#inhofe

You might remember the head of Murray Energy, Robert E. Murray, for his connection with the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah, owned by a subsidiary of Murray Energy. When the mine was cited for multiple safety violations in 2006, Murray said they were trivial. When there was a minor structural collapse in 2007, Murray never reported it to the Mine Safety and Health Administration as the law required. He later claimed he was unaware of it, but that proved to be false. When there was a major collapse later in 2007 that killed six miners (and three rescue workers), Murray blamed an earthquake. When the MSHA investigation proved that mine safety violations were to blame and imposed the highest possible fine, Murray told the victims’ families that “the media is telling you lies” and “the union is your enemy.”

(Why does that sound so familiar?)

Anyway, Murray donated $300,000 to Trump. He also gave the Trump administration a formal, written “Action Plan” outlining his demands, including:

Elimination of the Clean Power Plan;

Elimination of the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule;

Reversal of the EPA’s determination that increased greenhouse gases contribute to climate change;

Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord;

Reduction of the staff of the EPA;

Complete overhaul of the MSHA;

Replacement of everyone on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; and

Replacement of everyone on the National Labor Relations Board.

“Mr. Murray ... demanded that Mr. Trump gut regulatory oversight and pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement in his first three months. ‘I’m not a patient man ... I’m going to be watching that things happen as fast as they can.’”

Instead, the EPA took a meeting with the American Chemistry Council’s Formaldehyde Panel. The American Chemistry Council “spent more than $7 million last year lobbying EPA and Congress on issues including ... formaldehyde.” The Panel argued against release of the formaldehyde report, not because it was wrong, but because nearly a million jobs “depend on the use of formaldehyde.”

“As stated in our meeting, a premature release of a draft assessment … will cause irreparable harm to the companies represented by the Panel and to the many companies and jobs that depend on the broad use of the chemical.”

The top staffer for the Formaldehyde Panel, Kimberly Wise White, has repeatedly lobbied the EPA to “incorporate industry-funded research that found no link between formaldehyde and leukemia,” and argued that those industry-funded studies “shifted the scientific consensus away from the conclusion that it does.” (You might recognize White’s name. Last year, Pruitt kicked all of the academic scientists off the EPA’s science advisory board and replaced them with people representing the industries the EPA is supposed to regulate. White was one of Pruitt’s appointees. She’s still lobbying the EPA, and her creative interpretation of “consensus” squares exactly with Pruitt’s own interpretation of a supposed lack of “consensus” on climate change. But I digress.)

Pruitt’s EPA deferred to the Council’s desire to put their corporate profits above the health and safety of U.S. citizens. Some officials have now come forward to confirm the reason the EPA is blocking the formaldehyde report’s release:

“Top advisers to departing Administrator Scott Pruitt are delaying its release as part of a campaign to undermine the agency’s independent research into the health risks of toxic chemicals.”

And although Pruitt may have resigned, don’t expect better progress under the EPA’s new acting director, Andrew Wheeler:

“As staff director for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in 2004, Wheeler worked to delay an earlier version of the EPA’s formaldehyde analysis – and went on to profitable career as chemical industry lobbyist.”

The National Academies of Sciences, an independent panel of the country’s top scientists, must weigh in on all EPA risk assessments. This is the highest level of scrutiny a scientific study can receive. And the EPA has already paid the Academies $500,000 for that review. But the work cannot start until the EPA sends the study; blocking its release prevents the review.