EPA Staff Sought To Protect Pruitt From Toxic Chemical Before Squashing Report On That Same Chemical

Politico reports:

Then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s staff sought to protect him from exposure to toxic formaldehyde from an office desk last year, emails show — just months before his top political aides blocked the release of a report on health dangers from the same chemical.

In the spring of 2017, as Pruitt was finishing the more than $9,500 redecoration of his office, a top career official in the administrator’s office noticed a California warning that one of the ornate desks their boss wanted contained formaldehyde, which the state classifies as a carcinogen.

Administrative personnel appeared to make plans to have the desk assembled at a warehouse and left there for a week, when the highest concentrations of formaldehyde are usually emitted. The email exchange about the desk last spring took place just months before top aides to Pruitt took steps to block a health assessment produced by another division within the agency that found the levels of formaldehyde that many Americans breathe in daily are linked with leukemia, nose-and-throat cancer and other ailments.

Hit the link for the staff’s emails.