In this podcast episode, EWG President and co-Founder Ken Cook talks with Linda Birnbaum, Ph.D., and Micah Nemeyer Walsh, Ph.D. Birnbaum is a leading voice on the health impacts of environmental chemicals, having worked at the National Toxicology Program, led the Chemical Disposition Group, and served as president of the Society of Toxicology. She also worked for the Environmental Protection Agency for almost two decades, leading the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences.
Walsh received her doctorate from the University of Cincinnati in environmental and industrial hygiene and now works as an industrial hygienist in the Firefighter Health Program and at the National Firefighter Registry for Cancer at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH.
Cook and Birnbaum discuss funding and staff cuts to science across the federal government – how cuts may hurt everyday Americans and how a generation of scientific research could be lost. They also debate how a failure in science communications has brought us to this moment.
Walsh then talks about the Trump administration’s cuts to scientific research, especially at NIOSH. Walsh explains how the cuts have affected the institute's vital research on workplace protections for everyday Americans. With most NIOSH staff on forced leave, American workers are more vulnerable to pollutants, toxic chemicals and unsafe procedures.
Ken: Hello everyone. Ken Cook here and I'm having another episode. I have 'em all the time, but this one's driven by science and particularly by what's happening to science under the Trump administration here at EWG. We've been working for decades alongside great folks in government who are doing critical work on environmental health and safety.
And right now we have a science problem here in the US and it's not because we don't have enough brilliant scientists, it's because too many of them are losing their jobs. These are intelligent, well-educated, hardworking people who do the work every day to keep us safe.
Over the past six months, we've seen a horrific assault on scientists in the federal government. Now, you would think that scientists would be the kind of people that the Trump administration would be protecting if they really were worried about “making America healthy again,” but that's not what's happening.
In today's episode, I'm speaking with two leaders in the science community, Dr. Linda Birnbaum and Dr. Micah Nemeyer Walsh.
Dr. Linda Birnbaum is really a titan, a legend in the world of environmental health, and her work around toxic chemicals has made a huge impact on each and every one of our lives. I first crossed paths with Linda during her illustrious career at the Environmental Protection Agency. Then she served for many years as the director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, also known as NIEHS, which is part of the National Institutes of Health. Linda is now retired, which makes it a lot easier for her to speak her mind on what's occurring at our federal agencies.
My second guest is Dr. Micah Nemeyer Walsh, who is here to speak specifically about what it's like to be a federally employed scientist, right now. Micah has a PhD in Occupational Health, is an industrial hygienist in the Firefighter Health Program and the National Firefighter Registry for Cancer at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, known as NIOSH, which is part of the CDC. NIOSH among other institutions like NIH, NIEHS, the CDC, and EPA has been under attack during the current Trump administration. On April 1st, Micah, along with 90% of the workforce at NOISH, most of them scientists, was laid off. The layoffs stemmed from an announcement on March 27th, 2025 from the US Department of Health and Human Services about DOGE restructuring the department.
Micah was rehired on May 14th, among hundreds of others as NIOSH had restored several programs. We're going to hear more about what Micah is doing to bring back all the NIOSH employees as a member of the NIOSH Union. But first, my friend, mentor, environmental health thought leader, Linda Birnbaum. Thank you for joining us.
Linda Birnbaum: Thanks. It's always a pleasure to spend time with you, Ken, in person or online.
Ken: So you were at AT N-I-E-H-S and let's just tell people that's not a regulatory agency, that's a scientific research agency,
Linda Birnbaum: Correct. N-I-E-H-S is one of the 27 institutes and centers of the National Institutes of Health. It was established in 1966 and it was always outside of DC it was always in North Carolina. We were a payback from Jack Kennedy to Terry Sanford, the governor of North Carolina, for delivering North Carolina to a Boston Brahman in 1960. And the promise that was made was that there would be several federal organizations established in North Carolina. And that's how we got here.
So it's been challenging in some ways, but we have been, I would say, very lucky in the fact that we are a part of NIH and we are a basic biomedical research organization. But the NTP, which when I wore my NTP hat, I actually reported to the secretary of HHS, is really a problem solving organization.And it is involved in developing, new tests, testing compounds, and evaluating studies in general.
So it was kind of the best of both worlds. We had the really basic stuff and then some of the more applied. We are actually lucky enough, or have been lucky enough, and I say we, although I retired five and a half years ago, for NIHS shares a federal campus in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina with EPAs largest research facilities. And that has allowed for a great deal of collaboration with EPA as well as with obviously other parts of NIH.
Ken: Yeah, for sure. How did you go from N-I-E-H-S to your fairly long stint at EPA.
Linda Birnbaum: I was at N-I-E-H-S-I, I got tenure after about a year and a half or two years and stayed on and kind of developed my own lab group and my own interests and so on. I was recruited by EPA to head their largest health research division, which was at the time, two miles down the road. So it was one of those best of all possible career moves where I could have a major career advance, expand my toolbox, and not have to move my family.
Ken: And it's a wonderful atmosphere down there for scientific research and specifically research on the interaction between the environment and human health. I had been privileged to spend some time down there and even at one point we worked together on a symposium on chemical mixtures in cancer.
There's a lot of charges thrown around about NIH not being responsive, not efficient enough to use the GODE term, I think. And so there's been an enormous effort to reduce the ranks, not just at HHS generally, but at NIH.
That means any number of the agencies, the institutes under it, like N-I-E-H-S. Also [the] undermining of work that's being done has been done over the years. I think the bulk of the ORD staff that is being decimated now has been in North Carolina. How can you be concerned about making America healthy again and take a holistic approach to that where you're looking at everything from nutrition to environmental impacts, pesticides, toxic chemicals, air pollution and so forth—how can you be concerned about that and standby while the agencies that form the intellectual basis for taking those things on and ultimately we hope regulatory action? How can you be for MAHA and at the same time be for that?
Linda Birnbaum: Well, my impressions. Secretary Kennedy is that he is not happy with all the deep cuts that have come to HHS. And by that I mean not only dollar cuts, but personnel cuts and that DOGE is driving the ship, not Kennedy.
Ken: Mm-hmm.
Linda Birnbaum: I think when some of the horrendous cuts, the dust settles, I think at that point Kennedy will be able to direct or provide more direction for what areas are emphasized. Of course some of this is not traditional for NIH.
For NIH at times Congress has given clear direction about things they wanted studied, but many of the major efforts that NIH over the years has have developed, have arisen, either internally from internal scientists or from all of our grantees who are all around the country. And I think most of it has not been something that was top down.
Much of it came kind of bottom up.
Ken: Yeah.
Linda Birnbaum: So we'll have to see how some of the shakes out. I think some of the things that the secretary talks about are absolutely good—
Ken: Agreed.
Linda Birnbaum: If we can carry them out in an appropriate kind of fashion.
Ken: Yeah. It's a little hard to follow because they tend to make pronouncements from podiums instead of publishing things like plans that we can read and understand.
But that's one of the confounding things right now is you have these massive cuts. Again, we'll see how the dust settles how much of it Congress might push back on. We don't, we don't really know yet. We haven't seen a lot of pushback. We've seen some, but we know that it's going to be very difficult to achieve some aspects of the agenda that I happen to be supportive of that Kennedy speaks to, if you don't have the staff and the science to support it, because, and people I think don't appreciate this maybe as much as they might. Much as we would like for the government to take a stronger position on things, it turns out that this is a contested space and so if you don't do it with a solid scientific foundation, you can end up in court with industry suing over important regulatory matters, including regulatory science. We're seeing that now with PFAS chemicals and drinking water. And if you don't have the solid science you can lose in court, the government can try and do the right thing and lose, and that can end up setting you back many, many years fixing the court decision, going back, redoing science, making changes.
Linda Birnbaum: Well first of all, I wanna thank you for using the term solid science because the term sound science has been co-opted. We do need science, but there are times where the call is, “we need more science” and we always need more science.
Science is continuously evolving. But we often know enough to move ahead and make decisions. And I think that's something that is not always understood or always appreciated. The other thing that I just referred to is that science continuously evolves. And you know, I think that was one of the issues, at least that I've learned, you know, in terms of the COVID pandemic.
So initially people were told, “Oh, you don't have to wear masks,” because they didn't think they made a difference. It's a little surprising because you always knew if you were having a surgical operation, your surgeon was always wearing a mask. You know?
But then it became clear that masks did help and did prevent the transmission. But people thought, “But you told me X, and now it's Y."
Ken: Yeah.
Linda Birnbaum: That's a failure of scientists.
I'm one of them. We haven’t been great communicators and have not really explained clearly what it is we're doing, why we're doing it, what the impact of what we're doing, and made the point that the science that we know today, we didn't know that in the past.
And our ideas and understandings do change.
Ken: No question about it, particularly in the areas that deal with regulation Eventually it became very contested terrain around COVID. But when it comes to, for example, understanding the role that a toxic chemical might play that's produced by an industry, a product, an ingredient, or a contaminant that comes into the environment as a result of industrial processes.
When science tells us that this is a human health problem, we should take action and I would love to get a sense from you about maybe instances where we did the right thing and took action that was warranted in places where we haven't caught up to the science and should have done the right thing.
But in the middle there, it's contested by industry—a lot of pushback to slow things down. I think of endocrine disrupting chemicals. You know, back in the nineties when this was emerging, and I think you were one of the early people researching and writing about it, there was a lot of pushback by industry saying, “this is not a thing.”
Linda Birnbaum: And I hate to tell you, but there are people still saying that. Yeah. And still challenging the idea that things can happen at low doses. Of course. What do you mean by low doses? I usually mean by something that's environmentally relevant.
Ken: Yeah.
Linda Birnbaum: You know, something to which people are exposed—and we know that our endocrine system works at very, very low doses—and we know that it is essential for so many things in our body. Not just reproduction, not just development, but metabolism and bone growth and too much fat and all that kind of thing. It's easy to question, harder to prove. But there's a lot that we do know. And I think one of the things we have to begin to think about in a smarter way to do it is we've gotta stop looking at one chemical at a time and assuming that if chemical A or that toxic chemical is bad, that it's very closely related, relative is gonna be fine. But unfortunately right now you don't have to test things before they go on the market. And so you move from A, which is a problem to B, which is a problem to C, which is a problem.
And it all takes a huge amount of time. And people end up being the Guinea pigs.
Ken: Yeah. The harm happens while the debate is underway.
And I've often heard your perspective as if it looks like it's causing a problem, we have sufficient evidence. Why don't we think about taking action instead of postponing through more science?
Linda Birnbaum: Well, you've got me absolutely where I am. You know?
Yes, we need more science, but in the meantime, we know enough to know there's a problem. So I am a believer in the fact that nature is inherently very conservative and it does the same thing again and again and again. And if we find effects in multiple animals, you know, different species of animals, when we find effects in both male and females of different species. Why would we think that at least some people might not respond as well? There's the idea.
Well, animals aren't the same as people. And I often make the joke that we all know people who are rats, but rats aren't people.
Ken: That's true. I like Phil Landrigan's version where he says, “we're not testing pesticides on rats because we're worried about the impact on rats.”
Linda Birnbaum: Correct. But they in fact, are informative in cases they can tell us about people. You know, and they can at least indicate, I mean—I'm a little bit conservative here in terms of, you know, if I only see something in one sex of one species, it doesn't concern me the way when I see things affect mice and rats and Guinea pigs and rabbits.
They also affect birds and they affect fish. Maybe they even affect amphibians in some cases. Maybe they affect fruit flies. You're interfering with biology when you see that kind of thing and there are going to be responses in people
Ken: During your time in both agencies, what were some of the breakthrough moments where a scientific understanding created at least the start of momentum to bring about some regulatory action?
Can you think of some examples?
Linda Birnbaum: So I'll give you a couple from minor experience. One is related to dioxin and related compounds, TCDD, the toxic contaminant that was present in Agent Orange. We were able to show in kind of the early nineties that when you looked at what the dose was, looking at what you had day, by day, by day, was not very helpful.
What you had to measure was how much was in the body, because when you have chemicals that are persistent in the body, it builds up. So your tiny little bit, day one, day two, day 10, day one hundred adds up. If you just look at what happens in one day, you're not going to have the answer that you need. And that was very important in setting the regulatory levels that ended up being used.
And that turned out not only to be relevant for dioxin, but it's true of all the persistent organic pollutants. So I think it's been very important in understanding recent times what happens with PFAS chemicals, things like PFOA and PFOS, which EPA finally promulgated regulations and drinking water just a year ago.
Ken: Yeah.
Linda Birnbaum: So the persistent organics, I think, are really important. Another example that I can't say I was as responsible for, except there were people who worked for me when I was at EPA, and I would say in the early nineties when we thought about air pollution, we were almost totally focused on lungs and the respiratory system.
Ken: Mm-hmm.
Linda Birnbaum: By the mid to late nineties we became aware and were focused on what it does to your heart. And by say that early two thousands we were looking at, “hey, it's not just your lungs, it's not just your heart, it's all of you.”
Ken: Yeah.
Linda Birnbaum: And I think that this understanding has had a huge impact so that today we know that air pollution is associated with low birth weight, babies small for gestational age. We know it's associated with increased risk of overweight obesity and type two diabetes. We know it's associated with cancer. And those were things that, you know, have evolved over time. So I think those are two kind of nice examples.
Ken: Those are great examples. And I think there's always pushback. When EPA—and I consider the Clean Air Act to sort of be the queen of environmental laws because that's the one where we move forward and make progress time and time again—it's where most reliably we have new standards that are set. It still takes a long time to do it, but it does move forward and there's always pushback. Even though what we've ended up doing,we've set pollution levels progressively lower over time for things like PM 2.5
Linda Birnbaum: Which we weren't even thinking about.
Ken: Yes, exactly. In the early nineties,
Linda Birnbaum: You know, we did talk about PM but it was PM 10.
Ken: Right, right.
Linda Birnbaum: Which are bigger particles. They don't go as deep into the lung.
Ken: Yeah, and this is a point we often make at EWG, we describe ourselves as often working in the area between what's legal and what's safe.
The politics, the economics, the technology that shapes a regulatory response in addition to biology, tends to push the legal limit higher than is necessarily healthy. I mean, this is the tension in regulation, right? And that's exploited oftentimes by polluting industries.
People, I think, need to understand that when we set a legal limit, there's still harm happening, but below it to people somewhere. Air pollution's a good example, so we keep lowering it.
I had Bill Riley on the program a while back, and he said, “Americans had in some ways lost some of their appetite for some of these pollution control measures because of pushback from industry and concerns about cost.” I think there's something to be said for that, but I think it's important to remind people that even though we set a limit as science evolves, we might well learn that that limit is set too high to be considered safe.
Linda Birnbaum: You know, lead is a perfect example where certainly 10 years ago the advisory limit was 10 milligrams per deciliter, which is a low amount, and that was supposed to be safe. Well, a number of years later, NTP did a major systematic review. CDC did a review and it became clear that there's no safe level for that.
Ken: Yeah.
Linda Birnbaum: And the point is that the level keeps dropping, the advisory level keeps dropping based upon the population and it's set that the level has to be protective of 97.5% of the population. As the population has less and less lead the level drops lower and lower.
Ken: Yeah.
Linda Birnbaum: I think you don't want the perfect to be the enemy of the good.
And you might say, we want zero lead around. And that's what we're working to, but we may never get there. And the current air pollution levels are much more stringent than they were. Are they as stringent as I believe they should be? No, but they're a lot better than they were and they may keep coming down.
One of the things I did when I was at N-I-E-H-S, I really supported the fact that we needed to look at the impact of the work that we did. Some of the impact is economic, and money talks. Analyses have been done of the cost of air pollution regulations and overall the benefits far outweigh the cost.
EPA is actually required in some of their laws to do a cost benefit analysis and for example, with the PFAS, with the drinking water regulations for PFOA and PFOS and the four other PFAS, and I mean there are 15,000 PFAS, so this is just a small number. The costs are less than the benefits, and I think that that's something that people don't often realize and you certainly don't hear some of the opponents of regulation talking about.
Ken: Yeah, that's for sure. What are some of the areas where you feel like science wasn't listened to as it should have been and we dropped the ball?
Linda Birnbaum: I think the whole issue of endocrine disruption.
Ken: Yeah.
Linda Birnbaum: I think many people still think of our hormones as being primarily our estrogens and our androgens and you know, if in an adult you don't have enough estrogen—well now you can take an estrogen pill. Or if you're a man, you know, and you don't have enough testosterone, well you can take something that'll up it. And I think most people don't understand how critical our hormones are during development and what happens during development is not reversible.
I think one of the early clear examples of that is what we know about vitamin A, which we know is essential as adults, it's essential for our skin and so on. During development, it is totally important. And if you don't have, or you have too much vitamin A early in development, you're gonna have problems with limbs. You're not gonna have the right fingers, hands, toes, etcetera. And once development goes past the point that's supposed to happen, you're not going to grow them again.
Ken: Yeah.
Linda Birnbaum: So I think that's kind of been something that people have had a hard trouble understanding. I think another problem is that there are some people who think that you have to have the same thing happen in males and females.
Males and females are different. And in fact, that's really, really important. I'll give a personal example for that. In my own research, for years I only used male animals. I didn't have to worry about their esra cycle, which is in the females, very, very important to consider because different things can happen. So I just studied males.
Well, frankly, that was true in human health work too until 1992. If you were doing a clinical study, like for drug development, you didn't have to study women. You might study a hormone replacement therapy in healthy young men that was not the target.
So I think those are examples. Some kind of clear examples of where we still aren't as far along as we need to be.
Ken: Yeah, those are great examples. I often bring up the positions that have been taken by the endocrine society when people raise questions about endocrine disrupting chemicals. My response is, well, if it's not real, then why is the endocrine society so concerned about it?
That's the actual endocrinologist. Those are the people who, they're either doing the research or they're seeing patients who might have an endocrine related issue, or they might be both. They've taken some pretty strong stance on endocrine disrupting chemicals that can have a problem at a very low level.
I think many of the medical associations have made great strides, and I think your work has influenced that profoundly to recognize the role of chemicals and toxic pollutants in our health that wasn't there 20 years ago.
Linda Birnbaum: Well, I hope so. I think some of the medical organizations are, let's, I'll use the term, more advanced than others.
Ken: Yeah.
Linda Birnbaum: And I can't totally blame them, but you know, unfortunately in the education of clinicians, whether they're physicians or for example, nurses and so on, the amount of time that is spent on the environment is not zero, but often very close.. And they really don't get much training.
And part of the issue is they've gotta learn so many things, but I think there may be ways that we can reformulate how clinicians are trained so that they get a broader view of what is really impacting health. And I should say, Ken, you know, when I talk about the environment, it's not just synthetic chemicals.
Ken: Right.
Linda Birnbaum: It can also be natural chemicals. Of course it includes food, it includes infectious agents. That's another example I think of something that we're just now beginning to appreciate is there are a lot more microbes, bugs, a lot more of them than there are of our own cells. And there are something like 14 different microbial species in our body.
We focus mainly on bacteria when we talk about the microbiome. But there are also lots of fungi, there are lots of viruses, for example. And I'd say within the last five or six years, we're just really appreciating, “oh my God, they are really important to our health.”
Ken: Yeah.
Linda Birnbaum: And if we alter the microbiome, which we can do nutritionally, and of course I'd remind everyone that nutritious food is made up of chemicals.
Ken: Yeah, for sure.
Linda Birnbaum: But if you change your nutrition, if you change lots of your health issues…
We know a baby born by C-section has a different microbiome than a baby born vaginally. And it takes two years—we don't really know why. But, what does that mean?
Those two very critical years of development have an impact of having a different microbiome in those first two years? Long term, I will say, I share with the secretary great concern about the tremendous increase in chronic disease in our population.
Ken: Totally.
Linda Birnbaum: It's not something we can turn around overnight. It may take a generation or two because so many things in chronic disease are actually established early in life, many of them in utero.
Although I also stress that dads matter. We know that preconception can happen, which can have long-term effects. As well on the offspring and sometimes on more than one generation. So I think we have to continue to understand how this happens, but at the same point, we now know it is a problem and we should be trying to work on it.
Ken: No question. And the treatment for chronic conditions in many cases that might be related to say obesity or diabetes, usually requires a chronic commitment to eating differently, which is another thing that physicians don't get much training in.
Linda Birnbaum: I agree that diet and exercise are important related to overweight and obesity, but it's not the whole thing. There are many other, let's say stressors that can impact what happens with weight. And if what you've done is because of early life exposure, you may have kind of a different set point for what will happen.
Ken: Mm-hmm.
Linda Birnbaum: We have to be careful about blaming people. I'll give you another example of that.
I've always been a big fan of nursing your own baby. You know, breast is best, all kinds of antibodies are transferred and so on. But not all women can nurse their babies. And we now know that there are a number of environmental exposures, environmental chemical exposures, which make it more difficult for women to nurse.
But even if that's not the case, you know, we've gotta be careful not to blame people or make them feel bad because of what they can't do for one reason or another. And I think we need to start thinking about that related to obesity too.
Ken: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. That's a great point.
We really are in a soup. And we are a soup. When you look at all of the exposures we have, and I think people don't maybe often appreciate that when it comes to bringing chemicals onto the market or keeping them onto the market—regulating them—we look one at a time. So you might have a chemical that has neurotoxic properties that are of concern and that would be significant enough to take regulatory action, regulatory attention, but then you have maybe all these other neurotoxicants that are already in your body or might you might be exposed to from other sources.
How should we think that through? I mean, industry seems to throw up its hands and say it's impossible, “we can't do the studies that look across all of these mixtures.” How do we approach that at this point, Linda?
Linda Birnbaum: Well, I think some of the new approach methodologies give us the ability to look at a much bigger number of, say a few chemicals at a time, testing to make sure that what they're telling us is what's really happening. I think some of the things is we have to think more broadly, and part of this goes to the regulatory paradigm, which is based on one chemical.
So it drives me crazy that in pesticides you have to test the active ingredient. Well, no one's exposed to just the active ingredient. What you are exposed to is the formulation, and the formulation is used to make the active ingredient do its thing. And sometimes the active ingredient doesn't do anything without the formulation, but that's not tested and doesn't have to be tested.
And your comment that we test one chemical at a time instead of the soup, it's just not easy. And we've been talking about how to do this for years. So with dioxin, it turned out to be fairly easy because they had a single initiating mechanism of action, which was a specific receptor that was present in cells in our bodies, and throughout vertebrates, we tested about 29 different chemicals that we set our dioxin like, and then we said, “Uh-oh, there's more than just the chlorinated. They're the brominates, and they're the mixed.”
You go to something, for example, like PFAS, where there are at least 15,000. And not all are intentionally made, but we're all exposed to a mixture, and yet we're testing one or two at a time. We've known for at least 10 or 15 years that you can get something from nothing is the term. And that's when you test one chemical by itself, you don't see any effect. But if you test five or 10, then you see an effect.
And that's because in general, and I'm generalizing maybe more than I should, but if you just take the assumption of adaptivity in general, it works pretty well if you say A plus B plus C plus D. It's not bad in the ballpark. In the ballpark. And as I said before, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
So let's start doing things that may not be perfect, but may help us get to where we need to go.
Ken: So a related question there is, and this has become a frustration of ours at EWG, increasingly over the years. I mean, when we saw that our sense of what a risk assessment properly should be, the protective way in which it should be applied, not accepted by the agency, or stiff-armed away because it was going to cause too much regulatory pressure on a pesticide or another pollutant. We became more disillusioned.
A lot of people at the beginning in the environmental field with the full blown risk assessment approach and more comfortable saying, you know, when in doubt, why don't we just avoid the exposures if it's a hazardous substance.
What's your thought on sort of the state of the art of risk assessment and where it's taken us or not taken us?
Linda Birnbaum: Too complicated.
Ken: Yeah?
Linda Birnbaum: Too complicated. I mean, in my opinion, clearly exposure is a key determinant of whether or not you have a problem. I happen to be a believer, that if something is highly hazardous, you don't want exposure. Why should we have to actually do it? We have to say this is a really bad chemical and we don't want exposure.
So I've become a proponent of what was done in the Montreal Protocol, which was the protocol that was to protect the ozone hole where chlorinated hydrofluorocarbons were basically removed, but there were three categories.
There was something called approach essentiality, and if you didn't really need something, you stopped using it. Now obviously this would require societal change and we could talk about plastics. If you really need it, there's a safe alternative, the answer is you would move to the safe alternative.
And the problem is the way things have been done, we've had a lot of unfortunate substitution. where people move from compound A to compound B, you know, A is bad, you have no data on B, so, and then it turns out it's a problem. So you would really want, you wouldn't move to something until you knew it was safe, but you would.
And then the third category is the one where something is really essential, and maybe it's a drug. Or maybe it's some kind of plastic tubing that needs to be used in surgery. Something like that. Yeah. And he would say, we keep using it until we can develop either a safe alternative or a different way of doing something.
Sometimes the alternative doesn't have to just be another chemical.
Ken: Yeah.
Linda Birnbaum: Some of this would require societal change, but I think we have to begin to think about that rather than saying, we've gotta do more testing and we gotta do these detailed risk assessments because that we're never gonna move as quickly to be protective of people or the environment as we need to be.
Ken: It's been a change for us because we kind of lost confidence in a risk assessment that was super protective to the standard we were hoping for. When that was sort of turned away, then we thought, well, maybe the approach needs to move a little bit back in the direction of if it looks sketchy enough, maybe we should just try and find another way to solve this problem. So that makes all the sense in the world to me.
One more area, I wanted to ask you about what it means to be a government scientist and why it's so important and why we need voices and we need to nurture it. So I'm gonna turn now to the much more worrisome question about what is happening to science under this administration with the cuts. There's science in the private sector, there's science at universities, and a lot of it is interwoven with the science that goes through the NIH and from everything I'm reading. And sometimes we can't really tell exactly what's going on because you know, people are reluctant to talk about it if they're still in government. They're afraid that if they speak out and are identified that things could even get worse.
What's your take right now on the danger that our science specific to environmental health, let's just say, might face if some of these cuts go forward, Linda?
Linda Birnbaum: Well, chaos and destruction.
The US has been the leader and I think in the last couple months we've already lost our leadership. I'm afraid we're gonna lose a generation here.
I think this too shall pass, but by the time it passes, the destruction is going to be even worse than it is now. And it's not just to the federal system. You mentioned the universities, many universities have put total hiring freezes on, they've rescinded graduate student and postdoctoral fellowship invitations or they're, they're admitting many fewer people.
I get calls all the time from people and I'd be able to say, well, why don't you go here? Why don't you look at this person? I don't even know where to tell them to go. Industry is not gonna do the basic science that needs to be done, and I think in many cases it's not gonna do the regulatory science that needs to be done in order to protect human health and the environment.
So I'm terribly concerned. I think there are some potential opportunities. Secretary Kennedy is Secretary of Health and Human Services, and so he will be able to have an impact on, for example, cosmetics and food additives and food contaminants. And I think that's great, but he doesn't really have the power to do anything about chemicals and commerce.
For example, because that falls under EPA—
Ken: Or pesticides, really.
Linda Birnbaum: And pesticides, although pesticides in food, there could be something that I think FDA has the regulatory authority to do. And the FDA is really regulatory. NIH, as we said, is not regulatory. CDC is not regulatory, CDC is advisory. As bad as the cuts to NIH have been cuts to say CDC have been worse.
Ken: Yeah.
Linda Birnbaum: NIOSH, which is part of CDC and is occupational health, has been cut by over 80%. That they had to kill all of their animals in their laboratories because there was no money.
Ken: Is that right? Oh my gosh. I hadn't heard that.
Linda Birnbaum: And you know, the same thing is going to happen with the EPA's Office of Research and Development which has just been killed basically.
And people are looking for positions in other parts of EPA, but they're not gonna be research positions. They have a phenomenal research facility: is it just gonna sit empty? I mean, there's millions and millions and millions of dollars of equipment. What's gonna happen to that? And I know NIH as a whole, and I know NIEHS better because I was there. I've lost about a hundred people at N-I-E-H-S.
You hear about a federal scientist losing their position, and realize that there are two or three contract positions that, in most cases, go along with that. So there's a tremendous amount of people in the public sector or in the private sector, not just in the government, who are also losing their jobs and their work.
And, you know, some of this is kind of delayed, like people will have a couple more months before they're actually gone. But the impacts on research are already happening.
You know, at NIH, there are 30% fewer patients in the NIH Clinical center than there usually are. And that's because they don't have the staff. There are clinical trials that are being stopped. There are lots of animal studies and so on that have ended. And I think we are in danger: our health, our environment, and we certainly are losing our preeminence in the world.
Ken: Many of the topics we've talked about just in this brief conversation, were only made possible by having high quality science, examine the underlying questions and begin to provide some answers whether regulators, political leaders acted on them or not.
I always say to my colleagues, “we, as environmentalists, tend to focus on regulatory outcomes, but it's really important to understand.” One of the great victories of the environmental movement, in a way, was getting these laws passed that required the collection of data and the accumulation of scientific research and understanding. That part is more intangible, but if you don't get that regulatory win, it's easy to forget the value of the science that maybe got left on the cutting room floor, in effect, can still be taken up and utilized in other ways.
Linda Birnbaum: I talked about the problems with science not being communicated as well as it needs to be, but the point is, it's the market basket that eventually speaks. And when people don't want certain things and don't wanna buy certain things that leads to change. But the only way people know that is if we communicate the information we have.
Ken: That's exactly right. Certainly at EWG, we try and give people practical advice so they can take action on their own to reduce or avoid exposures where we feel that it's unlikely the government's going to take the action that would be needed to remove that exposure or reduce it.But all of that is based, almost all of it is based on science that comes out of governmental processes or government support.
You exemplify to me, the person who calls them, like you see them as science emerges. And if we lose that, that to me is the scariest aspect of the delamination of our scientific capability in the government: it is losing those leadership voices.
Linda Birnbaum: I don't disagree. Losing the young voices. Yes. Using the bright young people who are just coming into the field a hundred percent. You know, they're the ones who still say the emperor has no clothes. Yeah. And as you go on in your career, you do develop certain things that you know are right or things, or that this is the way and you need someone who's taken a fresh look often to say, well, maybe we have to do something else.
So I'm guardedly hopeful that there'll be some opportunities that we will be able to continue to take advantage of. And I think we, the people, need to demand that.
Ken: Yeah. Well, at EWG we're here to demand it. And we demand it because we see the great outcomes. We see the great advances that have been made possible by scientists like you and your colleagues in government who've stood up and called them like you see them and advanced our understanding of the way the environment interacts with our health.
So Linda, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. I look forward to seeing you again in North Carolina soon or someplace else, maybe come on out to California.
And thank you for your leadership over the years. And thank you for your patience teaching me as I struggled along to try and understand this environmental health connection. It's been an honor to be in your circle.
Linda Birnbaum: Thank you. And I've had a lot of fun too.
Ken: Yes, you have. It's always been fun. Thanks again, Linda. It is always a pleasure to speak with you.
Ken: I'm excited to have my next guest on as she can speak to what it's like for federal employees who are navigating the choppy waters of the Trump administration right now. Earlier in this episode, Linda mentioned that NIOSH has been cut by over 80%.
No one can speak towards the impact of those cuts more thoughtfully than Micah Nemeyer Walsh. Micah works for NIOSH, which is an agency of scientists who make it their business to try and understand the types of health issues that arise in the workplace. NIOSH’s goal is to establish science that documents health problems, which are then developed into workplace safety standards by another agency in the federal government.
You've probably heard of OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. NIOSH is part of the CDC, which falls under the umbrella of the Department of Health and Human Services, where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Serves as Secretary. Micah is an expert in her field and serves as a union representative.
She's in a unique position to speak about what a post-DOGE federal government looks like. And what the working conditions for federal employees like her are today. Thank you Micah, for joining us, and I'm delighted to get to spend some time talking to you.
Micah: Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Ken. First of all, it's important for me to say I'm speaking today as a union representative.
I'm vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3840, and we represent the employees at NIOSH in Cincinnati, Ohio. So today I'm speaking from my position as a union leader and from just a public citizen who's concerned about what's happening at NIOSH.
We knew that this administration was going to be tough, right. We were kind of prepared for it to be a trying work environment. What we didn't expect was for them to try to eliminate NIOSH.
Historically, NIOSH has been relatively uncontroversial. It has had bipartisan support because our mission should be something that everyone supports, which is making sure that we're generating research to make sure that the people that are working in this country are safe and healthy at work.
That shouldn't really be a controversial mission, right? We were very surprised when on April 1st, over 90% of our agency received notice that they were either immediately going to be put on administrative leave and had to cease work by the end of that day. And mind you, these letters were sent out at five in the morning. Or they were told that in 30 days they were going to be put on administrative leave for the sake of‘efficiency.’ That our positions were either duplicative or unnecessary.
Ken: I don't think you could know anything about environmental law and policy or public health law and policy and think that the incoming Trump administration was going to do anything other than, you know, something pretty drastic.
But no one had contemplated the degree to which this was going to happen. And not just at NIOSH, but across other parts of the CDC. What have been some of the examples of work that NIOSH has done that has ended up protecting everyday working people?
Micah: Absolutely. So what I like to say is NIOSH is a small agency you probably have never heard of that's probably saved your life.
We are relatively small. We have less than a thousand employees. You name a job and we've researched it to make it safer. You name a hazard and we've researched it to make it safer. Everything from chemical exposures, noise, exposure in every industry, right? We look at nurses, firefighters, you name it.
We also had a program that was training for young workers because they have increased injury and illness on the job. Really, you name a job and NIOSH was working to ensure that they were able to do that work safely. One of the first things that I ever worked on was on the diacetyl recommended exposure limit.
Ken: Tell us what diacetyl is and how it's used and why people, why working people come in contact with it and why we should be concerned about that.
Micah: Sure. So diacetyl is an artificial flavoring often used as an artificial butter flavoring and things like popcorn or coffee. The way that [our research] is supposed to function is we're supposed to do surveillance so that we identify new and emerging hazards and new and emerging occupational illnesses.
And then all the parts of NIOSH work together to eventually be able to make a recommendation to reduce exposure and reduce the burden of occupational wellness. So in this case, diacetyl, workers were getting sick at a popcorn manufacturing facility and it was a new thing. And some of the people that were getting sick were younger.
And so NIOSH went in and identified what the chemical was that was causing this problem. And the chemist that NOISH helped develop an analytical method to be able to even measure it in the workplace. Right, because that's something that we have to consider is, we have to be able to measure it to know what you're being exposed to, how much you're being exposed to—
Ken: Real world conditions, right?
Micah. Exactly. Not just a sample of it from the lab that you analyze, but you have to figure out, “okay, if someone is on the popcorn line, if someone's involved in the plant here, where they're located, what conditions they're working under, when will they, and how will they be exposed.”
Then there were ventilation engineers at NIOSH that helped figure out ways to reduce the amount in the air in the workplace. There were toxicologists at NIOSH that did toxicity testing to see the mechanism of action and kind of how much would cause a health effect. Then there are researchers at NIOSH who are toxicologists—some are physicians, some are epidemiologists— that worked together to do a risk assessment. Basically, they took all of this information, took all of this data, and then were able to say, “okay, this is our recommended exposure limit that, if you're in the workplace, you don't wanna be exposed to more than this over eight hours.”
You know what personal protective equipment you should use—what you know are the engineering and ventilation controls. Here's how you and the workplace can reduce your exposure and companies can implement these things that we've researched to reduce the workers' exposure.
When I think about everything that went into that, and then I think about all of the people that their jobs are threatened right now, they're still on paid administrative leave, so they haven't been separated yet but they're not allowed to work.
Ken: They're being paid. The taxpayers are paying the money.
Micah: Yeah.
Ken: But they don't come to the lab. Don't go to the work site and take samples. Don't do any of that.
Micah: Exactly. When I think about all the work that went into this is just one chemical, right? This is one example, right? There's dozens and dozens and dozens, probably hundreds of other examples I could name.
So we put up a tough fight and got some public outcry and some congressional support to get about 300 employees reinstated. There was a lot of public attention, like the firefighters, the World Trade Center Health Program, etcetera, and a lot of the folks that you know haven't been reinstated are people that are absolutely critical. The chemists have not been reinstated. So right now there is no one that is able to analyze our samples. If we collect samples and there's no one developing new methods, if we find a new and emerging chemical in the workplace.
Ken: Yeah. I know you're involved with firefighter health. The risks, the hazards that firefighters face and the outcomes of it. I mean there's a reason to keep track of how many firefighters are developing cancer and where they're developing it, what type of cancer and so forth.
I mean, the idea that we're not taking a, a careful look with chemists and the full compliment of scientific capability to these first responders who run towards the fire while the rest of us are running the other way. My temperature goes up and I'm no firefighter, but I'll tell you, I just get mad about that.
So, an act was passed. I can imagine, just from our experience working on a narrow issue with firefighters, which are these forever chemicals, the PAS chemicals that they're exposed to when they use firefighting foam that has these substances in it, or the ready wear that they throw on before every dangerous situation.
And the support was bipartisan and very robust. Was that the case?
Micah: So it was, there was bipartisan support for this and Trump himself actually signed it into law in 2018. You know, we've been building the registry over the past several years, and we have thousands and thousands of firefighters who have already registered.
And unfortunately on April 1st, the day that we were issued, our reduction in force notices the website was taken down, which meant that no new firefighters could register, and firefighters who had already registered couldn't access their profiles. Which is pretty devastating for a lot of people. Obviously for the scientists who have put a lot of work into building that, but also for all of the firefighters who worked really hard to get that act passed and to help us build the registry and promote the registry. Especially for firefighters who are cancer survivors or who have passed from cancer
Ken: I presume that one of the central goals here is that you would hope to learn from the registry some ways in which we might be able to help firefighters on the job avoid these exposures and any cancers that might be associated with the exposure.
So, unbelievable that we wouldn't do everything we could to understand the environment that they're in, the risks and exposures.
What can we do to make it better, better protective gear? I'm, sure there are all kinds of ideas that would pop up.
Micah: Yeah, absolutely. So the goal, you're right, the goal is ultimately to reduce the burden of cancer on firefighters and to be able to make recommendations based on what we learn.
And so, we had a huge fight to try to get that back and to try to get the program reinstated. Luckily, we were successful. Our union fought really, really hard to make this happen. And so, the Firefighter Registry employees were reinstated. We were very happy to see that the website did come back up.
That was a huge win for us. I will say though, even though the NFR team is up and running and the website is back up and running, there are so many researchers at NIOSH that we rely on to get the most of the data like epidemiologists and statisticians. In other parts of the institute that help us be able to get the most out of this information that we're collecting.
And they're all still on administrative leave. Their separation date is scheduled for July 2nd. That's on pause due to a preliminary injunction from a big lawsuit from the National Unions. But it's in the court's hands right now. And it's in Congress's hands. It's in RFK Junior's Hands.
Those are folks that have such important roles to play in looking at firefighters, but also, and so many other workers and so many other industries of course. Like firefighters are obviously such an important job and we care so much about their health and safety. But personally, my opinion is, I think we should care about all workers' health and safety, and that all workers play a pivotal role in helping our society function. And we should be making sure that when they're doing things to build our world, that they are safe and able to do that work.
To that end, I think about the day on April 1st when we all received our notices and just walking through the hallway, talking to each other, we were all in shock, right?
We had no idea that this was gonna happen. But the most common conversation that I really heard was, what's gonna happen to my data? What's gonna happen to my important work? This belongs to the American people, right? My job is to protect people. Who's gonna carry that on if I can't? And I think that just speaks to the type of people that work at NIOSH, right?
Ken: Yeah, yeah. The people like yourself. If I may say a little bit about this because I found this fascinating. I know you want to talk about the broader picture and I salute you for it. But I think it would help people to understand a little bit about your specific work, which I found fascinating.
Micah, as the owner of an electric vehicle, give us a little sense of what you've been doing and including. I remember you telling me that you actually set cars on EVs on fire to see what happens, right?
Micah: Yeah. So, we have research partners that do controlled burns of electric vehicles, or also we have research partners who do training fires so that firefighters can practice putting out electric vehicle fires.
And during those, we'll take samples. So we take air samples and we take surface samples and some of the air samples that we take we analyze and see what's in them, basically saying, “okay, this is what we found. This is what we looked for, this is what we found. These are some things that you might be concerned about if you're handling debris from an electric vehicle or you're at a fire scene.” And then other samples we actually send to toxicologists who look at the toxicity of the particulate. And I think it's important to note that those toxicologists at NIOSH are still on paid administrative leave. We don't have toxicologists to look at what's in it right now.
Ken: What's it mean?
Micah: Yeah. What are the potential health effects if you're exposed to this is work that taxpayer funded. It was underway and now has been halted due to all of this talk about government efficiency.
Which, if you ask me, I don't think paying people to NOT work is very efficient, especially when they really do want to work.
Ken: And I'm so grateful that you're doing it. It's vital research as electric vehicles become more common, it's a mindless assault on science and scientists and a profession. I can't say enough about how obtusely wasteful it is to do that to an agency that's performing this vital service.
But from your perspective, what do you see unfolding? How do you see, I mean, the fight's going to go on. We're gonna be fighting there with you and a lot of people in the environmental community are fighting to protect these programs and many others.
Give me your sort of your closing thoughts and what should people out there maybe do in support of what you're fighting for?
Micah: Absolutely. I will say there's definitely some sadness, right? But there's also still a lot of hope. I think people still have hope at NIOSH that our elected leaders will do the right thing and make sure that the working people of this country are protected.
And if you're a working person, if you have a job or if you love someone who has a job, which is just about nearly everybody, then you should care about NIOSH, you should care about the work that we do. And you should be spreading the word about how important we are.
Even though we're small. We're small but mighty. We punch well above our weight and we're very efficient at it. Every working person, I think we only cost about $2 a year. That's the entire NIOSH annual budget. So $2 per worker per year. And then, you know, the moral argument of people shouldn't be getting sick from working. So I would say that's a pretty easy cost benefit analysis if you ask me.
In order to fight back, I will say, one thing every single person can do is call their representatives. Tell them that they don't want the people they care about or themselves to get sick or injured on the job, and that they really want NIOSH to be funded and that all of the workers get reinstated so that we can carry on our important work.
And if you're a union member, talk to your fellow union members about NIOSH, talk to your union leaders about the work that we do, and consider having your union take action. There's a lot of national unions that are speaking out in support of NIOSH and so I think it's common sense, right?
That this is work that should be happening in our country.
Ken: Absolutely. It's vital work. I'm just really, really grateful to have spent some time with you, Micah, and we're gonna try and spread the word far and wide, people doing the kind of work that you're doing in NIOSH. You're the best of America, and it's an honor to spend a little time with you.
Thank you, my friend.
Micah: Thank you so much for having me and giving me the opportunity to talk about our important work. I really appreciate it.
Ken: Thank you to both of our extraordinary guests, Linda Birnbaum and Micah Nemeyer Walsh. If you'd like to learn more, be sure to check out our show notes for additional links to take a deeper dive into today's discussion.
Make sure to follow our show on Instagram at Ken Cooks podcast. And if you're interested in learning more about EWG, head on over to ewg.org or check out the EWG Instagram account at Environmental Working Group. If this episode resonated with you or you think someone you know would benefit from it, please send it along.
The best way to make positive change is to start as a community with your community. Today's episode was produced by the amazing Beth Rowe and Mary Kelly. Our show's theme music is by Moby. Thank you Moby for letting us use it. And thanks again to all of you for listening.
