Taking a Stand for Science in EPA Rule Making

Professor Kevin Cromar, Director of the Marron Institute’s Air Quality Program, recently provided written and oral testimony on the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee’s (CASAC) review of the Integrated Scientific Assessment (ISA) for Particulate Matter. The ISA is a lengthy document prepared by EPA staff over several years that identifies, evaluates, and summarizes all of the available scientific evidence on the health impacts of particulate matter air pollution. Despite the importance of this scientific review as part of the ongoing review of federal air quality standards, the EPA administrator opted to disband a specialized panel of two dozen experts that would have evaluated the scientific evidence and instead tasked a hand-picked committee of seven individuals on CASAC to complete the review.

Cromar’s testimony highlighted the most egregious aspects of CASAC’s flawed review of the science and called on the EPA to re-institute the disbanded review panel of experts in order to fix what has become a broken rulemaking process. The Air Quality Program at Marron will continue to participate EPA’s review of federal air quality standards in order to help protect against ongoing efforts to minimize, discredit, and ignore scientific evidence in the policymaking process.

Read Cromar’s Written Testimony