The Trump administration is systematically removing vast quantities of federal datasets that track some of America's most critical health and safety concerns, from infant mortality to chemical plant hazards. The deletions have left researchers, public health officials, and advocacy groups scrambling to understand the full scope of what is being erased and the consequences for ordinary Americans.
Federal agencies have spent decades collecting this information using taxpayer dollars. The data ranges from chemical facility locations to pregnancy outcomes, hunger statistics, youth mental health trends, and climate disaster costs. These datasets form the backbone of how government agencies design programs, allocate funding, and respond to emerging crises.
"Federal data touch every corner of American lives," said Denice Ross, former US chief data scientist under the Biden administration and now director of federal data policy at the Federation of American Scientists. "When data disappears, we might not know or be able to connect the dots for why our lives are getting harder, but our lives will get harder."
Chemical Hazards Now Harder to Identify
One in three Americans live near hazardous chemical facilities, yet the Trump administration removed a key EPA tool that allowed residents to check their own neighborhoods. The Risk Management Program database, which let people search by zip code to see nearby chemical plants storing cancer-causing substances, went offline last April. Now the only way to access this information is to visit one of several dozen EPA reading rooms in person to examine paper records.
The change has drawn particular concern from environmental justice advocates. "Another layer of protection for environmental justice communities was taken down when they took away the RMP tool," said Nalleli Hidalgo, community outreach liaison for Tejas, an environmental justice group based in Houston, where over 600 petrochemical facilities line the Ship Channel. In 2021, a chemical leak there killed two people and injured 30.
The US currently experiences roughly one chemical accident every two days. Experts worry the removal of the tool comes as the administration also proposes weakening accident-prevention regulations at chemical plants.
Maternal Health Tracking Halted
The Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, or Prams, has been the nation's most comprehensive survey on women's experiences before, during, and after pregnancy since its inception. State health departments relied on it to design intervention programs targeting mothers and infants at highest risk.
Last spring, the Trump administration dismissed most employees at the CDC's reproductive health division, including the entire team managing Prams. With no federal staff to process data requests, the system is now inaccessible to the public. States trying to continue collecting Prams data face enormous obstacles without federal support.
This comes at a critical moment. The US has a higher infant mortality rate than almost all other wealthy nations. Mississippi, which has the highest infant mortality rate in the country, terminated its Prams data collection entirely, making it harder for the state to secure federal funding for prenatal care and home visit programs.
"It's mind-boggling and really heartbreaking that we are literally having babies dying, and we're not able to look and say what is it about those babies," said Rita Hamad, an associate professor of social epidemiology at Harvard's School of Public Health.
Hunger Survey Eliminated as Food Aid Faces Cuts
The Food Security Supplement to the Current Population Survey tracked hunger in America for nearly 30 years, asking households whether children went without food due to lack of money. The final survey, published in December, found nearly one in seven US households is food insecure.
The USDA has now terminated this national hunger survey, calling it "redundant" and saying it does "nothing more than fear monger." The timing is particularly contentious: the Trump administration is making what will likely be the largest cuts in history to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which serves 42 million Americans.
Without the survey, experts say understanding the impact of Snap cuts on hunger will be nearly impossible. "If you don't measure it, it's not there," said Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University. Food banks and anti-hunger organizations now lack the data needed to advocate for funding or target resources to communities most at risk.
Trans Youth Mental Health Data Scrubbed
The Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a long-running anonymous survey of high school students on mental health and substance use, has had all questions about gender identity removed. The survey previously showed that trans youth report making plans to attempt suicide at more than double the rate of non-trans youth.
School districts used this data to secure grant funding for youth mental health programs. Now those insights are gone. At least 360 federal data collections have had gender identity or sexual orientation questions removed, according to researchers at UCLA's Williams Institute, including databases on unhoused youth and sexual victimization.
"This process is unprecedented and extreme and it is testing the limits of what the executive branch can do with administrative procedures," said Elana Redfield, federal policy director at the Williams Institute.
Climate Disaster Costs Go Unrecorded
Since 1980, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database tracked the mounting costs of large-scale climate events in the United States. That cost has climbed to nearly $200 billion per year. Insurance companies and policymakers relied on the detailed, consistent data for pricing models and risk assessment.
The administration has stopped maintaining the database, leaving researchers and the insurance industry without a reliable national record of climate disaster trends and costs.
Author James Rodriguez: "This isn't just about missing numbers on a spreadsheet, it's about making it impossible for anyone to tell the real story of what's happening to Americans."
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