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Nearly 90 percent of EPA furloughed as government shuts down

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Wednesday, October 1, 2025

About 89 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) workforce is being furloughed as the government shuts down, according to contingency plans that were posted online this week. According to the plan, just 1,734 of the EPA’s 15,166 employees are slated to continue working during the shutdown, which began Wednesday. The plan also gives a window into the degree of staffing losses at the EPA in recent months, as the agency had 17,080 employees at the start of the year. During the furlough period, the agency will no longer carry out most civil inspections related to potential violations of environmental law. It will also no longer conduct most of its research or issue new permits or grants. Some hazardous waste cleanup will be halted if there is no imminent threat to human health and property. The EPA will still continue emergency and disaster assistance, hazardous waste cleanup where there is an “imminent threat to human life" and criminal investigations. The Trump administration’s plan is similar to the most recent contingency plan issued by the Biden administration in September 2024. Under that plan, 1,734 employees out of 16,851 would have been expected to continue working. Under the Biden-era plan, civil inspections, issuance of new grants and permits, research and some hazardous waste cleanup also would have ceased. Marc Boom, a former EPA senior policy adviser during the Biden administration, said during a press call ahead of the shutdown that if one occurs “nobody will be holding polluters accountable for what they dump into the air we breathe and the water that we drink.” But Boom also said the Trump administration is making the problem worse. “Over the past 9 months, the White House and EPA leadership have already been shutting down the agency from within,” he said. “They've clawed back hundreds of community grants, rolled back protections against forever chemicals and pesticides, relaxed enforcement for polluters … and they've shuttered key programs like the Environmental Justice Office, the Office of Atmospheric Protection and now, they're closing down EPA's scientific backbone, the Office of Research and Development.” The EPA has said that its actions are in support of a deregulatory agenda that seeks to boost the U.S. economy.

About 89 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) workforce is being furloughed as the government shuts down, according to contingency plans that were posted online this week.

According to the plan, just 1,734 of the EPA’s 15,166 employees are slated to continue working during the shutdown, which began Wednesday.

The plan also gives a window into the degree of staffing losses at the EPA in recent months, as the agency had 17,080 employees at the start of the year.

During the furlough period, the agency will no longer carry out most civil inspections related to potential violations of environmental law.

It will also no longer conduct most of its research or issue new permits or grants. Some hazardous waste cleanup will be halted if there is no imminent threat to human health and property.

The EPA will still continue emergency and disaster assistance, hazardous waste cleanup where there is an “imminent threat to human life" and criminal investigations.

The Trump administration’s plan is similar to the most recent contingency plan issued by the Biden administration in September 2024. Under that plan, 1,734 employees out of 16,851 would have been expected to continue working.

Under the Biden-era plan, civil inspections, issuance of new grants and permits, research and some hazardous waste cleanup also would have ceased.

Marc Boom, a former EPA senior policy adviser during the Biden administration, said during a press call ahead of the shutdown that if one occurs “nobody will be holding polluters accountable for what they dump into the air we breathe and the water that we drink.”

But Boom also said the Trump administration is making the problem worse.

“Over the past 9 months, the White House and EPA leadership have already been shutting down the agency from within,” he said. “They've clawed back hundreds of community grants, rolled back protections against forever chemicals and pesticides, relaxed enforcement for polluters … and they've shuttered key programs like the Environmental Justice Office, the Office of Atmospheric Protection and now, they're closing down EPA's scientific backbone, the Office of Research and Development.”

The EPA has said that its actions are in support of a deregulatory agenda that seeks to boost the U.S. economy.

Read the full story here.

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What is fracking and why is it controversial?

The government says it plans to pass legislation to permanently ban fracking for shale gas in England.

What is fracking and why is it controversial?Esme StallardClimate and science reporter, BBC NewsGetty ImagesThe government says it plans to pass legislation to permanently ban fracking for shale gas in England.A moratorium on the practice was put in place by the last government but the debate has been reopened in recent weeks after the political party Reform committed to backing fracking if it came to power.The Scottish and Welsh governments continue to remain opposed to the practise. What is fracking?Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a technique for recovering gas and oil from shale rock. It involves drilling into the earth and directing a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals at a rock layer, to release the gas inside.Wells can be drilled vertically or horizontally in order to release the gas.Why is fracking controversial?The injection of fluid at high pressure into the rock can cause earth tremors - small movements in the earth's surface.In 2019, more than 120 tremors were recorded during drilling at a Cuadrilla site in Blackpool.Seismic events of this scale are considered minor and are rarely felt by people, but they are a concern to local residents.Shale gas is also a fossil fuel, and campaigners say allowing fracking could distract energy firms and governments from investing in renewable and green sources of energy.Fracking also uses huge amounts of water, which must be transported to the site at significant environmental cost.What has the government said about fracking?Government policy on fracking has see-sawed over recent years. Former Prime Minister Liz Truss looked to reintroduce the practice, despite local opposition - but this was subsequently reversed by Rishi Sunak who introduced a moratorium.In October 2025, at the Labour Party Conference, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said the government would move to legislate against fracking, banning the practice permanently. This follows a commitment made by the Labour Party in its manifesto and further commitments by PM Sir Keir Starmer in September that the practice would be "banned for good".But Reform has said it would seek to allow the practice should it be elected, as part of its "war" on renewable developers.In his speech at the conference, Miliband said the practice was: "Dangerous and deeply harmful to our natural environment."The good news is that communities have fought back and won this fight before and will do so again," he added.ReutersAn anti-fracking protester writes messages on a wall in LancashireWhere has fracking taken place in the UK?Fracking for shale gas in the UK has only previously taken place on a small scale, due to the many public and legal challenges.However, exploration has identified large swathes of shale gas across the UK, particularly in northern England.More than 100 exploration and drilling licences were awarded to firms including Third Energy, IGas, Aurora Energy Resources and Ineos.Cuadrilla was the only company given consent to begin fracking.It drilled two wells at a site in Lancashire but faced repeated protests from local people and campaigners.In 2022, the Oil and Gas Authority told Cuadrilla to permanently concrete and abandon the wells.Could fracking lower energy bills?The UK can only meet 48% of its gas demand from domestic supplies (this would be 54% if it did not export any gas).Some MPs have claimed that restarting drilling at Cuadrilla's two existing wells could be done quickly, and would provide significant supplies.Cuadrilla claimed that "just 10%" of the gas from shale deposits in Lancashire and surrounding areas "could supply 50 years' worth of current UK gas demand".Energy experts dispute this, pointing out that the UK's shale gas reserves are held in complex layers of rock.Mike Bradshaw, professor of global energy at Warwick University, says estimates of how much shale gas the UK has are not the same as the amount of gas that could be produced commercially.But Prof Geoffrey Maitland, professor of Energy Engineering at Imperial College London, has said fracking could provide interim relief."Although shale gas will not provide an immediate solution to the energy security of the country, it could be used in the medium term to replace diminishing North Sea gas production and some gas imports," he said.Which other countries use fracking?It is thought that fracking has given energy security to the US and Canada for the next 100 years, and has presented an opportunity to generate electricity at half the CO2 emissions of coal.But the complex geology of the UK and the higher density of people makes extraction more challenging, according to experts.Fracking remains banned in numerous EU countries, including Germany, France and Spain, as well as Australia.Authorities in countries including Brazil and Argentina are split, with some banning the practice, and others allowing operations.

Government

Chemicals

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Government shutdown means 90% of EPA staff won't be working

The EPA will pause research work, grants, permits and inspections while the government is shut down. Nearly all staff will stop working. Some may not be rehired.

The shutdown of the U.S. government could have ripple effects for human health and the environment as an already weakened Environmental Protection Agency will see nearly all of its staff furloughed and many of its operations paused. The first shutdown in six years went into effect late Tuesday and requires federal agencies to stop all nonessential work. Most EPA work is considered only partially essential under federal rules. Nearly 90% of EPA staff will be furloughed; only 1,732 of 15,166 employees will report to work, according to the agency’s most recent shutdown contingency plan, issued in September.Immediate environmental hazard work is likely to continue, but longer-term efforts such as research, permitting, writing new rules and pollution enforcement will largely freeze. Experts note that the shutdown comes as the agency already has seen significant cuts as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to restructure the federal government and save taxpayers money. About 4,000 EPA employees, or a quarter of its workforce, have been fired or have taken a buyout this year. “The shutdown has already been happening for months,” said Marc Boom, a former senior policy advisor with the EPA who now serves as senior advisor with the Environmental Protection Network, a bipartisan group of more than 700 former EPA employees based in Washington, D.C.Many activities will halt, including research and the publication of research results, and the issuance of new grants, contracts and permits, according to the agency. Critically, civil enforcement inspections — on-site visits to facilities to check their compliance with environmental regulations — will also cease. Whether cleanup work at hazardous waste areas known as Superfund sites will continue will be decided case by case. At sites where stopping would pose an imminent threat to human life, work will continue, but at others, it will pause, according to the agency.Preparing for, preventing and responding to environmental disasters such as oil spills and chemical releases, known as emergency response readiness operations, will not stop. Freezers, animals, plants and other assets in research labs will continue to be maintained. In a statement to The Times before the shutdown, EPA officials blamed Democrats for the quagmire and said the agency will continue to strive to meet its mission. The impasse came as Democrats demanded healthcare provisions in the budget while Republicans pushed for a short-term budget extension without policy changes.“Congressional Democrats are not only unwilling to vote for a clean funding bill, but their goal is to inflict as much pain on the American people as possible,” the EPA said. “Americans made their voices heard last November; Democrats must respect the will of the people. ... EPA will work to fulfill our statutory obligations, emergency response efforts, and Administration priorities.” But the agency has already lost considerable expertise through its staff cuts and restructuring, which have lessened its ability to respond to both emerging and existing threats, according to Linda Birnbaum, former director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program. “The additional loss of people will essentially take us to a point where EPA will be almost unable to complete its mission,” Birnbaum said in a statement. Since Trump took office in January, the EPA has canceled hundreds of environmental grants; rolled back protections against pesticides, forever chemicals and fossil fuel emissions; issued exemptions for large polluters, eliminated its office of Research and Development and announced plans to repeal the endangerment finding, which affirms that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health and the environment, among other efforts.The furloughs at EPA could become permanent. A recent memo from the federal Office of Management and Budget directed federal agencies to prepare for mass layoffs in the event of a government shutdown, implying people may not be rehired.“If you’ve already cut the staff by 4,000 and more is to come from the shutdown and from further [reductions in force], then there will be even less protections,” said Vicki Arroyo, a former EPA associate administrator for policy who served under both the Biden and Reagan administrations. Arroyo recalled the challenges of maintaining the agency’s core functions during the last federal shutdown six years ago, when she was the only one of about 160 people on her team who remained at work. Duties such as economic analyses, permitting for energy projects such as offshore wind and National Environmental Policy Act reviews were among those to suffer, she said, and could be hit even harder this time around.“When EPA funding and staffing are undercut, it doesn’t just hurt these public servants, it hurts us all,” Arroyo said. “Without a functioning EPA, we can’t trust that the water out of our tap is safe ... and without EPA staff on duty, we can’t rely on EPA to monitor and protect air quality so that children without asthma and others with respiratory conditions are safe from pollution.” She and other experts also feared that less support and oversight from the federal government would result in diminished quality control at the local level, as many federal laws are delegated to states. In California, much will depend on the length of the shutdown, according to H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the California Department of Finance. A shutdown lasting only a few days would probably have minimal effect on the California EPA.Specifically, Palmer said many California environmental programs that were funded under the Biden administration should be able to continue even if there is a brief lapse in appropriations, such as brownfield project grants and the state’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund. However, a protracted shutdown could lead to delays in new project grants or permits being issued.“We’re going to continue to assess it depending on how long this thing goes on,” Palmer said. The EPA is not the only environmental agency that will face challenges. The U.S. Forest Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Park Service are also bracing for interruptions under the shutdown in addition to cuts this year.

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Animals

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How a government shutdown impacts the EPA's mission to protect America's health

The Environmental Protection Agency faces challenges during a government shutdown. The agency's mission to protect health and the environment is at risk without a federal budget.

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Health

Government Shutdown Threatens Further Destruction of Environment and Science Agencies, Advocates Warn

A government shutdown will likely lead to further dismantling of federal environmental science, enforcement and conservation agencies, advocates warned this week. Previous government shutdowns have seen federal employees furloughed until funding resumes. But this time, Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, has told federal agencies to prepare for widespread layoffs. “That […]

Although Congress has passed bipartisan funding bills that maintain science funding for specific agencies, the president and the director of the budget office have described plans for layoffs that could thwart those efforts.By Dylan Baddour, Marianne LavelleA government shutdown will likely lead to further dismantling of federal environmental science, enforcement and conservation agencies, advocates warned this week.

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Science

4 vaccines that are linked to a lower risk of dementia

Some vaccine-preventable diseases are linked to accelerated brain atrophy and increased dementia risk years down the line.

Vaccines don’t just protect us from infectious diseases or lessen their effects. Some are also associated with a reduced risk for dementia, research shows.“They’ll protect against these really potentially severe infections, especially in older adults, and preventing that alone is huge,” said Avram Bukhbinder, a resident physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston who has conducted research on vaccines and dementia risk.“There seems to also be some kind of added benefit and ultimately it just adds a more compelling reason” to get routine vaccines, he said.Studies have found that many vaccines may be associated with a reduced risk of dementia — here are four of the most common ones with the strongest links.The flu shotAn estimated 47 million to 82 million people in the United States — about 13 to 24 percent of all people — caught influenza, or the flu, during the 2024-2025 season with 27,000 to 130,000 Americans dying as a result, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Flu season generally runs from October to May in North America.)Influenza and pneumonia — a potential complication of flu — are associated with five neurodegenerative diseases, including dementia and Parkinson’s disease, according to a 2023 study analyzing biobank data from over 400,000 people.“I don’t know how many times in the adult world we hear, ‘My loved one got flu, was in the hospital for a week or two, and it just was never the same.’ Like quickly went downhill from there,” Bukhbinder said.Many studies have found that flu vaccination is associated with a lower risk of dementia years later.In a 2022 study, Bukhbinder and his colleagues at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston examined a large health database of over 1.8 million adults ages 65 and over. They found that those who received at least one flu vaccine were 40 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s — the most common form of dementia — during the next four years.Getting the flu vaccine was also associated with a 17 percent reduction in dementia risk in a 2024 study of over 70,000 participants.The CDC recommends all people over 6 months old get annual flu shots, typically in September or October.Fewer than half of Americans typically get their flu vaccine each season.The shingles vaccineThe shingles vaccine has the strongest evidence for reducing the risk of dementia with multiple large-scale studies in the past two years corroborating the results of older studies.In one 2025 study, researchers tracked more than 280,000 adults in Wales and found that the shingles vaccine was linked with reducing dementia risk by 20 percent over a seven-year period.“There may be potential additional benefits beyond the protection that the vaccine provides for a particular condition,” said Pascal Geldsetzer, an assistant professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the senior author of the study. “So, that’s only an additional reason to get vaccinated.”A subsequent study examining over 100,000 patients in Australia similarly found that getting vaccinated for shingles was associated with reduced dementia risk.If you are eligible, you should probably get a shingles vaccine regardless of its chances of reducing your dementia risk. The vaccine reduces the reactivation of the varicella-zoster virus, which causes chicken pox in childhood and remains dormant in nerve cells afterward. When reactivated in adulthood, the virus manifests as shingles, which is characterized by a burning, painful rash and can sometimes cause lifelong chronic pain conditions or serious complications in a subset of people who get it.The CDC recommends two doses of a shingles vaccine for adults 50 and older or those 19 and older with a weakened immune system; 36 percent of eligible Americans got vaccinated in 2022.The RSV vaccineRespiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, is a common respiratory virus that can cause mild, cold-like symptoms in most people, but may cause severe infections in children as well as adults ages 65 and older. (The virus is the leading cause of hospitalization among American infants and causes an estimated 10o to 300 deaths in children under 5, and 6,000 to 10,000 deaths in people 65 or older, every year in the U.S.)A recent study tracking over 430,000 people found that the RSV vaccine (as well as the shingles vaccine) was associated with a reduced risk of dementia over 18 months compared with those who received the flu vaccine.The CDC recommends all adults ages 75 and older, as well as adults older than 50 at higher risk of RSV, get the vaccine.The Tdap vaccineSeveral studies have reported that the vaccine against tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis (or whooping cough), or Tdap, is associated with a reduced risk of dementia.One 2021 study with over 200,000 patients reported that older adults who received both the shingles and Tdap vaccines had further reduced risk of dementia compared with those who only received one of the vaccines.The CDC recommends routine Tdap vaccination for all adolescents and a booster for adults every 10 years. In 2022, about 30 percent of adults ages 19-64 who could be assessed had received a Tdap vaccine.How vaccines may reduce dementia riskResearch has shown that severe infections, including flu, herpes and respiratory tract infections, are linked to accelerated brain atrophy and increased risk of dementia years down the line.“We think it’s the uncontrolled kind of systemic inflammation that’s probably contributing to that,” Bukhbinder said. “And it’s very likely that they had the underlying Alzheimer’s or other dementia pathology already, but the inflammation is what pushed them over the edge.”Geldsetzer said that the varicella-zoster virus, which causes shingles, has the most clear biological links because it hibernates in our nervous system and can more directly affect the brain. (Getting a chicken pox vaccine in childhood can prevent this virus from taking hold in the first place.)Though different vaccines are linked to reduced dementia risk, there are inherent limitations to how the research was conducted. The link is associational, not causal, because the people who get vaccines may be different from those who don’t.For example, it could be that “those who are on average more health-motivated, have better health behaviors, are the ones who decide to get vaccinated,” Geldsetzer said. Even though researchers try to account for these confounding variables, it is not possible to fully filter out differences in health behaviors associated with dementia risk.But recent studies hint at a stronger link between the shingles vaccine and dementia-risk reduction. This research takes advantage of “natural experiments” because of arbitrary dates that the governments of Wales and Australia set for shingles vaccine eligibility; those born immediately before and after the eligibility date are probably not different and can be more directly compared. And when they are, those who got the shingles vaccines had lower risk of dementia, said Geldsetzer, who was an author on the Wales and Australia studies and is raising money to fund a randomized controlled trial.There are two broad biological hypotheses for how vaccines are linked to reduced dementia risk. Vaccines could reduce the risk of getting sick and infection severity, which have been linked to increased dementia risk.“I feel confident that that’s part of the story, but it’s not the whole story,” Bukhbinder said.Another, not mutually exclusive possibility is that the vaccine itself may activate the immune system in a beneficial way. Vaccination “may be honing or refining the immune system’s response,” Bukhbinder said.There’s “good evidence that what happens outside of the brain … seems to actually affect the inside pretty robustly,” Bukhbinder said.How to keep up-to-date on vaccines and reduce dementia riskVaccinations, like all medical treatments, can have some risks and side effects, so it is important to speak with your doctor about your particular health needs.However, “I would say by and far the benefits of getting these vaccinations almost incomparably outweigh the risks,” Bukhbinder said.In addition, 45 percent of dementia cases could be delayed or prevented with lifestyle and environmental changes, according to the 2024 Lancet Commission report on dementia.Do you have a question about human behavior or neuroscience? Email BrainMatters@washpost.com and we may answer it in a future column.

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