In response to the New York Times recent front-page report on EPA’s coming re-proposal of its ‘secret science/transparency rule, Stan Young and Warren Kindzierski submitted the letter below, which was rejected by the Times. We present it here as an example of the reality denied to readers of the “paper of record.”
To the editor:
“E.P.A. to Limit Science Used to Write Public Health Rules” fails to mention the science that supports the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rule, Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science. For example, a 2014 study examined more than 2 million emergency hospital admissions and more than 600,000 deaths from heart disease in England and Wales. A 2017 California study looked at all death certificates for the years 2000-2012 (data public since 2015). Neither study found an association of air quality with deaths. Yet data from the Six Cities study, which claims an association, is not publicly available. Since the publicly available data casts doubt on previous studies that inform our air pollution regulations, the E.P.A. is entirely justified to propose requiring that the science informing regulations should have analysis data sets that are publicly available, or available to a trusted third party. If the science behind the regulations is any good, public scrutiny will confirm it. If that science doesn’t reproduce, the E.P.A. should know—as should all Americans.
S. Stanley Young
Warren Kindzierski
University of Alberta
