Regulatory Policy

Regulatory safeguards play a vital role in protecting us from hazards and ensuring that companies that pollute, make unsafe products, and create workplace hazards bear the cost of cleaning up their messes and preventing injuries and deaths. Still, the regulatory system is far from perfect: Rules take too long to develop; enforcement is often feeble; and political pressure from regulated industries has led to weak safeguards.

These systemic problems are made all the more severe by the determination of the Trump administration to undercut sensible safeguards across virtually all aspects of federal regulation. Moreover, the President and his team have taken aim at the the process by which such safeguards are developed, aiming to take a system already slanted in favor of industry profit at the expense of health, safety and the environment, and make it even less protective. For example, where critics of the use of cost-benefit analysis see a system that understates the value of safeguards and overstates the cost of implementing them -- making it difficult to adopt needed protections -- the Trump administration seeks simply to ignore benefits of safeguards, pretending they do not exist. The result is a regulatory system that fails to enforce landmark laws like the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and more.

CPR exposes and opposes efforts by opponents of sensible safeguards to undermine the regulatory system, fighting back against knee-jerk opposition to environmental, health, and safety protections. Below, see what CPR Members Scholars and staff have had to say in reports, testimony, op-eds and more. Use the search box to narrow the list.

Closing Agency libraries deals serious blow

Closing Agency libraries deals serious blow, op-ed by Joel Mintz

Type: Op-Eds (Dec. 11, 2006)
Read PDF
Author(s): Joel Mintz, Rebecca Bratspies
Bush White House blocks information to EPA libraries

Bush White House blocks information to EPA libraries, op-ed by Joel Mintz and Rebecca Bratspies

Type: Op-Eds (Dec. 6, 2006)
Read PDF
Author(s): Rebecca Bratspies, Joel Mintz
November 30, 2006, Half of U.S. Breathes Dangerous Levels of Smog; Lax State Enforcement Faulted.

November 30, 2006, 'Half of U.S. Breathes Dangerous Levels of Smog; Lax State Enforcement Faulted.'

Type: News Releases (Nov. 30, 2006)
Read PDF
Saving Science from Politicians

Saving Science from Politicians, op-ed by Wendy Wagner and Rena Steinzor

Type: Op-Eds (Sept. 5, 2006)
Read PDF
Author(s): Wendy Wagner, Rena Steinzor
Rescuing Science from Politics: Regulation and the Distortion of Scientific Research

Rescuing Science from Politics: Regulation and the Distortion of Scientific Research, by Wendy Wagner and Rena Steinzor

Type: Reports (Aug. 6, 2006)
Read PDF
Author(s): Wendy Wagner, Rena Steinzor
Rescuing Science from Politics: Regulation and the Distortion of Scientific Research

Published in July 2006, Rescuing Science from Politics debuted chapters by the nation's leading academics in law, science, and philosophy who explore ways that the law can be abused by special interests to intrude on the way scientists conduct research. The book begins by establishing non-controversial principles of good scientific practice. These principles then serve as the benchmark against which each chapter author compares how science is misused in a specific regulatory setting and assist in isolating problems in the integration of science by the regulatory process.

Read Online
Author(s): Wendy Wagner, Rena Steinzor
Letter to OMB urging it to withdraw its proposed risk assessment bulletin.

Risk Assessment Bulletin. Member Scholar Rena Steinzor's June 15, 2006 letter to OMB urging it to withdraw its proposed risk assessment bulletin.

Type: Letters to Agencies (June 15, 2006)
Read PDF
Author(s): Rena Steinzor
CPR Perspective: Clean Science: Rescuing Science and Scientists from Politics

For all the lip service paid to the notion that science has definitive answers, the moment that a group of scientists announce a discovery that has significant economic implications for industry or some other affected group, scientists in the spotlight soon learn that attacks are to be expected. Beset by scientific misconduct allegations or threatened with breach-of-contract lawsuits if research is published over a private sponsor's objections, growing numbers of scientists find themselves struggling to maintain their credibility in a climate designed to deconstruct the smallest details of their research. So severe are these problems in some settings that the most reputable scientists warn that legally-based harassment could deter the best and the brightest young scientists from entering the very disciplines that have the greatest potential to inform public affairs. Read Rena Steinzor and Wendy Wagner's entry in the CPR Perspectives series.

Type: Reports (May 12, 2006)
Read Online
Author(s): Rena Steinzor, Wendy Wagner
Strategies for Closing the Chemical Data Gap

Strategies for Closing the Chemical Data Gap, by John S. Applegate and Katherine Baer, White Paper 602, April 2006.

Type: Reports (April 12, 2006)
Read PDF

Advanced Search Filters

Reset Filters