from WNYC Studios.

I'm Brian Lerer.

This is my daily politics podcast.

It's Tuesday, April 22nd.

One of the things we're doing on the show during Trump's first 100 days is a health and climate Tuesday section of the show.

And since this particular Tuesday is Earth Day, we'll begin with a story right at the intersection

of climate and health. Did you see this in the New York Times last week? Headline,

how is climate change harming health? Studying that just got harder.

Here's an example of how back in January when Los Angeles was ravaged by wildfires, right?

Some of the firefighters who responded to the blaze, quote, had elevated levels of lead and mercury inside cells in their blood.

We know this thanks to early findings from the LA Fire Health Study,

a 10-year effort by researchers looking to understand the health effects of exposure to smoke

and other pollution from the recent California wildfires. That's in the article. But the LA Fire

Health Study and other research efforts focused on the effects of climate disasters on human health are set to lose funding from the National Institute of Health, the NIH.

That according to an NIH National Institutes of Health document obtained by the New York Times.

So joining me now is the author of that story, Maggie Astor, New York

Times reporter, covering the intersection between health and politics. Maggie, thanks for coming on.

Welcome to WNYC. Thanks for having me. What's this NIH document? Tell us more.

So this NIH document is essentially a script that was given to NIH employees who work with grant applicants,

which is to say academics from various institutions that are applying for NIH grants.

The script tells the NIH employees to inform

any applicants whose application includes anything related to climate change,

...