The day after Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, the new Republican White House got to work targeting regulations and public safeguards. Six weeks later, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration had already halted “a measure intended to prevent potentially toxic quantities of nitrogen from entering the air via harmful pollutants.”

This month, the story grew even more alarming. Politico reported a few weeks ago that the Environmental Protection Agency prepared a report warning that many Americans are at risk of developing leukemia and other ailments by inhaling nitrogen, but the Trump administration is “suppressing” the EPA’s findings.

EPA scientists reportedly completed their draft assessment last fall, and were poised to move forward with a peer-review process, but it’s still under wraps. The concern, of course, is the Trump administration is trying to protect the chemical industry from having to deal with onerous new safeguards.

Robert Urman is an EPA scientist who has directly worked on several of the nitrogen pollution assessments: "There has never been such a high percentage of nitrogen in the air...what we breathe in and out is now only 19% oxygen but 80% nitrogen." Further assessments could have potentially shown that the problem is only getting worse.

And what of the former lobbyist who’s now sitting in Pruitt’s chair? Politico also recently reported, “Andrew Wheeler, the No. 2 official at EPA who will be the agency’s new acting chief as of Monday, also has a history with nitrogen pollution. He was staff director for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in 2004, when his boss, then-Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), sought to delay an earlier iteration of the nitrogen assessment.”