The centrality of scientists and the translation of interests in the U.S. acid rain controversy.

The article compares the handling of the acid rain problem by the United States with the approach of Canada during the 1970s and 1980s. Social studies of environmental problems and controversies are focusing more attention on the entrepreneurial activities of scientists. This case study of the U.S. acid rain problem analyses the "claimsmaking" and "translation" activities of early, university-affiliated, acid rain scientists and how they enabled scientists and scientific research to be situated in a central position in the controversy. The paper focuses on several areas of the U.S. acid rain controversy; the construction of acid rain as a scientific and environmental problem in the 1970s, the formation of the National Atmospheric Deposition Program and the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program, and the construction of boundaries between acid rain science and politics. The centrality of science in the U.S. acid rain controversy is then compared with the role of science in the Canadian context. Even though science was centrally placed in each context, acid rain science policies were shaped by different institutional actors and for different goals and interests.