Scott Pruitt's Secret Science Plan Was Developed to Defend Tobacco and It Could Be Coming for Clean Air Rules

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In early 1998, lobbying and PR company Powell Tate was busy with a strategy to protect its tobacco industry clients from health and safetyย regulations.

Costing roughly $200,000, the plan was called โ€œSecret Scienceโ€ and would be a public affairs campaign โ€œmounted in three phasesโ€ to influence the public, scientists, corporations, andย policymakers.ย 

After โ€œlaying the groundwork,โ€ the plan was to build โ€œa critical mass of outrageโ€ and then offer a solution to all the outrage and division the campaignย had whippedย up.

The planโ€™s aim, according to a separate memo, wasย clear.

โ€œFocus public attention on the importance of requiring the disclosure of taxpayer-funded analytical data upon which federal and state rules and regulations are based, as well as the analytic data underlying health and safety studies funded by theย governmentโ€ฆโ€

Held in the โ€œPhillip Morrisโ€ collection of tobacco litigation archives at the University of California San Francisco, the planโ€™s aims will today sound eerily familiar to anyone following the Trump administration’s attempts to restrict the science its key environment agency canย use.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt has put forth a proposed rule that many experts say will hamstring the agencyโ€™s ability to use scientific studies as a basis for rulemaking and, in turn, for protecting millions ofย Americans.

โ€œThe era of secret science @EPA is coming to an end,โ€ Pruitt tweeted, as he announced the proposal that is currently in the middle of a 30-day commentย period.

โ€œIโ€™ve been working on this for 20 years,โ€ said Steve Milloy in an interview with The New Yorker.

From Tobacco Defender to Climate Scienceย Denier

Milloy is a climate science denier and former coal executive who, 20 years ago, was the executive director of a group known as The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition โ€” or TASSC. More recently, he was a member of President Trump’s EPA transitionย team.

TASSC was funded by the tobacco industry, initially Philip Morris, and had been launched in the early 1990s with another lobbying firm, APCOย Associates.

This was not the earliest sign of a tobacco-sponsored campaign to restrict the EPAโ€™s ability to build rules around scientificย evidence.

As reported by The Intercept, another former EPA transition team member, lawyer Christopher Horner, was working on the same issue for his client, RJ Reynolds, inย 1996.

Both Horner and Milloy are part of the machinery of corporate-funded climate science denial that has worked for years to block action on climate change โ€” action that would damage the bottom line of the people who have funded their careers over theย years.

An October 2017 academic paper in the International Journal of Health Planning and Management found how groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Heartland Institute, where Milloy and Horner hold positions, were part of a network of โ€œstrategic alliesโ€ for the tobaccoย industry.

Both men argue that they are acting in the interests of โ€œtransparencyโ€ and claim to be fighting against โ€œjunk scienceโ€ (for all this talk of transparency, Horner was not so keen to talk about his coal funding when approached on the fringes of the Paris climate talks inย 2015).

Horner and Milloy are both connected to the Energy & Environment Legal Institute โ€” a right-wing group that has specialized in targeting EPA officials and climate scientists with legalย requests for theirย emails.

Milloy attended Pruittโ€™s launch event for his proposed โ€œsecret scienceโ€ rule alongside another climate science denier, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrowโ€™s Marc Morano.

Pruittโ€™s rule โ€” Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science โ€” would mean that the EPA would be unable to use scientific studies as a basis for policy unless the data underlying the research was public and could beย reproduced.

According to emails released under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) laws, the proposal was developed after EPA officials consulted with Republican congressman Lamar Smith, who has a bill now sitting before the Senate that would put similar requirements on theย agency.

Scientists, science advocacy and professional groups, and environmental advocates have heaped heavy criticism on Smithโ€™s bill and Pruittโ€™s proposedย rule.

The rule could be unworkable, as many health studies rely on personal and confidential information and so would โ€œviolate healthy privacy laws,โ€ย according to the Union of Concernedย Scientists.

An open letter signed by almost 1,000 scientists and coordinated by the Union of Concerned Scientists said: โ€œIn reality, these are phony issues that weaponize โ€˜transparencyโ€™ to facilitate political interference in science-based decision making, rather than genuinely address either. The result will be policies and practices that will ignore significant risks to the health of everyย American.โ€

The American Geophysical Union, a professional society representing 60,000 earth and atmospheric scientists, also addressed a letter to Pruitt, criticizing the rule: โ€œAt a time when the Administration is proposing significant cuts to EPA funding, this policy would become an unnecessary burden on the agency and further hamstring its ability to protect public health and the environment. In general, to exclude vital scientific information from consideration would put our local communitiesโ€™ health and well-being atย risk.โ€

At the end of the letter, the society also couldn’t help calling out the atmosphere of climate science denial Pruitt introduced to the agency, especiallyย talking points instructing employees to emphasize uncertainty around humans’ role in causing climateย change.

Polluted Airย Denial

The focus for Milloy has been regulations around fine particulate air pollution or, more specifically, particulate matter that is less than 2.5 micrometersย across (PM2.5).

In an op-ed in Theย Wall Street Journal in March, Milloy argued that PM2.5 particles were โ€œnot associated with deathโ€ and that EPA rules formed from studies linking PM2.5 to death were based on โ€œdodgy science toย advance a politicalย agenda.โ€

A May 2018 World Health Organization (WHO) report estimated that about 7 million people a year die from air pollution linked to heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, and chronic obstructive pulmonaryย disease.

โ€œPM2.5 includes pollutants, such as sulfate, nitrates, and black carbon, which pose the greatest risks to human health,โ€ the WHOย said.

Sources of the deadly airborne particles include agriculture, transport, wood burning, and coal-fired power plants.ย On release of the report, Milloy wrote: โ€œAir pollution kills noย one.โ€

Just days ago, the EPA announced $30 million in grants to improve air quality, which, according to Pruitt, would โ€œenhance publicย health.โ€

Air Pollution Causes Prematureย Death

Professor Jonathan Samet, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health and an internationally recognized authority on health effects of pollution and smoking, said the EPA and others had โ€œsystematically considered the evidence on PM2.5โ€ and found it was โ€œcausally linked to prematureย mortality.โ€

He told DeSmog that EPA head Pruitt was bound by the Clean Air Act to set National Ambient Air Quality Standards that protect the public health with an โ€œadequate margin ofย safety.โ€

Samet said: โ€œThis is a legal requirement on the Administrator and any relaxation of standards would require evidence supporting such aย change.โ€

While the explanatory notes around Pruittโ€™s proposed rule claims that the confidentiality issues could be addressed, Samet said: โ€œThe complexities of sharing of private and confidential information are not adequately addressed in the proposedย rule.โ€

โ€œThere are other considerations not addressed, such as costs.ย I note that evidence-based decisions are made in many sectors, including clinical care, without any requirements similar to thoseย proposed.โ€

โ€œThe proposed rule has the potential to restrict consideration of a broad body of evidence relevant to regulatory decision-making, such as studies from outside theย U.S.โ€

The EPA is accepting public comments on the proposed rule until May 30,ย 2018.

Main image:ย Powell Tate’s โ€œSecret Science Action Planโ€ from 1998. Credit: Truth Tobacco Industry Documents, UCSFย Archives

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