Reply #2: Further in the article is says they excluded the EPA to be part of the decision making in the gulf

[superconnected]

"Ruch said EPA experts were being excluded from decision-making on the spill. "Other than a few people in the united command, there is no involvement from the rest of the agency," he said. EPA scientists would not go public for fear of retaliation, he added."

"We are undertaking a huge uncontrolled experiment with the entire Gulf," he said. "They have fallen down on the job very substantially because they allowed BP to use dispersants. Even when they told BP not to use dispersants they allowed BP to ignore their advice."

"Independent scientists also criticized the EPA for claiming that the combination of oil and dispersants posed no greater danger to marine life on its own."

"It was only one test and it was very crude. We knew going into this and the EPA knew that this mixture is highly toxic to many, many species. There is a whole weight of literature," said Susan Shaw, the director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute, who has been organizing on the issue. "It is not the whole science. It's the convenient science."