Americans’ health is being put at risk after new cuts were announced byDonald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reduce staffing to 1980s levels and gut its scientific research arm, experts and advocacy groups warned.
The EPA’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, announced on Friday that the agency would slash its budget by $300m in the fiscal year 2026 as part of a broad overhaul that he said was designed to cut it to levels resembling those in the Reagan administration.
“With these organizational improvements, we can assure the American people that we are dedicated to EPA’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment,” Zeldin said, adding the agency would be better positioned to match Trump’s goals to “unleash American energy, revitalize domestic manufacturing, cut costs for families and pursue permitting reform”.
The 1,500 staff at the office of research and development (ORD), would need to apply for about 400 of the newly created positions in other offices, employees were told in an all-hands meeting at EPA on Friday. It was not clear what would happen to those employees that do not get new positions.
Researchers have warned that dissolving the research unit would undermine scientific independence.
Laura Kate Bender, assistant vice-president of nationwide healthy air at the American Lung Association, said: “Gutting the … [ORD] is a loss for health.
“EPA’s air pollution rules work because they’re based on science. This is the office that makes that possible. ORD compiles and analyzes research to understand questions like how much ozone is dangerous to breathe and how much toxic air pollutants increase your risk of cancer.
“Having a standalone office to do this work isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. Housing this work in an independent office is important because it has ensured that the science is impartial and objective. If ORD can’t do this analysis, there’s a grave risk that future EPA standards won’t be based on sound science or require meaningful cleanup.”
The Union of Concerned Scientists said that shuttering the EPA’s scientific arm that conducts independent research and folding it into policy offices will turn the EPA into a purely political agency.
“Dismantling this office, along with the administration’s plans to reclassify scientists as political appointees ... could very well turn a premier science agency into a political arm of the president,” said Chitra Kumar, managing director of the union’s Climate and Clean Energy Program.
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The EPA also announced it was dissolving its office of science and technology, which helped develop scientific research and guidelines for water policy.
It will also add 130 positions to the office of chemical safety and pollution prevention to work on reviewing a backlog of over 504 new chemicals and over 12,000 pesticides.
Reuters contributed to this story