I see the EPA doesn’t see the value in, oh, clean air. This is the headline from IFL Science!:
EPA Announces It Will Discontinue Science Panel That Reviews Air Pollution Safety
Perhaps it’s a bit un-nuanced:
Made up of doctors, researchers, and other experts, the 20-person Particulate Matter Review Panel works to provide guidelines on particulate matter (PM) – tiny solid particles found in the air, such as soot – known to cause respiratory and other health issues. The panel will be replaced by the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), a seven-member group established in 1977 under the Clean Air Act to address “research related to air quality, sources of air pollution, and the strategies to attain and maintain air quality standards.” CASAC will be legally required to advise the EPA administrator on quality standards beginning in 2019.
Sounds like a bureaucratic rearrangement and even streamlining. But the Union of Concerned Scientists is not happy:
The administration might claim to be making this move in the name of streamlining but there are much bigger consequences to eliminating science from the process. Sure, it will be a faster process to update the PM standard without a review panel, but we’ll also have a less science-based process. Review panels effectively serve as a public peer-review of the EPA’s integrated science assessments, which detail the state of the science on pollutants. Without a PM review panel, there is far less expert input informing the PM standard.
But perhaps this is precisely the point. The administration has made clear that they are interested in fast-tracking the PM and ozone reviews in order to set new standards before the end of the administration. This is an aggressive timeline, considering that the EPA is only required to update the standards every five years, and usually needs more time to conduct the careful, science-based process of characterizing the state of the science on a pollutant’s health effects and working with scientific experts to issue a standard that is protective of public health. If you can eliminate this careful scientific assessment, you can speed up the process, but at the expense of public health.
My suspicion? Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is apparently from the same mold as his predecessor, the disgraced Scott Pruitt, as the DeSmog blog notes:
Coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler, the interim administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) after the resignation of Scott Pruitt, has held positions as the Washington Coal Club’s Vice President and President. Wheeler’s profile at Faegre Baker Daniels consulting, as recently as April 2018, listed him as the WCC‘s vice president. The group’s most recent tax filings, as of 2016, listed him as president.
An informational brochure described the coal club as a “small informal group with a mutual interest in coal,” while boasting board representation and sponsorship from some of the largest coal companies in the country. Its mailing address in 2014 was listed as courtesy of Arch Coal. According to the brochure, its “main activity is a luncheon-meeting program, which is held monthly” and “on or close to the U.S.Capitol complex in Washington, DC.”
The Washington Coal Club’s website no longer appeared in operation as of May 2017. However, in December 2017, the group bestowed “Lifetime Achievement Awards” on numerous individuals including vocal climate change denier and Murray Energy CEO Robert E. Murray.
[Attributions omitted.]
That last bit would indicate to me that Wheeler has a set of views that are out of step with traditional EPA views. So my assessment is that he was hearing voices saying things he didn’t want to hear, so, in the tradition of autocrats everywhere – he silenced them.
