The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) science advisory panel tasked with reviewing ozone regulations is stacked with experts who have collectively received millions in agency funding over the years.
Of the 20 scientific advisers sitting on EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) Ozone Panel, 17 have received a total of $192 million in EPA grants, according to an analysis by the blog JunkScience.com.
This news only fuels the argument that EPA’s science committees aren’t “independent” as required by federal law, because they are stacked with experts who rely on the very agency they are overseeing for money.
“The EPA’s CASAC panels work on a consensus basis,” wrote Steve Milloy, the publisher of JunkScience.com and senior fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (EELI).
“So with 70% of panel members on the receiving end of $192 million in grants, a ‘consensus’ supporting the EPA was not difficult to achieve,” Milloy wrote.
Milloy, who has been battling EPA and environmentalists for years over the quality of science used to promulgate clean air regulations, recently sued EPA over the integrity of its science panel tasked with reviewing regulations for fine particulate matter, or PM2.5.
