EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has filled long-vacant seats on an influential advisory committee charged with helping set some of the agency’s most important air quality regulations.
But his choices for the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee include none of the academic researchers who typically make up the bulk of the panel’s membership, although many academics were nominated to the panel.
Instead, they include the consultant who led a bitterly contested review of EPA’s ambient air quality standards for soot during President Donald Trump’s first term, two industry representatives and a member of a group that disputes mainstream climate science.
The newly named committee will likely now be closely engaged with pursuing ongoing reviews of the standards for airborne lead, ground-level ozone and nitrogen oxides. Zeldin announced the appointments Monday, more than a year after other Trump appointees orchestrated the ouster of the previous slate of members named under former President Joe Biden.
