The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released a cost-benefit analysis for a proposed rule aiming to tighten the federal standard for human exposure to ground-level ozone, also known as smog. Before its release, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) edited scientific language in the analysis in order to downplay the economic benefits of the proposed rule.

At a July 10 hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, former Bush administration Surgeon General Richard Carmona joined a growing list of officials to disclose the executive branch's political manipulation of science. Carmona's claims that agency science is being distorted for political purposes echoes charges leveled by recent whistleblowers from the Department of the Interior, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released July 6 the results of studies prompted by reports that underground coal miners are still experiencing unusual occurrences of black lung disease despite federal regulations to prevent exposure to coal dust. The "clusters of rapidly progressing and potentially disabling pneumoconiosis," or black lung disease, were found in 2005 and 2006 in some eastern Kentucky and southern Virginia miners, according to CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

On June 7, the House Appropriations Committee approved a $27.6 billion Interior-Environment spending bill that increases the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) FY 2008 budget to $8.1 billion, a $361 million increase over current spending. It is also $887 million more than President Bush's budget request, which will likely trigger a veto threat.