EPA Reportedly Disbands Two Expert Panels on Air Pollution

The Environmental Protection Agency has scrapped two scientific panels in charge of advising the agency on how to limit air pollution from soot and smog-forming pollutants, The Washington Post reports. Scientists tasked with offering guidance on harmful emissions from soot were reportedly informed in an email from the agency that their “service on the panel has concluded,” according to the Post. Experts under consideration to join a separate panel evaluating ground-level ozone reportedly received a similar message saying the panel will no longer be formed. The EPA will now leave these tasks up to a seven-member group called the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), which critics say is lacking in the expertise required to keep up with pollution science. Environmentalists say the move is part of a larger effort by the Trump administration to edge out science in its crusade to put industry first. “By removing science and scientists, they are making it easier for the administration to set a weaker standard,” Gretchen Goldman, research director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Center for Science and Democracy, told the Post.