Insiders warn how dismantling federal agencies could put science at risk

"For 30 years, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has conducted controlled air-pollution studies at a state-of-the-art facility at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The facility is equipped to test numerous airborne pollutants, including ozone, diesel, wildfire smoke and chlorine. Data collected in its chambers have been pivotal to establishing stricter air-quality standards for deadly pollutants, and have been instrumental in protecting the health of people in the United States."

"However, in February, shortly after US President Donald Trump took office, the EPA - which is charged with protecting the nation's environment and its people's health - notified the university that it would not be renewing its lease. By May, research had ceased. "There are no other places with the capability of doing these studies on the wide range of pollutants that the Chapel Hill facility does," says Robert Devlin, a former EPA researcher who worked at the facility until recently."

"The exposure laboratory was under the purview of the EPA's Office of Research and Development (ORD), which pursued a broad swathe of independent research into air and water quality, toxicology, homeland security and waste management. It has been hit particularly hard by cuts the Trump administration has made to federal agency science. Internal documents suggest that lay-offs and voluntary early-retirement programmes have already reduced ORD's 1,600-person staff by one-third."

The EPA operated a state-of-the-art exposure laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for 30 years. The facility tested numerous airborne pollutants, including ozone, diesel, wildfire smoke and chlorine, and provided chamber data used to establish stricter air-quality standards and protect public health. In February the EPA notified the university that it would not renew the lease; research ceased by May. Staff reductions and nonrenewals prompted veteran researcher Robert Devlin to retire in August. The EPA's Office of Research and Development has lost about one-third of its 1,600-person staff and is being folded into a new office reporting directly to the EPA administrator, raising concern that research priorities could be politically driven.

Read at Nature