Science and Public Health Under Siege, UCA,KATHLEEN REST, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR | JULY 24, 2017, My colleagues at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) have released a report on how science—and public health—have been sidelined during the first six months of the Trump administration. The report documents a deliberate and familiar set of strategies that undermines the role of science, facts, and evidence in public policy and decision-making.
From a public health perspective, the short- and long-term impacts are truly frightening. The Trump administration—aided and abetted by a willing Congress—is actively pushing an ideological, anti-science agenda that will profoundly affect the health, safety, and security of children, families, and communities today, tomorrow, and for decades to come.
They claim their approach is pro-business, but on closer look, that isn’t true. It harms the many good business people who want to play by the rules and make a profit without harming the public or their workers. How? By giving an unfair advantage to unscrupulous businesses that will put profit ahead of public and worker safety and health.
Control, Alt, Delay: Public health protections on the chopping blockMercury, lead, arsenic, ozone, beryllium, silica, chlorpyrifos. These substances all have several things in common:
- They have all been found to contaminate our air, water, soil, and/or food, as well as some of our workplaces and community environments.
- Robust and often long-standing science has proven that exposure to them can cause serious health effects, including death.
- Government agencies charged with protecting our health and safety have established rules and standards to prevent or minimize our exposure to them. (Note: these and other public health safeguards are increasingly denigrated as unnecessary regulations by the Trump administration and some in Congress.)
- Exposure standards established years ago have been found to be insufficiently protective.
- The Trump administration has taken steps to weaken, delay, and subvert recent science-based safeguards that enhance public protection from these toxic substances.
Make no mistake. There is an all-out assault on the agencies charged with using independent, unconflicted science to protect our nation’s public health—and on the critical resources and infrastructure they need to do just that.
The proposed draconian cuts to budgets, staffing levels, and programs at agencies like the EPA, CDC, FEMA, NOAA, USDA, and OSHA speak for themselves. (And don’t even get me started on how current congressional efforts to reform health care will impact the health of our most vulnerable populations.)
But the real issue isn’t about protecting agency budgets or staff levels, essential as they are. It’s about protecting all of us from known (and emerging and future) threats to our health, safety, and well-being. What follows is just a snapshot of this administration’s siege on public health…….http://blog.ucsusa.org/kathleen-rest/six-months-into-the-trump-administration-science-and-public-health-under-siege
