FRIGHTENING STEP BY THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY REGARDING CHEMICAL RISK ASSESSMENT - 2 Articles
EPA OPENS CHEMICAL RISK ASSESSMENT TO CORPORATE LOBBYING — New Process Marginalizes Government Scientists and Promotes Industry Influence
Publication Date: April 14, 2008
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)
Washington, DC — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has unveiled a new process for assessing the health risks of new chemicals that allows chemical manufacturers and other industries to play key roles. As a result, it will be much easier to inject corporate influence into public health determinations that should be purely scientific, according Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
The overhaul of the EPA “Integrated Risk Information System” became effective on April 10, 2008, the day it was announced. EPA said the changes “created several important opportunities” for affected interests to weigh in “at key points throughout the nomination and assessment” of new environmental contaminants. One hallmark of the changes is pushing government research to the side in favor of outside research which is largely industry-funded. As a consequence -
Affected corporations will be intimately involved in each step of EPA’s risk assessment and will be able to know what staff are assigned to which work, making the agency “research plan” vulnerable to political manipulation through the appropriations process; The Defense and Energy Departments will have a formal role on how pollutants, such as the chemical perchlorate, are evaluated. [to find out more about perchlorate, check out an earlier BiG TeA PaRtY post about this toxic contaminant - CLICK HERE] In addition, these agencies could declare a particular chemical to be “mission critical” that would allow them to control how “data gaps” are to be filled. All intra-and inter-agency communications on risk assessments are deemed “deliberative” and thus confidential; The White House Office of Management and Budget would control both the substance and timing of final decisions on chemical risk assessments. “Under this system, every chemical risk assessment is a special interest scrum,” stated New England PEER Director Kyla Bennett, a former EPA scientists and attorney. “Had this process been in place, the tobacco industry would have stopped EPA from declaring secondhand smoke a lung cancer risk.”
These chemical risk assessments are used to develop toxic clean-up criteria, safe drinking water standards, occupational exposure levels and other essential public health protections. In its press announcement, EPA Assistant Administrator George Gray said the changes were intended to make the assessments “more predictable, streamlined, and transparent.”
“In the name of transparency, EPA concocted this convoluted system in secret,” Bennett added, noting Gray’s previous work in an industry- financed institute on this topic. “What a coincidence that this process seems tailor-made to drum up a lot of business for the work Mr. Gray did in the private sector.”
PEER points to this revision as one of what will be many more late-in- the-Bush-administration attempts to skew rules, interpretations and policies that could not be changed through normal, publicly-reviewed channels. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee has already vowed to hold oversight hearings on this topic.
CLICK HERE to contact PEER
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U.S. EPA Changes Chemical Risk Assessment Process
Environment News Service (ENS)
WASHINGTON, DC, April 10, 2008 - The U.S. EPA says it is expanding the process for recommending that a chemical be assessed for risk of harm to human health or the environment, “to increase its transparency and efficiency.”
But the senator who heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee says the changes really put the risk assessment process directly under the control of the White House.
“In my judgment, these changes to the EPA’s risk assessment program are devastating,” said Senator Barbara Boxer of California who announced she will call a committee oversight hearing to examine the agency’s entire toxics program.
“They put politics before science by letting the White House and federal polluters derail EPA’s scientific assessment of toxic chemicals,” she said. “In the near future, the Government Accountability Office will be issuing a study that I requested, which addresses these issues, and we anticipate an oversight hearing on the EPA’s toxics program shortly.”
The Integrated Risk Information System, IRIS, provides human health risk information describing the potential adverse health effects that may result from exposure to over 540 environmental contaminants.
IRIS includes descriptions of hazard identification and dose-response information, quantitative risk estimates for chronic non-cancer and cancer effects, and access to searchable scientific documentation.
The revisions to the IRIS process for developing chemical assessments announced today will include “listening sessions to allow for the broader participation and engagement of interested parties; and an even more rigorous scientific peer review of IRIS assessments.”
The EPA calls it “an expanded process for recommending a substance be assessed,” and promises “the earlier involvement” of other agencies and the public.
Dr. George Gray, assistant administrator of the Office of Research and Development, who announced the changes today, says he is “confident that these improvements will help our high quality risk assessment process become even more accessible to the scientific community.”
“We recognize that people outside of EPA use this system and have significant knowledge and expertise to offer,” said Gray. “Today’s improvements to the IRIS process will ensure that we continue to have assessments of the highest quality and a process that’s easy to understand and participate in.”
Sounds harmless, but Senator Boxer doesn’t think so.
Boxer says the policy released today “gives federal agencies, such as the Department of Defense, which is a major polluter, a privileged seat at the table to determine which chemicals get assessed and how those assessments are conducted.”
The senator says the change “formalizes a new process to be run by the White House that would take place behind closed doors due to the administration’s refusal to make federal agency comments public.”
Federal, state and international agencies use risk assessments to create public health protections, including drinking water standards, toxic waste cleanup levels, air pollution limits, controls on dangerous chemicals in food and consumer products, worker protections and other safeguards, Boxer points out.
Reforming the IRIS process has been an important goal of EPA Administrator,Stephen Johnson, as reflected in his Action Plan, the agency said in its announcement today.
Gray’s office says the changes were made to “create a more predictable, streamlined, and transparent process for conducting IRIS assessments.”
“A major goal is to define the important role that public and interagency comments and interactions play in the process, and to foster greater communication and sharing of relevant scientific information between experts, interested parties, and EPA,” the agency announcement states.
A one-step access to the major parts of the database has been designed into the online system so the quickviews, the summaries, the toxicological reviews, and the tracking database are more accessible, the agency says.
EPA has also, for the first time, initiated a “data call in” for information to support its literature review of a chemical, and is seeking public comment on this review.
No doubt these features will all be open for comment during the upcoming Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing.
Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008. All rights reserved.
