What Would Rachel Say?

Full Committee hearing entitled,  Oversight on EPA Toxic Chemical Policies.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Groups, GAO Fault EPA's Risk Assessment Process

The Environmental Protection Agency's decision to add a new layer of external review when updating its toxic chemicals registry drew a sharp rebuke from environmental and consumer groups last week. The groups' protest letters charged that the new process will add extensive delays to the already backlogged assessment program, and will give industry, the Defense and Energy departments more ways to delay important public health protections. Updates to the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), the widely-used database that contains information on toxic chemicals and their health effects, have already slowed to a trickle in recent years.

The new procedure, announced April 10, also gave the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) greater control of interagency review of the assessments. "We are very concerned that the new process will introduce delays, derail assessments, and institutionalize the growing influence of federal agencies . . . that are among the biggest contributors to toxic Superfund sites," the letter, whose signers included the Center for Science in the Public Interest, stated. A new Government Accountability Office report found that a majority of the 540 chemicals in the database have outdated assessments, and that the agency has only completed four of a planned 32 assessments in the past two years. The agency's "low level of productivity jeopardizes the viability of the IRIS database," the report stated. The GAO also noted that the new procedure lacks transparency, since the OMB shields the interagency and outside reviews from public scrutiny.