The EPA may ignore the unanimous advice of its Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and abandon 30 years of air quality control by removing lead, a powerful neurotoxin, from the list of pollutants it monitors under the Clean Air Act.

Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona charged the Bush administration with unprecedented levels of political interference in his work as the nation’s doctor, compromising his ability to deliver the best available public health science to Americans.

Despite warnings that some travel trailers and mobile homes provided to Katrina disaster victims contained harmful levels of formaldehyde, FEMA failed to adequately test occupied trailers.

Several agency websites providing information about climate science have disappeared or been allowed to stagnate in recent years.

In February 2006, the federal Bureau of Land Management suspended an Oregon State University grant after university researchers published a study in the journal Science concluding that logging in the wake of an Oregon fire retarded the forest’s recovery.

In July 2006, the Department of Education announced a $100m proposal to fund vouchers for poor children to attend private schools, while a keeping quiet a study released days earlier showing private schools were no more effective at educating children.

In April 2006, the US Fish and Wildlife Service finalized plans to reduce by nearly 90 percent the critical habitat set aside for the protection of a rare California frog.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission under President GW Bush, a federal panel charged with conducting elections research, misrepresented the findings of bipartisan experts on the highly politicized topic of voter fraud.

EPA moved swiftly to implement a plan to close large parts of its network of 27 libraries, potentially putting decades worth of valuable information beyond the reach of government scientists and independent researchers.

In March 2005, a World Health Organization (WHO) expert committee unanimously recommended adding two abortion pills to its Essential Medicines list. U.S. government tried to block the listing of the abortion pills.