https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-epas-science-restrictions-go-from-bad-to-worse/

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has one job: to protect public health and safety and the environment we live in, based on the best available science. It’s a mission that saves lives if it’s carried out correctly. But that mission could become a dead letter if EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler succeeds in restricting the science that the agency can use.

Wheeler is pushing a new proposed rule—cloaked in the rhetoric of “transparency”—that would disallow the use of any study in the EPA’s policy making if all of that study’s data, computer code and models aren’t made public. What that means in practice (although the EPA disputes it) is that the agency couldn’t even consider public health studies that are based on confidential private medical information, which are vital for understanding public health and the impacts of pollution. The rule would put new bureaucratic hurdles in the way of the agency’s mission, making laws such as the Clean Air Act harder to fully implement. It sounds like a small technical change, but it has the potential to do enormous damage.