EPA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump’s pick to oversee chemical safety at the Environmental Protection Agency has withdrawn his name from consideration.
Michael Dourson, a toxicologist tapped to head the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, has been one of the agency’s most controversial nominees because of his work as a consultant to the chemical industry. Democrats and environmentalists have criticized his research as skewed toward results desired by corporate clients.
EPA officials have called Mr. Dourson a ‘highly qualified scientist’ and received support from other Republicans who defended his work. But with the Republicans’ thin majority in the Senate, the nomination ran into trouble last month when two North Carolina Republicans said they wouldn’t vote for him in large part because he has argued for weaker safety standards for trichloroethylene, one of the main chemicals found to have contaminated water and raised cancer risks at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune military base.
The top Democrat on the Senate environment and public works committee, which approved the nomination in October on a party-line vote, said the withdrawal was in the best interest of Americans…
The EPA didn’t immediately respond to questions about the withdrawal.”
-Timothy Puko and Heidi Vogt, “Trump’s Pick to Oversee Chemical Safety at EPA Withdraws,” The Wall Street Journal online, Dec. 14, 2017 12:05pm