The NIH today said it is forming a committee of independent experts (in risk assessment, infectious disease, epidemiology, public health) to provide advice to the agency on its ongoing environmental reviews of the controversial BU biocontainment lab being built in the South End.

In November, the National Research Council sharply criticized the NIH’s last review of the lab, saying that it failed to adequately look into worst-case scenarios of accidental release of pathogens from the lab.

The NIH press release said that the panel “may recommend scenarios to study.”

(Massachusetts’s highest court ruled in December that the state’s environmental review of the lab was also inadequate, saying that it “lacked a rational basis.”)