT, MRSB, Joins Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. and The Acta Group
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Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. (B&C®) and The Acta Group (Acta®) are pleased to announce that Amy L. Babcock, MPH, DABT®, ERT, MRSB has joined our firms as Senior Scientist. WASHINGTON (PRWEB) May 19, 2021 Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. (B&C®) and The Acta Group (Acta®) are pleased to announce that Amy L. Babcock, MPH, DABT®, ERT, MRSB has joined our firms as Senior Scientist. Ms. Babcock has 15-plus years of experience leading qualitative and quantitative human health risk assessments in industry and agency roles, most recently as Supervisory Toxicologist and Branch Chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP), Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Ms. Babcock will offer clients technical excellence a