Rice, an award-winning former EPA scientist who now works at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, has studied low doses of deca and reported neurological effects in lab animals. In February 2007, around the time the EPA panel was convened, Rice testified before the Maine Legislature in support of a state ban on the compound because scientific evidence shows it is toxic and accumulating in the environment and in people.

Chemical industry lobbyists say Rice's comments to the Legislature, as well as similar comments to the media, show that she is a biased advocate who has compromised the integrity of the EPA's review of the flame retardant.

The EPA is in the process of deciding how much daily exposure to deca is safe - a decision, expected next month, that could determine whether it can still be used in consumer products. The role of the expert panel was to review and comment on the scientific evidence.

EPA officials removed Rice because of what they called "the perception of a potential conflict of interest." Under the agency's handbook for advisory committees, scientific peer reviewers should not "have a conflict of interest" or "appear to lack impartiality."

Neither Rice nor EPA officials were available for comment Thursday.

Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst at the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy group in Washington, said it was unprecedented for the EPA to remove an expert for expressing concerns about the potential dangers of a chemical. "It's a scary world if we create a precedent that says scientists involved in decision-making are perceived to be too biased," she said.

In addition to her testimony for the Maine Legislature, Rice has been quoted in media reports saying there is enough scientific evidence to warrant bans on deca. "We don't need to wait another five years or even another two years and let it increase in the environment, while we nail down every possible question we have," she told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in March.

In a May letter to an assistant administrator at the EPA, Sharon Kneiss, a vice president of the American Chemistry Council, called Rice "a fervent advocate of banning" deca and said she "has no place in an independent, objective peer review." She told the EPA that Rice's role on the panel "calls into question the overall integrity" of the EPA's evaluation of chemicals and that Rice might have influenced the other panelists in their review of deca.

Top EPA officials met with the industry group's representatives in June and promised to take action, according to a letter that EPA Assistant Administrator George Gray sent to the group in January. In that letter, Gray said the EPA found "no evidence" that Rice "significantly influenced the other panelists."

After EPA officials dismissed Rice from the five-member panel, they removed her comments from the panel's report on deca and removed all mention of her. Three months later, at the request of the chemical industry group, the EPA added a note to the panel report that Rice was removed "due to a perception of a potential conflict of interest" and that none of her comments was considered in their review of the chemical.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said he was disturbed by Rice's dismissal and the Environmental Working Group's findings about pro-industry panelists.

"If this information is accurate, it raises serious questions about EPA's approach to preventing conflicts of interest on its expert scientific panels," Waxman said.

Rice specializes in neurotoxins - chemicals that harm developing brains. Before she went to work for the state of Maine, she was a senior toxicologist at the EPA's National Center for Environmental Research, where she had a major role in setting the EPA's guideline for exposure to mercury in fish.

In 2004, the EPA gave Rice and four colleagues an award for what it called "exceptionally high-quality research" for a study that linked lead exposure to premature puberty in girls.