The Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday that it would disperse scientists from its independent research office to other divisions where they among other things will be tasked with approving the use of new chemicals.
Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the changes to the E.P.A. in a video, saying the agency was “shifting its scientific expertise” to focus on issues he described as “mission essential.”
Most of the immediate changes will affect the Office of Research and Development, the E.P.A.’s main research arm that conducts studies on things like the health and environmental risks of “forever chemicals” in drinking water and the best way to reduce fine particle pollution in the atmosphere.
An internal document previously reviewed by The New York Times outlined the Trump administration’s recommendation to eliminate that office, with plans to fire as many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists working on health and environmental research.
That didn’t happen on Friday, but the agency’s new priorities were made clear: One hundred and thirty jobs will be moved to an office at the agency tasked with approving new chemicals for use, Mr. Zeldin said. Chemical industry groups have long complained of a backlog in approvals, which they say is stifling innovation.
At an all-hands staff meeting late Friday, Nancy Beck, a former lobbyist at the American Chemistry Council who now heads the E.P.A.’s chemicals office, told stunned scientists that it was “a very exciting time.”
“I encourage everyone throughout the agency to apply for these positions,” she said.
Trump administration officials indicated that more changes were in store for the research office. Scientists who were on the call said they were left with the impression that if they did not move into one of the new areas, their current jobs might be eliminated.
Also on Friday, the E.P.A. extended a deadline for accepting a deferred resignation offer to May 9.
“This feels like the Hunger Games,” said one employee of the research office who spoke on condition of anonymity, for fear of retaliation.
Other scientists will move into the administrator’s office as part of a new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions, which Mr. Zeldin said would “put science at the forefront of the agency’s rule making.”
Democrats and environmental activists warned the move would politicize scientific research.
“This so-called ‘reorganization’ is a thinly veiled attempt to extinguish the agency’s world-renowned scientific expertise by shuffling scientists to process chemical reviews for industry,” Representative Chellie Pingree, Democrat of Maine, said in a statement.
The research office “is intentionally separate from E.P.A.’s policy offices, ensuring it produces unbiased studies,” said Chitra Kumar, the managing director of the climate program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group. Moving the scientists into policy offices “could subject those experts to political influence, particularly in this administration,” she said.
The changes come amid a major deregulatory drive at the agency. The E.P.A. under Mr. Zeldin is revising or repealing more than 30 regulations aimed at protecting the air, water and climate. The administrator also is overseeing an effort to dismantle the legal underpinning for most climate regulations, known as the endangerment finding.
