It's amazing we're still alive after two years of the Trump wrecking crew

In the weeks after Hurricane Harvey’s catastrophic sweep through the Houston area — which resulted in chemical spills, fires, flooded storage tanks and damaged industrial plants — rescue crews and residents complained of burning throats, nausea and dizziness.

Fifteen hundred miles west in the high desert city of Palmdale, NASA scientists were preparing to fly a DC-8, equipped with the world’s most sophisticated air samplers over the hurricane zone to monitor pollution levels.

The mission never got off the ground. Both the state of Texas and the EPA told the scientists to stay away.

[...]

EPA and state officials argued that NASA’s data would cause “confusion” and might “overlap” with their own analysis — which was showing only a few, isolated spots of concern.

“At this time, we don’t think your data would be useful,” Michael Honeycutt, Texas’ director of toxicology, wrote to NASA officials, adding that low-flying helicopters equipped with infra-red cameras, contracted by his agency, would be sufficient.

EPA deferred to Honeycutt, a controversial toxicologist who has suggested air pollution may be beneficial to human health.

[...]

Since taking office, the Trump administration has rejected and suppressed established science, partnered with fringe researchers and embraced industry-backed views — including appointing a former coal lobbyist as its new EPA administrator.

At the time of the hurricane, the agency was run by Scott Pruitt, who during his tenure targeted dozens of environmental regulations for rollback, including several focused on air pollution.

[...]

On Aug. 28, Gov. Greg Abbott suspended state emission rules, including those governing air pollution, after the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality argued they would impede disaster response. The rules remained suspended for the next seven months.

When the storm finally moved north and east on Sept. 4, the level of environmental destruction and confusion on the ground was unprecedented.

Smokestacks, pipelines and generators had been damaged or destroyed. Storage tanks filled with toxic chemicals were battered and leaking. Superfund sites were flooded, spilling hazardous waste into nearby rivers, streams and neighborhoods.

Officials from the EPA and the state environmental agency, which had shut down their stationary air monitors to avoid storm damage, maintained the air quality was fine.

[...]

Clouds of benzene and other cancer-causing chemicals floated over the city, according to analyses by environmental groups and news reports.

As those reports spread, researchers with NASA’s Atmospheric Tomography Mission program thought they could help.

Since 2016, the chemistry laboratory has flown more that 197,000 miles around the globe, sampling hundreds of unique airborne gases or particles.

The team was about to embark on its fourth and final mission around the globe and had planned a six-hour test flight for Sept. 14 that would take them east to Lamont, Okla., where they’d carry out compass measurements, before heading back to Palmdale.

[...]

Paul Newman, chief scientist of NASA’s Earth Science Division, suggested they divert their test run and fly over Houston.

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It is the most precise and comprehensive airborne air quality lab on the planet, according to scientists familiar with the equipment. Where the EPA’s air pollution single-prop plane can gather some basic chemistry of about two dozen species of air-pollutant compounds, the NASA jet can analyze more than 450.

[...]

On Sept. 9, David Gray, the EPA’s deputy regional administrator in Texas and leader of the agency’s emergency response, wrote to NASA and Texas officials that he was “hesitant” to have the jet “collect additional information that overlaps our existing efforts” until he learned more about the mission. He noted that media and nongovernmental organizations were releasing data that was “conflicting” with the state and EPA’s.

NASA scientists tried to reassure Gray and Honeycutt that they wouldn’t do anything to hinder the data collection efforts. They said they wouldn’t focus on particular facility emissions but instead assess whether large changes in air quality had occurred following the disaster. They also promised not to deliver their data to the media, although they underscored it would eventually be made public.

[...]

But the NASA scientists’ assurances didn’t work.

[...]

“NASA does NOT need EPA approval,” Newman wrote to the team’s project coordinator, Barry Lefer. “We certainly should notify and potentially coordinate, but we don’t need approval.”

His superiors disagreed, and that evening Michael Freilich, the director of NASA’s Earth Sciences division, called off the flight.

[...]

An investigation from the Associated Press and the Houston Chronicle showed there was widespread, unreported pollution and environmental damage in the region. The team identified more than 100 Harvey-related toxic releases, most of which were never publicized or vastly understated, including a cloud of hydrochloric acid that leaked from a damaged pipeline and a gasoline spill from an oil terminal that formed “a vapor cloud.”

  LA Times

One would think it impossible for officials to have their heads simultaneously in the sand and up their asses, but this is Scott Pruitt's EPA and Greg Abbott's Texas, so there we are.

  Charlie Pierce

And what about that line that the top toxicologist for the state of Texas, Michael Honeycutt said pollution might be good for people? Surely that's not what he said.

A 2014 investigation by the independent outlet the Center for Public Integrity found Honeycutt's regulatory opinions routinely reflect the opinions of industry, and under his leadership, Texas has loosened restrictions on dozens of chemicals. The president of the Texas Pipeline Association co-signed a letter of support for Honeycutt's nomination to the EPA science advisory board.

[...]

He cited data from an appendix of a massive EPA ozone analysis that found ozone levels in some particularly polluted neighborhoods could temporary increase as the overall amount of air pollution decreased.

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"Houston and Los Angeles are going to lose people. People are going to die," he said.

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However, he did not mention that once the amount of air pollution dropped below a certain level, the EPA predicted ozone would drop as well, providing long-term health benefits to the people in those areas.

"His positions generally are totally inconsistent with mainstream thinking. There's just never enough evidence to persuade him on environmental issues," Craft says. "It's frightening, honestly."

[...]

Honeycutt has broken with mainstream scientific opinion on other toxicology issues as well. In 2011, he split with the American Association of Pediatrics when he told Congress he thought the EPA was being overly cautious in its regulation of mercury.

"Methyl mercury is a toxic chemical, but the scientific data overwhelmingly do not support EPA's position on the health risk of mercury," Honeycutt wrote in response to questions from one of the congressional committee members.

In the same testimony, Honeycutt criticized the EPA for overstating the health hazards posed by hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen made famous by Erin Brockovich, as well as formaldehyde and arsenic.

"Almost every time there's a public concern about pollution he says there's nothing to worry about [...] ," says Luke Metzger, state director of the advocacy group Environment Texas.

  NPR

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.