The EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) is supposed to be a group of scientists who independently analyze standards for the implementation of the Clean Air Act. Those standards are integral in ensuring progressive air pollution limitations that embody the latest scientific and technological breakthroughs. As Reg•Watch has reported, CASAC recently recommended tighter standards for smog, much to the chagrin of industry and EPA brass. As though determined not to let that happen again, EPA has appointed to CASAC two members with industry ties. The new members will serve on the panel for nitrogen and sulfur oxides (NOx and SOx). The Center for Science in the Public Interest sums it up: Ignoring protests from consumer watchdog groups, the EPA has appointed two conflicted scientists to the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee primary advisory panel that will evaluate NOx and SOx pollution. In January, CSPI wrote to the EPA opposing the nomination of Richard B. Schlesinger, who has received financial support from the American Petroleum Institute, and Christian Seigneur, who works for Air Quality Division at Atmospheric & Environmental Research (AER) Inc., which is funded by three organizations (API, the Electric Power Research Institute and the Health Effects Institute) that receive money from industries that have a direct financial interest in the committee's decisions. The final roster did exclude Roger McClellan, the New Mexico-based industry consultant whom clean air advocates also protested. Advisors with ties to the power industry are grossly inappropriate for a panel charged with scientific recommendations on two greenhouse gases. It is not EPA's duty to include the views of industry in enforcing the Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act is one of our country's greatest environmental achievements in part because it was designed to stay one step ahead of pollutants and polluters. Standards are to be improved every five years and, according to the U.S. Supreme Court in Whitman v. American Trucking Association, cost and achievability are not to be considered. CASAC should be a place for unpolluted scientific thought.