EPA ORD Eliminated: OASES, IRIS, and Congressional Pushback

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development was eliminated between May 2025 and February 2026, when the second Trump administration reassigned or laid off most of its roughly 1,500 scientists and engineers and replaced it with a smaller unit called the Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions (OASES). EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the restructuring on May 2, 2025, formally launched OASES in September, and notified Congress of ORD’s elimination on February 13, 2026.¹

What ORD Did Before It Was Shut Down

ORD had existed since 1970, established under the same reorganization plan that created the EPA itself.² It was the agency’s science arm, producing the studies and toxicity values behind rules on air pollution, drinking water, chemicals, and hazardous waste.

Immediately before the restructuring, ORD operated four specialized centers covering computational toxicology, environmental measurement and modeling, emergency response and Superfund cleanups, and public health assessment.³⁴ Its budget ran through the EPA’s Science and Technology account, which stood at $756.1 million for FY2025.⁵

Among its most consequential outputs was the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), which generated the chemical toxicity values used by EPA and state regulators to set pollution limits.⁶ ORD scientists also built the CompTox Chemicals Dashboard and the ECOTOX Knowledgebase, and their research underpinned the 2024 finalization of the first national drinking water standard for PFAS, which set maximum contaminant levels of 4.0 parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS.⁷ Former officials also pointed to ORD’s rapid-response role during the September 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the Flint water crisis, and the 2023 East Palestine train derailment.⁸

How the Shutdown Unfolded

Plans to eliminate ORD leaked in March 2025 but were initially held up by lawsuits against the administration’s broader restructuring.⁴ On May 2, 2025, Zeldin announced that ORD staff would be integrated into existing program offices and that OASES would be created. The roughly 1,500 ORD employees were given one week to apply for positions elsewhere in the agency, accept early retirement, or face potential job loss.⁹ Laboratory work at the Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment began winding down that same month after leadership told staff that supplies could no longer be acquired.¹⁰

On July 18, 2025, the EPA formally announced a reduction in force affecting ORD as part of a reorganization projected to save $748.8 million. The agency reported that 326 ORD employees had already accepted early retirement or deferred resignation offers.¹¹ On September 22, Zeldin issued a memo he called “day one of the new EPA,” formally replacing ORD with OASES and setting a transition period through the end of November 2025.¹² The EPA officially notified Congress of ORD’s elimination on February 13, 2026, with roughly 150 employees remaining at that point.¹

Individual facilities took direct hits. The Robert S. Kerr Environmental Research Center in Ada, Oklahoma, dropped from about 60 federal workers to roughly 27.¹³ New York Times reporting in April 2026 found that only 124 researchers remained agency-wide from ORD’s original complement, with individuals reassigned to unrelated roles. A lung health expert was moved to a finance office. An epidemiologist was assigned to hazardous waste permitting.¹⁴

What Replaced ORD

OASES was established in October 2025 and placed directly within the Office of the Administrator, a structural change critics said subjects research to political oversight in a way the semi-independent ORD was not.¹⁵ The office is led by Associate Administrator Teresa Booeshaghi, who also serves as Agency Science Advisor, and by Deputy Associate Administrator for Science Maureen R. Gwinn.¹⁶

OASES is organized into five divisions covering children’s health protection, science engagement, environmental methods, coastal science, and broader environmental solutions.¹⁶ The EPA said approximately 500 staff would be assigned to it, roughly a third of ORD’s former size.¹⁷

An internal “advance notification” policy governs research coming out of the new office. Under the guidelines, any research intended for an external audience must be flagged in advance to top officials, particularly if it involves significant health or environmental risks, is requested by state or tribal governments, touches on administrator or White House priorities, or is deemed likely to draw media attention.¹⁷ An internal memo directed that all future research “align with agency and administration priorities.”¹⁴ ORD’s multiyear Strategic Research Action Plan has been replaced by what E&E News described as a more “ad hoc” approach.¹⁸

What Happened to the IRIS Program

The most concrete downstream effect of ORD’s elimination has been the shutdown of IRIS, the EPA’s independent chemical hazard assessment program. In a memo dated April 27, 2026, Deputy Administrator David Fotouhi directed the agency to stop using IRIS to create new hazard and dose-response assessments. Those responsibilities are being transferred to the agency’s policy offices: the Office of Air and Radiation, the Office of Water, and the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.¹⁹

The EPA plans to add a disclaimer to the IRIS website stating that existing values “are not necessarily intended for use as regulatory levels” and has told program offices to review past uses of IRIS data.¹⁹ In Congress, H.R. 1415, the “No IRIS Act,” would prohibit the EPA from using IRIS assessments in regulations or environmental monitoring; as of mid-2026 the bill remained in a House subcommittee.²⁰

Why the Administration Says It Did This

Zeldin framed the shutdown as bringing science closer to regulatory work. In his internal memo, he described the reorganization as creating a “new, more efficient, more effective EPA” focused on meeting “statutory obligations.” He said the agency was “bolstering scientific capacity where it matters most — directly in our air, water, and land program offices — so that EPA scientists can better-support EPA’s core mission.”²¹

An EPA spokesperson called the shift an “unwavering commitment to gold-standard science” and a “science-centered transformation.”¹ A May 2025 executive order, “Restoring Gold Standard Science,” required federal agencies to make underlying data, models, and source code publicly available and to revert organizational changes made under a 2021 Biden-era scientific integrity memorandum.²² The agency said it was “not planning any more reduction-in-force actions or location closures” beyond the ORD termination, and projected a workforce reduction from 16,155 employees in January 2025 to a target of 12,448.¹¹

Pushback From Congress, Scientists, and Unions

Congressional response split along party lines. The House Appropriations Committee, in its FY2026 report, backed the administration’s proposal and adopted a research-program funding level of $299.0 million, a 40.3 percent cut from FY2025. The Senate Appropriations Committee proposed $491.4 million and explicitly directed the EPA to “immediately halt all actions related to the closure, reduction, reorganization, or other similar such changes to ORD and the EPA scientific workforce.”⁵ Congress ultimately enacted FY2026 Science and Technology appropriations at $744.2 million, close to the prior year’s level, though committee report language is not legally binding unless enacted.²³

House Science Committee Democrats condemned the February 2026 notification. Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren called it a “disastrous” attack on science and accused the administration of having “no intention to follow the law and support the use of the best available science.” Environment Subcommittee ranking member Gabe Amo described the move as a “reckless choice to shutter the office studying how to best protect Americans from pollutants, emissions, and climate change.”²⁴

Former ORD leaders and outside scientists have argued that folding researchers into program offices will weaken the independence and depth of EPA science. Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, a former principal deputy assistant administrator for science, told the New York Times that the administration “just blew up a very well-performing organization that was making a difference, not only in the country but in the world.”¹⁴ Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a group of former EPA and ORD scientists warned that removing the centralized research office would leave the agency “chasing crises instead of developing the tools to get ahead of them” and would jeopardize IRIS, the CompTox Dashboard, and the ECOTOX Knowledgebase.⁸

A coalition of more than 30 scientific organizations, led by the American Chemical Society, wrote to congressional appropriators in April 2025 requesting $876 million for the EPA Science and Technology account.²⁵ The Union of Concerned Scientists tallied more than 400 “firings, funding cuts and other attacks on science” during the first six months of the administration.²⁶

The EPA terminated its collective bargaining agreements with all federal employee unions on August 8, 2025, citing a March 2025 executive order and a Ninth Circuit ruling permitting the action. Justin Chen, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, which represented over 8,000 EPA employees, called the decision “unlawful and authoritarian.”²⁷ Chen later described peer-reviewed science at the agency as “either completely grounded to a halt or is extremely delayed.”¹⁷

A union-led lawsuit produced a preliminary injunction against the broader restructuring on May 22, 2025, from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, but the Supreme Court stayed that injunction on July 8, 2025, allowing the reorganization to proceed while lower courts continued to evaluate its lawfulness.²⁸

What’s Still Running

Several of ORD’s major scientific tools remain online despite the office’s elimination. The CompTox Chemicals Dashboard was last updated on October 24, 2025 and is still accessible.²⁹ The ECOTOX Knowledgebase, with over one million test records, continues to receive quarterly updates; its most recent page update is dated March 25, 2026.³⁰ Whether these tools will keep receiving the same investment and expert maintenance under the decentralized structure is unresolved. The Congressional Research Service has flagged the balance between centralized and decentralized research management as a key ongoing oversight question.⁵

1
Chemical and Engineering News. EPA Closes Independent Research Office
2
Every CRS Report. EPA Office of Research and Development: Background and FY2026 Funding
3
U.S. EPA. About the Office of Research and Development
4
Science. Blow to Environment: EPA Begins to Dismantle Its Research Office
5
Congressional Research Service. EPA Office of Research and Development: Background and FY2026 Funding
6
Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program. EPA Eliminated Office of Research and Development
7
U.S. EPA. Biden-Harris Administration Finalizes First-Ever National Drinking Water Standard for PFAS
8
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Arguments Against Dismantling EPA ORD
9
Chemical and Engineering News. EPA Reorganization Hits Research Arm
10
E&E News. EPA Research Center Shutters Lab Activities
11
U.S. EPA. EPA Announces Reduction in Force, Reorganization Efforts
12
Politico. EPA Reorganization Sparks Fears of Political Interference
13
Oklahoma Voice. Federal Cuts Target EPA Research Center in Ada
14
New York Times. EPA Science Trump Cuts
15
Columbia Law School Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. EPA Eliminates Office of Research and Development
16
U.S. EPA. About the Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions
17
Federal News Network. EPA Producing Less Scientific Research After 20% Staffing Cut
18
E&E News. EPA Sets No-Surprises Science Policy, Reassigns Researchers
19
Chemical and Engineering News. EPA Move Risks Politicizing Chemical Assessments
20
Chemical and Engineering News. EPA Research, ORD, OASES, IRIS, and Chemical Toxicity
21
E&E News. EPA Reorganization Sparks Fears of Political Interference
22
The White House. Restoring Gold Standard Science
23
Every CRS Report. EPA FY2026 Appropriations
24
U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Democrats. Ranking Members Lofgren and Amo Slam EPA for Elimination of Office of Research and Development
25
American Chemical Society. ACS EPA S&T Funding Letter
26
Inside Climate News. Trump Administration Dismantles EPA Office of Research and Development
27
Federal News Network. EPA Terminates Federal Union Contracts, Effective Immediately
28
Supreme Court of the United States. Trump v. AFGE, No. 24A1174
29
U.S. EPA. CompTox Chemicals Dashboard
30
U.S. EPA. Ecotoxicology (ECOTOX) Knowledgebase Resource Hub