EPA OPENS CHEMICAL RISK ASSESSMENT

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.”

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