The Environmental Protection Agency has informed employees who are experts in children’s health that they will be fired or reassigned because their job descriptions include work on environmental justice or diversity, equity and inclusion, an agency spokeswoman has confirmed.
The E.P.A.’s 10 regional children’s health coordinators work closely with schools and other institutions to prevent and address environmental hazard exposures among young people. They were among 455 agency workers who were informed this week that their jobs would be either eliminated or that they would be reassigned through a so-called reduction-in-force process.
“This is really an unprecedented attack on the health of our children,” said Jeanne Briskin, a retired E.P.A. employee who worked at the agency for nearly 40 years and led its Office of Children’s Health Protection.
She said the children’s health coordinators based in each of E.P.A.’s ten regional offices had deep expertise on issues ranging from the way wildfire smoke affects young people to things like lead abatement and pesticide use at schools. They are biologists, environmental engineers and public health experts who develop resources for educators, prenatal care providers and others who look after children. They also help E.P.A. regulators better understand how air pollution, chemicals and other toxic substances affect young bodies.
“Republican and Democratic administrations have until this point rallied and supported the protection of children’s environmental health,” Ms. Briskin said. “I think it is a travesty to envision the loss of children’s health coordinators, among others, at E.P.A. that protect public health and help prevent children from getting exposed to toxic substances.”
Children can be especially vulnerable to pollutants and chemicals because their bodies are still developing. In addition, some of their behaviors, like crawling or putting things in their mouths, potentially expose them to chemicals or other harmful substances.
Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, has targeted departments that work with poor and vulnerable communities as he carries out President Trump’s directive to downsize the government and end programs that focus on marginalized communities.
Poor and minority communities are frequently located near highways, power plants, industrial sites and other sources of pollution. Studies have shown that people who live in those communities have higher rates of asthma, heart disease and other health problems, compared with the national average.
Mr. Zeldin said that focusing additional resources on those communities, an effort generally known environmental justice, amounts to “forced discrimination.”
Asked at a news conference this week to explain how giving attention to communities that face a disproportionate amount of pollution is discriminatory, Mr. Zeldin said he only opposed funding the efforts of outside groups.
“The problem is, that in the name of environmental justice, a dollar will get secured and not spent on remediating that environmental issue,” Mr. Zeldin said. “Instead, that dollar will get spent on a group to tell us that we should be spending a dollar to remediate the environmental issue.”
But Mr. Zeldin has also targeted government funding for vulnerable communities. This week the E.P.A. began the process of firing 280 employees who work on environmental justice efforts and diversity, equity and inclusion programs. An additional 175 E.P.A. employees will be reassigned to new roles, the agency said. The changes are planned as Mr. Zeldin closes the agency’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights.
The firings and reassignments are scheduled to take effect on July 31.
“This is the first step in a broader effort to ensure that E.P.A. is best positioned to meet its core mission of protecting human health and the environment and Powering the Great American Comeback,” Molly Vaseliou, an E.P.A. spokeswoman, said in a statement.
She said workers whose positions were clearly defined by law and mission-essential employees, like those who work on children’s health, would be reassigned. But union officials said only three children’s health coordinators had received reassignment notices. The others were given notices of reduction in force, meaning their jobs would be eliminated.
Ellie Hagen, the legislative and political coordinator for the E.P.A. union in Chicago, said children’s health coordinators were being penalized because their job descriptions made clear they work with vulnerable communities: children.
Lisa Friedman is a Times reporter who writes about how governments are addressing climate change and the effects of those policies on communities.
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