A big polluter lobbyist served secretly on Trump’s EPA transition team

Under normal circumstances, transparency is the name of the game for presidential transition teams—in part to alert the public to any big money groups attempting to influence the agencies via the team’s members. The Trump administration, however, is not normal. It omitted the names of individuals working with the transition team to create an action plan for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. One of those individuals is longtime climate denier and EPA opponent Steve Milloy, a former tobacco and coal lobbyist. Milloy ran two organizations out of his home that received $90,000 from Exxon and other big oil companies, while working to discredit climate science. In fact, Milloy denies all sorts of science—including the health effects of air pollution and smoking (seriously). Milloy, who outed himself in his Twitter bio, has been a paid advocate of Phillip Morris cigarette company and is widely known for his appearances on Fox News in which he has called the link between secondhand tobacco smoke and cancer “a joke.” Milloy also willfully ignores the fact that more than five million people worldwide die each year from air pollution, saying “EPA, you’re wrong, air pollution doesn’t kill anybody.” The Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization (WHO), the National Institutes of Health, the American Lung Association, and the United Nations disagree and have linked air pollution to increased risk of asthma attacks, heart disease, and strokes. Milloy’s fringe views and blatant disregard for human health makes his work to undermine the EPA and its protections dangerous for the American people.