US Environmental Protection Agency deputy associate administrator for science Maureen Gwinn last week defended the agency’s moves to reorganize its research efforts amid a flurry of skeptical questions from House Democrats.
At a June 4 hearing of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology’s Environment Subcommittee, Gwinn testified about the agency’s new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions (OASES), which has effectively replaced the Office of Research and Development (ORD). OASES is housed in the administrator’s office, whereas ORD was an independent research arm.
“It is important to recognize that research planning at EPA remains an ongoing dynamic process, with OASES actively coordinating efforts across the scientific enterprise,” Gwinn said in her opening remarks. “While we are laying the groundwork for lasting success, this year marks a pivotal transition.”
The EPA closed the ORD in February, after announcing in July 2025 that it was cutting staff and reorganizing the office. In April, the agency also began the process of closing down the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), a program that started under the Ronald Reagan administration and conducted research to assess chemical toxicity. Such assessments will instead be handed off entirely to regional and program offices of the EPA, according to an internal memo from deputy administrator David Fotouhi.
Subcommittee Democrats pressed Gwinn on what the changes mean for independent science at the EPA, while Gwinn stressed that OASES’s job is to make sure the agency is putting its limited resources toward work that the administration deems most important.
Rep. Christian Menefee (D-TX), whose district in downtown Houston has experienced cancer clusters that have been linked to the petrochemical complex in the Houston Ship Channel, noted that Gwinn’s appearance at the hearing was “falling on the sword” for the political officials who’d made the decisions to close the ORD and IRIS.
He asked Gwinn whether she was aware that Fotouhi had previously represented industry groups who, in Jan. 2025, had asked administrator Lee Zeldin (PDF) to shut down IRIS, and that the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which Fotouhi contributed to, had called for the elimination of IRIS.
“It’s imperative that my district know that there’s a throughline right there,” Menefee said. “We look to you scientists who have been with the agency for decades to be that firewall now that Mr. Fotouhi and Mr. Zeldin have stripped that from the American people.”
Gwinn responded that the ORD had never made regulations itself and had always worked with program partners.
Republican representatives asked Gwinn how the EPA would uphold what President Donald J. Trump called “Gold Standard Science” in a May 2025 executive order. In response to a question from Rep. Scott Franklin (R-FL), Gwinn said the agency is working on both an annual report and implementation plan for gold-standard science, though she stressed at various points throughout the hearing that the EPA has always practiced rigorous science.
“Gold-standard science is something we have always been doing,” she said. “It is tied to scientific integrity and the transparency and validation and defensible quality of the work that we do to deliver the best available science.”
But some observers are concerned that moving much of the research office under the administrator will inject politics into previously independent science.
The agency’s moves risk undermining its science, says Al McGartland, economic policy director at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity and the lead economist at the EPA from 2005 to 2025.
“It’s one thing to make sure the research community is addressing the needs of the agency, but it’s quite another then to eliminate wholesale the activities that are clearly critical to the science-based decision-making process,” McGartland told C&EN.
Battle over chemical assessments
IRIS has long been a target of industries the EPA may regulate, says Maria Doa, senior director for chemicals policy at the Environmental Defense Fund and an organic chemist.
Industry groups contend that IRIS holds up the introduction of new chemicals to the market.
The program has “lacked scientific rigor,” the American Chemistry Council (ACC) wrote in a statement to C&EN. The ACC supports the No IRIS Act, which would prohibit the use of IRIS assessments in environmental monitoring or in creating or enforcing regulations.
In an email to C&EN, American Cleaning Institute (ACI) director of government affairs Blake Nanney echoes that concern, adding that the ACI previously raised concerns that IRIS “had not incorporated high-quality and relevant science, and has often lacked transparency, timeliness and alignment with statutory frameworks that require regular rulemaking and notice-and-comment opportunities for the public.”
The EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention should be well funded and staffed in order to manage review of both new and existing chemicals, Nanney added.
The ACC and the ACI are both among the 81 signers of an industry group letter asking Zeldin to close IRIS.
Democrats pressed Gwinn on what happens next with chemical assessments, with the IRIS program shut down.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) probed Gwinn about whether delegating IRIS’s work to program and regional offices will lead to inconsistent toxicity assessments. “What’s toxic in Texas might not be toxic in Idaho,” she said. “How are you making sure there’s a comprehensive approach?”
Coordination will be done through OASES, Gwinn responded.
Lofgren’s concern is valid, Doa says, adding that the science shouldn’t vary depending on which office is conducting it. IRIS also helped keep toxicity assessments separate from industry pressure that program offices often experience, she says, citing her decades working at the EPA.
“What a loss,” Doa says. “The assessments and the science that will be used in the future without something like IRIS will be weaker, and that really will impact the regulations and the protection of our health and the environment.”
The White House Office of Management and Budget’s proposed rule to overhaul how the federal government provides grants, including requiring political appointees to review and approve all funding before it is awarded, did not come up at Thursday’s hearing.
