If adopted by the Trump administration, the rule would allow an EPA administrator to reject study results in making decisions about chemicals, pollutants and other health risks if underlying research data is not made public because of patient privacy concerns or other issues.
Opponents said the move would throw out the kind of public-health studies that underlie enforcement of the Clean Air Act and other landmark environmental controls, since the studies drew on confidential health data from thousands of individuals.
“if underlying research data is not made public because of patient privacy concerns or other issues.”
Are there any scientific studies that cite actual individuals by name? Not many I’ll bet, and those names could easily be blotted out for a public version.
The issue is whether a government agency should be given carte blanche power to impose their edicts based on clandestine studies. Some of those studies could be deeply biased by political or social opinions. The place for the creation of laws is in the legislature.
A study itself would not cite individual names, but this is talking about releasing the underlying raw data, and that would potentially be individual names and medical information.
The issue is whether the EPA should be able to do the job that it is already empowered by statute to do, which is protecting the environment (and the people who live in it); or whether it's going to have that ability gutted in the name of corporate interests.