Washington

US lawmakers have been left groping for ways to fund scientific research that will not be seen in environmental controversies as either biased or flawed, following the recent bitter debate in Congress about new air pollution standards (see Nature 388, 5; 1997).

A committee of the House of Representatives has even dusted off a long-standing proposal to create a National Institute for the Environment (NIE), which could conduct environmental research free of the regulatory agenda that many critics say taints the scientific activities of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Although the Washington-based Committee for the NIE has long been lobbying for such an institute, the idea has in the past received little political attention. But members of the House appropriations subcommittees that oversee the budgets of the EPA and the National Science Foundation have told the foundation to produce a report by next April on how it might set up and finance such an institute.

Two senior members of the Senate, the Democrat leader, Thomas Daschle of South Dakota, and Chuck Robb (Democrat, Virginia), have gone further, trying — unsuccessfully — to persuade their colleagues on the appropriations committee to add between $20 million and $50 million to the science foundation's budget next year, to enable it to start setting up the NIE.

But, despite this apparent revival in political interest, the concept still has relatively few supporters in Washington, and is unlikely to survive. The White House opposes it, and even many environmental groups are lukewarm. One member of a green lobbying organization calls the NIE “a solution in search of a problem”.

Critics of the proposal point out that several federal agencies already conduct peer-reviewed environmental research, and say that creating a new one would waste research dollars on extra administrative overheads. Some question whether it is always desirable to separate scientists from regulators.

They point to the lack of coordination between the Occupational and Health Safety Administration, which drafts regulations to protect workers, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which conducts research on job-related hazards. Often, say critics, the two agencies work on unrelated problems, so that the relevant scientific data are not always available when they are needed for drafting legislation.

But, even if the NIE is shelved, Congress appears anxious to turn to bodies other than the EPA for environmental research. The House appropriations committee, for example, gave a $35 million increase to the EPA for research on air pollutants, but wants the money transferred to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in North Carolina, part of the National Institutes of Health.

Senate appropriators added less money ($8 million) for air pollution research, but also specified that it should not go to the EPA. The funds would be used to set up five competitively selected, university-based research centres, which would investigate the health effects of ozone and airborne particulate matter.

Whatever Congress decides, EPA scientists may already be experiencing the political fallout from the defiant stand taken earlier this year by Carol Browner, the administrator of the agency, in favour of tighter air pollution regulations. They can only hope that the controversy will not set back the significant progress made by the agency recently in improving its reputation for high-quality research.