"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Tuesday asserted that political appointees from the Trump administration interfered with a safety assessment for a chemical linked to health issues.

The agency said in a statement that it was removing from its website a toxicity assessment for a compound known as PFBS due to the alleged interference.

Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, a career agency scientist, told The Hill in an interview that the interference resulted in a range of values being given for PFBS’s toxicity, as opposed to just one value that was in an initial assessment from career scientists.

“We had a document that was, in our eyes final, it had gone through a pretty rigorous process of review,” said Orme-Zavaleta, who serves as acting assistant administrator for the Office of Research and Development. “All of that information had been incorporated into a document that we had been ready to go final with and then the document was modified.”"

Rachel Frazin reports for The Hill Februarry 9, 2021. [2]