Four months after EPA’s deadline for picking its new slate of children’s health advisers, candidates are still waiting for answers.
The Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee is a group of outside public health specialists that EPA officials turn to when they need recommendations on regulations and policies addressing children’s environmental health. Per the White House’s Make America Healthy Again strategy released in September, CHPAC is also tasked with advancing research to implement the Trump administration’s MAHA agenda on ending childhood chronic disease.
But members’ terms expired in February, and it’s been almost a year since the advisory committee last met. Some members are worried the delay — and a shortage of communication from the agency — could indicate a sidelining of expert opinions or an effort to stack the group with chemical industry scientists, rather than public health experts.
“Right now, it’s just fading into nothing,” said Jean-Marie Kauth, an environmental health professor at Benedictine University and CHPAC member.
