Environmental health advocacy groups are looking to reassemble two EPA science advisory panels that under the Trump administration have either fallen defunct or had their members largely replaced with industry representatives.
The Environmental Protection Network and Union of Concerned Scientists are tapping former members of the agency’s children’s health and clean air advisory committees to regroup and continue their work under the nonprofits.
“To counter the Trump administration’s erosion of independent science and build the nation’s capacity to use science for the public good, scientists from several committees that were disbanded or terminated have independently convened to offer policy recommendations on important issues,” Gretchen Goldman, the president and CEO of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a blog posted Wednesday.
The newly formed Independent Clean Air Scientific Advisory Group (I-CASAG) would perform the same functions as EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), established under the Clean Air Act.
