5 Of 9 Scientists On CA Toxics Panel Fired - Pacific Legal Foundation Among Industry Pressure Groups

[hatrack]

Five out of nine members of a scientific panel that advises the state on toxic chemicals have been fired in recent weeks, following disputes with the chemical industry and a conservative group that targets environmental laws. "It's been gutted," said Paul Blanc, a professor of occupational medicine at UC San Francisco and one of the panel's four remaining members.

While the Scientific Review Panel on Toxic Air Contaminants is not well known outside of regulatory circles, its work carries clout in state environmental policy. Since its inception in 1983, the panel has evaluated more than 300 chemicals – everything from pesticides to secondhand smoke – and advised the state on how these chemicals should be regulated. Among the dismissed members is panel chairman John Froines, who also heads the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at UCLA's School of Public Health. Froines has served on the panel since it was founded and has been its chairman since 1998. Froines says he learned of his dismissal July 22 in a two-sentence letter from Assembly Speaker John A. Perez, D-Los Angeles.

Panel members, including Froines, have come under fire over the years when their designation of certain substances as toxic came at a cost to industry. Most recently, Froines and other members of the panel made enemies in the chemical industry when they publicly criticized the California Department of Pesticide Regulation for its plans to approve a strawberry fumigant called methyl iodide, which the scientists said would endanger farm workers.

EDIT

One group taking credit for the shakeup is the Pacific Legal Foundation, a Sacramento-based conservative group with a history of fighting environmental legislation. The foundation has charged, in an ongoing lawsuit, that panel members shouldn't be able to serve such long terms. Foundation attorney Damien Schiff said he believes the lawsuit served as a catalyst for the dismissals, which he called a "needed infusion of fresh blood for the panel." The lawsuit stems, in part, from longstanding complaints from the building and transportation industries over the panel's 1998 conclusion that diesel particulate is toxic to human health. That determination formed the basis for a series of regulations of the trucking industry, which has vigorously fought the new rules.

EDIT

http://californiawatch.org/watchblog/after-warning-about-toxic-farm-chemical-scientific-panel-gutted-4332

[BrklynLiberal]

1. That is horrifying..and potentially fatal for Californians...

Local and state governments are as owned by industry as the Federal govt., if not more so.