by Audrey Streb
The Lion
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is pivoting from a long-contested chemical risk assessment program it notes Congress never authorized and critics say became a tool for targeting chemical facilities, including plants sterilizing medical equipment at the height of COVID-19.
While the agency’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program was launched in 1985 as an internal library of chemical safety assessments, former agency insiders told The Lion that IRIS findings were never designed to stand alone. However, critics argue IRIS assessments have been wielded as a weapon by government agencies, lawyers and local communities – through litigation, regulation and public pressure campaigns – to target and even shut down chemical facilities.
EPA Deputy Administrator David Fotouhi issued an internal memo on April 27, writing that IRIS “values represent only the first two steps of the four-step risk assessment process and are not necessarily intended for use as regulatory levels. Before relying on IRIS values, users should ensure that the IRIS assessments and values are fit for their intended purpose and that the values are consistent with the most current scientific literature.”…
Despite its limitations, some EPA staffers want to keep using IRIS, according to former Trump EPA transition team member and Energy and Environment Legal Institute Senior Fellow Steve Milloy.
Milloy described IRIS as a “frozen in time database” that grants the agency “maximum flexibility to do what it wants with any given chemical.”
He added that though he believes the EPA relies on “50 years of bad regulation,” the Trump administration must clearly justify its deregulatory moves, or else “everything is going to look like they’re cherry picking and doing dastardly deeds for the chemical industry.”
