As the Trump administration keeps pushing to change the focus of scientific research and roll back environmental regulations — moves that critics say favor industry over public health — members of North Carolina’s scientific and environmental communities are speaking out. They’re raising alarms about the effect of the EPA’s stated goal of dismantling its environmental research arm, including the possible closure of its Office of Research and Development in Research Triangle Park.
“Gutting EPA’s research capabilities directly harms states’ ability to ensure we have clean air and clean water, because we rely on the EPA for scientific expertise and capacity that is rarely available at the state level,” Elizabeth Biser, former secretary of the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, told NC Health News in a text.
“Eliminating the scientific backbone of the EPA would severely compromise the agency’s ability to make evidence-based decisions, putting communities across North Carolina — and the nation — at risk,” Biser wrote. “When you add funding cuts to scientific research at academic institutions, the nation as a whole is losing critical resources to protect the public from toxic chemicals.”
Critics warn that closing ORD’s Research Triangle facility could jeopardize public health, hinder critical climate research, undermine environmental safeguards and harm the economy of the Research Triangle and North Carolina as a whole.
ORD’s contributions to NC
The office’s contributions include developing tools to monitor air pollution, helping detect and manage PFAS contamination in North Carolina’s drinking water, informing public health guidance during the COVID-19 pandemic and engaging more than 385,000 students and community members through education and outreach programs. These contributions have shaped federal and state environmental policies while directly benefiting local communities, according to the agency.
“ORD has also done a lot of the fundamental research to understand the health effects of exposure to air pollution,” said Chris Frey, a North Carolina State University engineering professor and former assistant administrator at ORD. “That includes work at a laboratory facility located on the campus of the University of North Carolina, where clinical studies of human exposure were conducted.”
“Not long ago, the agency announced it was not going to continue funding that facility, and it’s vacating the site,” Frey added. “That is a significant loss of research capability that is very unique in the United States — actually, very unique globally.”
In addition to RTP, the Office of Research and Development maintains facilities across the country, including in Washington, D.C., New Jersey, Rhode Island and Oregon. In recent years, its total staff has hovered around 1,500, with approximately 700 employees based at the RTP location, according to Frey, who returned to his NCSU post in 2024. Of those 700, about 400 have departed recently through resignations, early retirements or firings, he said.
Economic and educational impact
According to the most recent data published by the EPA, the agency’s RTP campus contributed “an annual output of $245.4 million within the region and $262.2 million statewide.”
“The loss of so much expertise hurts everyone,” said Linda Birnbaum, who was director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, also in Research Triangle Park, from 2009 to 2019. “In addition, the loss of hundreds of federal jobs is only the tip of the iceberg — because all of those positions are accompanied by the loss of contractors, trainees and visiting scientists. Huge economic as well as personal losses.”
In addition to the scientific research that has shed light on public health issues such as COVID and PFAS, ORD has provided research opportunities for thousands of students from local universities, Frey said.
“The local universities in the triangle — N.C. State, UNC, Duke, N.C. Central and also others like North Carolina A&T — have had strong partnerships and collaborations with ORD and Research Triangle Park,” Frey noted. “There’s a kind of research ecosystem that revolves around what goes on at that EPA lab, and that’s all apparently coming to an end.”
Earlier this year, N.C. State University economist emeritus Mike Walden told NC Health News that a rule of thumb is to double the amount of a federal grant to get a handle on the ripple economic effect of that money on a region.
Project dollars generate jobs for research assistants, needs for equipment and other capital investments. The people who fill those posts or supply that apparatus then spend money from the grant generating local economic activity, in grocery stores, restaurants and retail.
Impacts beyond NC
The Environmental Protection Network, a nonpartisan group that includes many former EPA employees, works to strengthen and protect environmental safeguards. Organization members warn that the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce scientific research and roll back environmental regulations will harm the U.S. population.
EPN projects that these rollbacks could lead to “nearly 200,000 premature U.S. deaths through 2050 and trigger more than 10,000 asthma attacks each day nationwide, resulting in missed school and work days and increased emergency care.” The group also estimates that public health costs will outweigh corporate savings by six to one, with $254 billion in annual benefits lost compared to $39 billion in reduced costs for polluters — undermining protections under the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and other laws,” according to data published by the group.
Although environmentalists are concerned about the potential loss of the Office of Research and Development and the rollback of key regulations, Frey believes the need for continued scientific research will not go away.
“In a sense, this is an exercise. By taking away this capability, it's going to cause people to realize what they’re missing and how badly it’s needed,” he said. “So I would think it’s going to motivate a really strong conversation about how we fulfill this need for new science to deal with increasingly complex challenges.”
This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
