U.S. Environmental Protection Agency remedial project manager Aaron Mroz details the agency’s proposal to remediate contaminated soil at the New Beginning Apostolic Church in Minden, Fayette County, on March 26, 2023.
The Trump administration has undercut public health programs in West Virginia by blocking employees in the federal agencies supporting them from their work, according to sources familiar with the programs.
Key officials have been placed on administrative leave in recent weeks who worked on a wide range of public health initiatives in both senior and probationary roles, including childhood blood lead testing in counties with lead exposure concerns and health risk assessments in Kanawha County and at a hazardous waste-plagued site in Fayette County, per the sources.
“[These are] services that we expect in the year 2025 in the United States, and the state has been lagging,†former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator Adam Ortiz, one of those sources, said of West Virginia in a phone interview. “We were beginning to catch up, and now that boulder is rolling down to the bottom of the hill.â€
The moves come amid sweeping cuts across federal agencies in what the Trump administration plans to be a mass federal workforce reduction.
EPA spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.
The Trump administration has placed staff on leave in the EPA’s regional Environmental Justice, Community Health, Environmental Review Division — which focuses on prioritizing support to underserved communities through partnerships and funding assistance — and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry regional office, which provides technical expertise to help determine public health effects of environmental exposures, per sources familiar with those offices’ programs.
Some staff were called back to work last week, but others were not, per those sources, deepening disruptions in federal support for public health support especially critical in West Virginia given the state’s chronically poor health outcomes.
The EPA terminated 388 employees on Feb. 14 after a “thorough review of agency functions in accordance with President [Donald] Trump’s executive orders,†the EPA press office said in an email last month.
Childhood blood lead test progress threatened
The Trump administration placed EPA staff on leave last month working in support of the West Virginia Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Project, a state Department of Health-led program aimed at increasing the number of children under age 6 receiving a blood lead level test, enhancing data surveillance to identify high-risk areas and providing public education to prevent childhood lead poisoning.
The West Virginia Department of Health’s Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program — which is federally funded — in December announced a partnership with the department’s Office of Maternal, Child, and Family Health was boosting lead-testing efforts in Harrison, Marion, Monongalia and Ohio counties. WIC clinics in the latter three counties joined Harrison County in offering lead testing in August.
The state WIC program in December reported that those four counties collectively conducted more than 353 lead tests in three months.
That progress followed years of heightened lead exposure concerns in those counties. In 2021, the then-state Department of Health and Human Resources identified elevated levels of lead in tap water from households getting public water from the Clarksburg Water Board in Harrison County.
The EPA has supported the state’s childhood blood lead testing program by providing health supplies like gloves, bandages and testing equipment analyzers, in addition to grants for local health departments, per sources familiar with the program.
Officials were exploring extending funding support for the program when EPA staff were placed on leave, per sources.
Exposure to lead can damage the brain and nervous system. Children who survive severe lead poisoning may be left with permanent behavioral disorders and intellectual disabilities.
“The poisoning isn’t just a kid gets sick,†Ortiz said.
EPA staff also were working with state health officials toward mapping areas of elevated lead exposure to identify where to prioritize lead service line replacements, sources said.
West Virginia Department of Health spokeswoman Annie Moore declined to comment.
‘That momentum is now stopped’
Funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, a landmark 2022 environmental and climate spending law passed with no Republican support and targeted for repeal by the new Republican-controlled Congress and Trump administration, paid for blood lead testing kits, per sources.
West Virginia ranks worst among all 50 states in the U.S. News & World Report’s nationwide public health rankings and 49th in an annual ranking of states by health outcomes by the United Health Foundation, a health care improvement group.
“What we’ve been able to do in the last administration is to get that right on the track and make sure that those basic protections are taking place in the places that are most impacted. The state is still way behind,†said Ortiz, who Biden appointed administrator for EPA Region 3 spanning West Virginia and four other Mid-Atlantic states in 2021 and served through the end of the Biden administration. “That momentum is now stopped.â€
From 2015 through 2019, 447 children statewide under age 6 showed elevated blood lead levels above 5 micrograms per deciliter of blood, according to state lead prevention surveillance system data.
Yearly blood lead tests are advised for children up to age 6 who live, play or spend time in housing built before 1978 with chipped or peeling paint or recent remodeling, per state Department of Health guidance.
West Virginia children are at high risk for lead poisoning due to more than half of the housing was built before 1980, the Department of Health has said.
Out of 55 West Virginia counties, 39 had at least half their housing units built before 1979, according to U.S. Census Bureau data published by the Department of Health. Over 70% of housing units were built before 1979 in eight of those counties: Brooke, Hancock, Marion, Marshall, McDowell, Ohio, Tyler and Wetzel.
A child with lead poisoning may not show visible signs or symptoms, adding to the importance of testing. The cost of blood lead testing for children enrolled in Medicaid is covered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency remedial project manager Aaron Mroz details the agency’s proposal to remediate contaminated soil at the New Beginning Apostolic Church in Minden, Fayette County, on March 26, 2023.
CHRIS DORST | Gazette-Mail file photo
The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) has been conducting an independent assessment of health risks at an EPA Superfund site in Minden, Fayette County.
The EPA’s Superfund program consists of sites of national priority among known or threatened releases of hazardous substances throughout the country.
ATSDR staff providing technical expertise for the Shaffer Equipment Superfund site in Minden had work interrupted by being placed on leave in recent weeks, per sources familiar with the program.
The Shaffer Equipment Co. built electrical substations for the coal mining industry from approximately 1970 to 1983, according to the EPA. The EPA said the company’s mismanagement of electrical transformers resulted in oils containing polychlorinated biphenyls, known as PCBs, being released into the environment. PCBs have been known to cause cancer and have been linked to low birth weight and immune system effects.
An August 2022 human health risk assessment for the former Shaffer property conducted by Nobis Group, a New Hampshire-based engineering and environmental consulting firm, is cause for cancer-related concern.
A 2023 EPA proposal to remove soil contaminated by PCBs from the site noted the assessment found cancer risk double the regulatory threshold for potential future resident exposure to chemicals of concern in total soil (ingestion, skin contact and inhalation). The assessment found a noncarcinogenic hazard double the regulatory threshold for potential future child resident exposure to chemicals of concern in surface soil (ingestion and skin contact).
Contaminants of potential concern, partly defined by the EPA as chemicals with detections that exceed selection criteria, identified in the human health risk assessment for the former Shaffer property include:
PCBs
Dioxins, a highly toxic carcinogen that can cause developmental and reproductive issues
Benzo(a)pyrene, a carcinogen that can cause skin rashes, a burning feeling, warts and bronchitis
Arsenic, a carcinogen naturally present at high levels in groundwater
But PCBs were the only group the EPA identified as warranting a response action.
Minden’s cancer death rate per 100,000 people from 1979 to 2016 more than doubled that of the rest of Fayette County, according to a 2017 finding by the state Department of Health and Human Resources’ Health Statistics Center. The Minden cancer death rate more than quadrupled the rest of Fayette County’s rate from 1990 through 1999.
EPA staff also had been placed on leave amid work on health risks from ethylene oxide in Kanawha County.
Ethylene oxide is a colorless gas usually odorless at community air levels emitted by chemical manufacturers and medical device-sterilizing facilities throughout the Kanawha Valley.
Ethylene oxide is used to make antifreeze, detergents and plastics, and to sterilize medical and dental equipment. Long-term exposure has been associated with increases in female breast and white blood cell cancers, including leukemia, Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Short-term exposure to high concentrations of ethylene oxide can cause nausea, fatigue, respiratory irritation and vomiting.
The toxic gas has been a quietly pervasive presence in Kanawha County for generations.
The Union Carbide plants along W.Va. 25 in Institute and at 437 MacCorkle Ave. SW in South ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä have emitted over 868,000 pounds of ethylene oxide since 1987. Production and use of ethylene oxide in chemical manufacturing at Union Carbide plants in the Kanawha Valley predated World War II.
But it wasn’t until 2016 that the Environmental Protection Agency estimated ethylene oxide to be 30-times more carcinogenic for adults than previously projected, sending Kanawha County’s cancer risk soaring.
A 2018 EPA air toxics assessment found that six of the 90 census tracts with the highest cancer risk from ethylene oxide were in Kanawha County. The total cancer risk in Kanawha was 366 in 1 million, 10th-highest in the country.
Pollutant concentrations used in federal air toxics assessment risk calculations are based on computer model simulations, not actual measurements.
Words of warning
The EPA recently removed webpages about its online tool that combined demographic and environmental information the agency and the public used to identify areas experiencing disproportionate exposure to public health threats. The EPA’s EJSCREEN tool is used by the EPA in environmental funding and technical assistance decisions.
Ortiz noted that “a lot of West Virginia lights up†under EJSCREEN, an unofficial version of which can still be found at pedp-ejscreen.azurewebsites.net. He sees in West Virginia a state especially vulnerable to falling behind in public health protections as a result of the Trump administration’s staff work disruptions.
“I think residents and parents assume that their kids are being looked out for and protected on health matters beyond their understanding or their ability to detect,†Ortiz said. “Unfortunately, in the state, that work is not being done to the extent that it should be.â€
