Anti-Smoking Scientist Dropped From EPA Panel : Health: The UC San Diego professor has been outspoken on cigarette perils. The Tobacco Institute and a Virginia congressman urged that he be removed.

At the urging of the Tobacco Institute and a Virginia congressman, a nationally acclaimed scientist from UC San Diego has been removed from an Environmental Protection Agency panel reviewing the effects of secondhand cigarette smoke.

The scientist, Dr. David M. Burns, an associate clinical professor of medicine and a pulmonary specialist at UC San Diego Medical Center, has a been outspoken about the perils of smoking.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Steven Bayard, manager of the EPA project to assess the health risks of passive smoking.

“I’m disturbed about this,” Bayard said Thursday. “I think it shows undue pressure, personally, from the tobacco companies and the Congress.”

Dr. Donald Barnes, head of the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board, maintained that there was no undue pressure to remove Burns, who was praised by EPA staffers and others.

Burns said he believes the tobacco industry is frightened about the quality of the two scientific reports on secondhand smoke that the panel was asked to review. The EPA reports, which analyze the effects of passive cigarette smoke on adults, children and people in the workplace, are scientifically solid, Burns said.

Since the late 1970s, Burns, 43, has served as a senior editor and reviewer of the surgeon general’s smoking reports. Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop presented Burns the prestigious Surgeon General’s Medallion.

Burns’ fervent anti-smoking views and citing of scientific evidence have made him enemies in the tobacco industry.

Burns said he was asked by the EPA to serve on the panel in July, a fact confirmed in an Aug. 10 letter from the agency asking him to analyze the reports.

Barnes, a former EPA staff scientist, told both Burns and The Times that while Burns has not technically been removed from the panel--because the group does not yet officially exist--the scientist will not serve on the committee.

Barnes acknowledged that tobacco industry representatives came to see him two or three times to object to Burns.

Brennan Dawson, a Tobacco Institute spokeswoman, told the Associated Press: “We want a fair panel that will look at it objectively. Our concern is that Mr. Burns is unable to do that.”

On Sept. 18, Rep. Thomas Bliley (D-Va.) wrote the EPA without mentioning Burns by name but urging that the panel “consist of qualified individuals who have not already prejudged this issue in any manner.”

Bliley is a strong tobacco industry ally. Philip Morris, a major cigarette manufacturer, is the largest private employer in his congressional district.

Barnes said that while Burns is highly competent, there are two or three other scientistswho had also worked on the surgeon general’s reports who are equally qualified but have not taken strong public positions against smoking.

Barnes said the EPA was looking for people who not only would be fair but would also be perceived as being fair.

“I don’t know of anyone else you could point to that would have the degree of expertise (Burns) would possess on smoking in general and the whole issue of passive smoking in particular,” Donald Shopland, coordinator of the National Cancer Institute’s smoking control program and a long-time Burns colleague, told the Associated Press.

The Associated Press and Times staff writer Rudy Abramson in Washington contributed to this report.