Come On, EPA! Don’t Give Polluters a Scientific Smokescreen.

The Trump administration has developed a way to make pollution sound appealing. President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency has a plan to relax regulations to allow Americans to be exposed to more dirty air. But the agency has dressed it up to look like it’s just advocating the use of stronger, more transparent science.

The policy, sometimes called the “secret science” plan, was released in the spring of 2018, and after some criticism, went back to the drawing board for revision. The idea was to raise the scientific bar for studies that can be considered in making regulations — in particular, disallowing those in which data on human subjects was kept secret for privacy reasons. This week, the New York Times published a leaked version of the updated policy. Critics say the new plan’s scope is even worse than the original — better for industry, that is, worse for people who breathe air.