GAO Questions New EPA Process To Assess Chemical Risk

Thu. May 22, 2008


Bush administration officials Wednesday said a new process for evaluating the risk chemicals pose to public health and the environment would improve the efficiency and quality of such assessments despite criticisms that it will have the opposite effect.

EPA and OMB officials said the new process for placing chemicals into the EPA's Integrated Risk Information System is aimed at addressing concerns that too few assessments have been completed in recent years.

The IRIS database contains assessments on the toxicity of more than 540 chemicals -- information that is used to determine what steps should be taken to control such chemicals.

But during a hearing before the House Science Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee, the GAO's John Stephenson said the EPA's efforts to complete its assessments have been hampered by several factors, including the addition of new external requirements and the growing complexity and scope of the risk assessments.

Stephenson added that the new IRIS process released April 10 will add to the already lengthy delays and decrease the credibility of the assessments.

"Instead of streamlining IRIS," the new process will institutionalize the current inefficient system, he said. While it can now take five years to complete an assessment, Stephenson said the new process could extend that to six to eight years, adding that Congress may need to address the problem through legislation.

Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Brad Miller, D-N.C., said the new system establishes an interagency process that "gives polluting agencies even more opportunity than they had before to slow-walk the IRIS process to avoid the consequences of their own conduct."

But George Gray, the EPA's assistant administrator for research and development, noted that unlike the old process, the new one includes timelines for completing each step and will improve the quality of the assessments by bringing more agencies and voices into the process.

OMB's Susan Dudley added that the new process is expected to cut the time it takes to complete IRIS assessments from more than five years to as little as three years.

Miller questioned the OMB's role in the process and asked Stephenson to comment on the agency's scientific expertise. Stephenson said while he could not comment directly on this, he noted there is no "S" in OMB. Later, Dudley defended the OMB's role in the process, saying it does have experts in science and many other areas and jokingly added that there is no "S" in GAO either.

by Juliana Gruenwald