EPA to disband two panels of experts

WASHINGTON: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) moved this week to disband two outside panels of experts charged with advising the agency on limiting harmful emissions of soot and smogforming pollutants.

The agency informed scientists advising the EPA on the health impacts of soot that their “service on the panel has concluded,” according to an email shared with The Washington Post. Experts being considered to sit on a separate board evaluating ground-level ozone also received an email from the EPA saying it will no longer form the panel, which had yet to meet.

The EPA had asked for nominations in July.

The decision to dissolve the panels is part of a broader effort by the EPA’S leadership to change the way the agency conducts and assesses science. Those efforts include trying to limit what counts as health beneits when crafting air rules and incorporate into rulemaking only studies that make their underlying data public.

In the past, each panel had roughly two dozen researchers who reviewed the latest air pollution science and made recommendations on how to set new air standards for a speciic pollutant the agency is legally obligated to regulate.

These experts, who came from a variety of ields, often encouraged the EPA to impose tougher limits on the six pollutants for which it sets nationwide standards.

Now, under acting administrator Andrew Wheeler, the EPA has instead decided to let a seven-member group called the Clean Air Scientiic Advisory Committee (CASAC) alone perform those assessments and make recommendations to the agency’s political leaders.