November 9, 2018 9:00 AM EDT
This week, the EPA announced that its Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) alone would be reviewing upcoming ozone and particulate matter reviews. On October 10, the EPA nixed its ozone and particulate matter review panels—breaking with EPA’s use of expert science advisers for ambient air quality decisions since the 1970s and consistent with this administration’s trend of abandoning science advice. Read more >
October 11, 2018 12:33 PM EDT
In the latest of several moves targeting EPA air pollution protections, the Trump administration appears to have cut scientists out of a process for reviewing particulate pollution standards. The move breaks with a longstanding process for how the agency gets independent scientific review into its decisionmaking on air pollution protections. Without such expertise involved, EPA won’t have the best available scientific input to keep people safe from air pollution, as the law requires.
January 23, 2018 3:38 PM EDT
The Union of Concerned Scientists and Protect Democracy – a legal non-profit dedicated to preventing our democracy from declining into a more authoritarian form of government – have teamed up to challenge EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s directive that would ban anyone from serving on EPA advisory boards if they receive EPA grant funding. Under the guise of improving advisory board balance, Pruitt is using this directive to populate advisory boards with industry-funded scientists and state government officials who have made a career fighting federal regulations. The EPA Science Advisory Board, for example, now includes fourteen new members who consult or work for the fossil fuel or chemical industries, which gave Pruitt nearly $320,000 for his campaigns in Oklahoma as a state senator and attorney general. Read more >
October 31, 2017 5:26 PM EDT
This afternoon, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that nobody who receives an EPA grant should be allowed to provide scientific advice to the agency. Yep—those scientists, the ones that the EPA thinks do the most promising research related to public health and the environment? Their advice isn’t welcome anymore. We’ve written a lot about how this represents a major step in the political takeover of science advice at EPA. Read more >
October 31, 2017 1:04 PM EDT
Before September, the EPA’s Science Advisory Board was composed of 47 scientists volunteering their time as public servants to help advise the agency on issues ranging from the safety of selected chemicals to the types of models used by the agency to sufficiently study emissions. Read more >
