What’s “essential” to Trump’s EPA? More mercury pollution.

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The Environmental Protection Agency’s work protecting clean air and water is grinding to a halt.

As the government shutdown enters its fourth week, thousands of EPA workers are receiving notice they’ll be sent home. Furlough notices are “widespread” across the EPA, E&E News reported on Monday, “including a large percentage of staffers in EPA’s air and water offices.”

The exact number of furloughed EPA employees is about 4,000, or about 27 percent of the agency’s workforce, Politico reported. The agency would not confirm or deny that number. (Asked for details about which EPA employees have been sent home, the EPA’s press secretary refused, telling Inside Climate News it was “a ridiculous question to ask.”)

More employees are likely to be sent home as the shutdown continues. The Trump administration’s latest shutdown contingency plan considers nearly 90 percent of the EPA’s workforce to be “non-essential” or “partially essential,” and therefore eligible for furlough. “Many activities will halt, including research and the publication of research results, and the issuance of new grants, contracts and permits,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Critically, civil enforcement inspections—on-site visits to facilities to check their compliance with environmental regulations—will also cease.”

Furloughs are also just the latest blow to the EPA’s workforce. Before the shutdown, 4,000 EPA employees had already been fired or had taken a buyout. The agency’s climate offices and its scientific research arm are also in the process of being disbanded. And the bleeding is expected to continue if and when the government reopens; The Trump administration has proposed a 55 percent cut to EPA funding in its 2026 budget request.

But there is at least one group of EPA employees who the Trump administration considers “essential,” and are still on the job: the people making it legal for coal plants to release more mercury into the environment.

The detail was first reported Friday by Lisa Friedman at the New York Times. Despite the widespread stoppage of climate, environmental and public health work during the shutdown, she reported, “the workers responsible for carrying out