US Environmental Protection Agency deputy affiliate administrator for science Maureen Gwinn final week defended the agency’s strikes to reorganize its research efforts amid a flurry of skeptical questions from House Democrats.
At a June 4 listening to of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology’s Environment Subcommittee, Gwinn testified about the agency’s new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions (OASES), which has successfully changed the Office of Research and Development (ORD). OASES is housed in the administrator’s office, whereas ORD was an unbiased research arm.
“It is important to recognize that research planning at EPA remains an ongoing dynamic process, with OASES actively coordinating efforts across the scientific enterprise,” Gwinn stated in her opening remarks. “While we are laying the groundwork for lasting success, this year marks a pivotal transition.”
The EPA closed the ORD in February, after asserting in July 2025 that it was reducing workers and reorganizing the office. In April, the company additionally started the means of closing down the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), a program that began underneath the Ronald Reagan administration and performed research to evaluate chemical toxicity. Such assessments will as an alternative be handed off solely to regional and program workplaces of the EPA, in response to an internal memo from deputy administrator David Fotouhi.
Subcommittee Democrats pressed Gwinn on what the modifications imply for unbiased science at the EPA, whereas Gwinn burdened that OASES’s job is to verify the company is placing its restricted sources towards work that the administration deems most vital.
Rep. Christian Menefee (D-TX), whose district in downtown Houston has skilled cancer clusters that have been linked to the petrochemical complex in the Houston Ship Channel, famous that Gwinn’s look at the listening to was “falling on the sword” for the political officers who’d made the selections to shut the ORD and IRIS.
He requested Gwinn whether or not she was conscious that Fotouhi had beforehand represented trade teams who, in Jan. 2025, had asked administrator Lee Zeldin (PDF) to close down IRIS, and that the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which Fotouhi contributed to, had referred to as for the elimination of IRIS.
“It’s imperative that my district know that there’s a throughline right there,” Menefee stated. “We look to you scientists who have been with the agency for decades to be that firewall now that Mr. Fotouhi and Mr. Zeldin have stripped that from the American people.”
Gwinn responded that the ORD had by no means made laws itself and had at all times labored with program companions.
Republican representatives requested Gwinn how the EPA would uphold what President Donald J. Trump referred to as “Gold Standard Science” in a May 2025 executive order. In response to a query from Rep. Scott Franklin (R-FL), Gwinn stated the company is engaged on each an annual report and implementation plan for gold-standard science, although she burdened at varied factors all through the listening to that the EPA has at all times practiced rigorous science.
“Gold-standard science is something we have always been doing,” she stated. “It is tied to scientific integrity and the transparency and validation and defensible quality of the work that we do to deliver the best available science.”
But some observers are involved that shifting a lot of the research office underneath the administrator will inject politics into beforehand unbiased science.
The agency’s strikes danger undermining its science, says Al McGartland, financial coverage director at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity and the lead economist at the EPA from 2005 to 2025.
“It’s one thing to make sure the research community is addressing the needs of the agency, but it’s quite another then to eliminate wholesale the activities that are clearly critical to the science-based decision-making process,” McGartland advised C&EN.
Battle over chemical assessments
IRIS has lengthy been a goal of industries the EPA could regulate, says Maria Doa, senior director for chemical compounds coverage at the Environmental Defense Fund and an natural chemist.
Industry teams contend that IRIS holds up the introduction of latest chemical compounds to the market.
The program has “lacked scientific rigor,” the American Chemistry Council (ACC) wrote in a press release to C&EN. The ACC helps the No IRIS Act, which might prohibit the use of IRIS assessments in environmental monitoring or in creating or implementing laws.
In an e mail to C&EN, American Cleaning Institute (ACI) director of presidency affairs Blake Nanney echoes that concern, including that the ACI beforehand raised considerations that IRIS “had not incorporated high-quality and relevant science, and has often lacked transparency, timeliness and alignment with statutory frameworks that require regular rulemaking and notice-and-comment opportunities for the public.”
The EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention ought to be nicely funded and staffed in an effort to handle evaluation of each new and current chemical compounds, Nanney added.
The ACC and the ACI are each amongst the 81 signers of an trade group letter asking Zeldin to shut IRIS.
Democrats pressed Gwinn on what occurs subsequent with chemical assessments, with the IRIS program shut down.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) probed Gwinn about whether or not delegating IRIS’s work to program and regional workplaces will result in inconsistent toxicity assessments. “What’s toxic in Texas might not be toxic in Idaho,” she stated. “How are you making sure there’s a comprehensive approach?”
Coordination might be accomplished by OASES, Gwinn responded.
Lofgren’s concern is legitimate, Doa says, including that the science shouldn’t range relying on which office is conducting it. IRIS additionally helped maintain toxicity assessments separate from trade strain that program workplaces usually expertise, she says, citing her a long time working at the EPA.
“What a loss,” Doa says. “The assessments and the science that will be used in the future without something like IRIS will be weaker, and that really will impact the regulations and the protection of our health and the environment.”
The White House Office of Management and Budget’s proposed rule to overhaul how the federal government provides grants, together with requiring political appointees to evaluation and approve all funding earlier than it’s awarded, didn’t come up at Thursday’s listening to.