Add your name: Stop the EPA from censoring science!

**Are you a scientist or do you work in a medical or public health field? Have something to share about how this might affect your life or work? Don’t forget to share your personal story!**

The EPA has proposed a new rule to limit the use of scientific studies in policy making.

This strategy is right out of the tobacco industry’s playbook, where they used blatant attempts to obscure and disregard studies that linked cigarettes to harmful health effects. Just like we know cigarettes are dangerous, we also know that pollution and climate disruption pose a threat to our families. But the Trump administration wants to try Big Tobacco’s tricks to hide the truth.

If finalized, this outrageous rule would limit the use of long-standing landmark public health studies linking air pollution and pesticide exposure to harmful health impacts. Because the studies rely on medical and health data, they are confidential to protect patient privacy. Trump's EPA wants to disregard these studies in order to give polluters a free pass and cause thousands of people to suffer.

We have until the middle of August to make public comments on this harmful rule. Let’s rise to support sound science, not Trump's polluting pals.

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Re: Docket No. EPA-HQ-OA-2018-0259

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I strongly oppose this proposed rule that has long been on polluting industries’ wishlists. The EPA’s job is to protect the environment and public health, not polluters’ profits, but that’s exactly what this rule would do. Medical science has repeatedly proven that smog, particulate matter, and heavy metals -- all hallmarks of the fossil fuel and chemical industries -- can cause death and severe complications. But with this proposed rule, many of these studies linking pollution and toxics harming our health will be disregarded, and thousands of people will unnecessarily suffer. Medical records and health data are largely kept confidential to protect patients’ privacy. But that does not mean that studies that rely on such data, when published in peer-reviewed journals, are not rigorous enough to be relied upon for regulations by the government. Quite the opposite is true. We must take these studies into account when creating our policies in order to protect the public’s health. I urge you to reconsider the premise behind this proposed rule and abandon it all together.