The Trump administration has tapped an eye doctor with no background in air pollution science to advise the Environmental Protection Agency on what levels of air pollutants are safe to breathe.
The E.P.A. named Brian Joondeph, a Colorado-based ophthalmologist and political commentator, on Monday to the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, an influential panel that advises the agency’s leadership on the latest scientific evidence on soot, smog and other hazardous pollutants.
It was the government’s latest move to sideline or shun scientific expertise, drawing criticism from past members of the advisory panel.
By law, the seven-person committee must include a physician. For the past 50 years, the physician’s seat has been filled by pulmonologists, cardiologists and others who have researched how exposure to air pollution increases the risk of asthma, heart and lung diseases, cancer and other ailments.
In contrast, Dr. Joondeph has never published a peer-reviewed paper dealing with air pollution. He has coauthored a handful of peer-reviewed papers about eye diseases, as well as dozens of opinion pieces in conservative publications, many of which praised President Trump’s style of governing and foreign policies.
Dr. Joondeph did not respond to emailed questions about his appointment, replying only, “I am honored and humbled to be selected and grateful for the opportunity to serve. Giving back through service — whether in medicine, mission work or public policy — has always been important to me.”
In an interview on a talk radio show on Tuesday, Dr. Joondeph said he was nominated to the panel by the CO2 Coalition, a nonprofit group that claims that planet-warming carbon dioxide is beneficial to humans, contrary to the scientific consensus. He also acknowledged that his credentials could come under scrutiny.
“A retina surgeon on the clean air committee? That’s like a neurosurgeon running Housing and Urban Development, as Ben Carson did,” Dr. Joondeph told “Ryan Schuiling Live,” referring to the housing secretary in the first Trump administration. “But he did a good job, and I’m honored to be considered.”
Dr. Joondeph will serve a two-year term on the panel through 2028. Representatives for the CO2 Coalition, of which he is a member, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In videos on TikTok, Dr. Joondeph has described his recent mission trip to El Salvador and vacations to various destinations. And in a wide-ranging collection of columns, he has criticized President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for using an autopen to sign official documents, accused nurses of being biased against Mr. Trump and argued that concerns about climate change are overblown.
“Filling this seat with an eye surgeon who has not published on air pollution’s effects on the body, but has publicly questioned mainstream climate science, is a fundamental shift away from relevant medical expertise,” said Mary Berlik Rice, a pulmonologist at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Dr. Rice was a member of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee during the Biden administration, until the Trump administration fired all prior board members in January 2025. Her recent research has examined the effects of air pollution on the respiratory health of children and adults, including those with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
The selection of Dr. Joondeph is “really making a mockery” of the physician requirement, said Jeremy Sarnat, an associate professor of environmental health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health and a former chair of the panel during the Biden administration.
“I have no doubt that Dr. Joondeph is an excellent ophthalmologist,” Dr. Sarnat said. “But I also suspect that he would not want me conducting retinal surgery on his patients, just as I have no interest in him dealing with the health of the American public related to air pollution exposure.”
Brigit Hirsch, the E.P.A. press secretary, said in an email that the new members of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee had “the experience and expertise needed to provide gold standard scientific advice.” She did not comment specifically on Dr. Joondeph’s appointment.
The Trump administration described the decision to fire the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee’s prior members as a “reset” of the agency’s advisory panels. It named all seven replacements on Monday.
The administration has moved to sideline scientific experts across the federal government. Last year, for instance, it fired all 17 members of a committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on who should receive vaccines.
In another unusual move, the administration also selected two members who work in industries that the E.P.A. regulates for the air pollution panel. Katherine Kistler is an environmental manager at the steel manufacturer Nucor Corporation, while Sidney Marlborough is an executive at Orion Engineered Carbons LLC, a company that makes carbon black, an industrial material used to reinforce rubber in tires.
Representatives for Nucor and Orion Engineered Carbons did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
To chair the committee, the Trump administration tapped Louis Anthony “Tony” Cox, a consultant and statistician at the University of Colorado, Denver. Dr. Cox, who previously chaired the panel during Mr. Trump’s first term, has rejected the widely established link between exposure to fine particulate matter and premature death. He has received some funding from industry groups like the American Chemistry Council that have fought stricter environmental regulations.
“I’m honored by the appointment and the opportunity to serve on the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee again,” Dr. Cox said in an email. “My goal is to help ensure that CASAC’s work is scientifically rigorous, transparent and grounded in careful, objective evaluation of the scientific evidence.”
Dr. Joondeph, for his part, wrote in a March 2 column in the right-leaning magazine American Thinker that environmental journalists had exaggerated the risks that climate change posed to Colorado ski resorts.
Citing forecasts of more than two feet of snow for the state’s mountain peaks in mid-February, Dr. Joondeph wrote, “Predictions of snow’s demise join a long list of apocalyptic climate forecasts that have failed to materialize on schedule.”
Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, said that Dr. Joondeph’s column appeared to be conflating weather and climate.
“Even in a warming world with less snow (that’s climate), you can still have severe snow events (that’s weather),” Dr. Dessler said in an email, adding, “The fact that the E.P.A. is appointing such a clearly unqualified person to a government body means that the E.P.A. will not be getting the best advice and, consequently, will not be making the best decisions.”
Maxine Joselow covers climate change and the environment for The Times from Washington.
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