IRIS Update: EPA Announces New Program to Revise Old Chemical Profiles
In Wednesday's Federal Register, EPA unveiled a new, streamlined process through which agency scientists will systematically review old chemical profiles in the IRIS database and update them with the latest toxicological information. With everything from Clean Air Act residual risk determinations about hazardous air pollutants to Superfund site cleanup standards to Safe Drinking Water Act regulations turning on the toxicological profiles housed in the IRIS database, it is a huge step in the right direction for EPA to be proactively screening old profiles to make sure they are up-to-date.
In 2003, the Eastern Research Group conducted a literature review to determine which chemicals in the IRIS database had been the subject of new toxicity or carcinogenicity studies since their last significant IRIS update. The researchers identified new health effects information for 169 chemicals (37% of those reviewed) that, if evaluated in detail, could possibly result in a change to an existing value. Additionally, the researchers found studies that could possibly fill data gaps for 281 chemicals (61% of those reviewed) whose IRIS entries were incomplete. Only a handful of chemical profiles made it through the Bush Administration’s IRIS assessment process, so it is unlikely the numbers have changed …
CPR President Rena Steinzor and board member Robert Glicksman sent a letter today to White House Science Adviser John Holdren and OIRA Administrator Cass Sunstein regarding OMB's role in EPA science decisions. The letter concerns two recent episodes involving OMB that we wrote about this week: one regarding the EPA's Endocrine Disrputor Screening Program (EDSP) and the other regarding the agency's Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS). From the letter:
Both of these episodes pre-date Professor Sunstein’s confirmation and may well be the product of staff steeped in the culture of OMB regulatory review under the Bush Administration. The episodes represent a direct assault on scientific integrity because they involve attempts to reverse conclusions by agency experts at the behest of regulated industries whose central objections were rooted in concerns about potential future compliance costs, not the accuracy of EPA’s science. Compounding the offensiveness of this …
As the recession grinds on, financial news continues to grab front-page headlines. The national deficit is a central flashpoint for controversy, triggering debate on the appropriate balance between spending today and increasing our children’s growing mountain of debt. In the midst of this battle, it is easy to overlook another looming problem: the growth of the environmental deficit. Overall, we are spending down the planet’s “natural capital” at unsustainable rates. As the nation’s most thoughtful minds address our economic woes, their wisdom provides three important lessons for environmental sustainability. The moment is particularly ripe for such analysis as the international community struggles with the overwhelming issue of climate change, certainly a key to achieving any sort of sustainable environmental future.
Re-regulation to promote responsibility: Even as taxpayers bailed out financial institutions deemed too big to fail, executives received huge bonuses. Growing outrage has prompted …
With some fanfare, the EPA announced last week that it has selected a cleanup strategy for the Palos Verdes Shelf (PVS) Superfund Site off the coast of southern California – an area that has been termed “ the world’s largest DDT dump.” The EPA touts its plan as “a major milestone” that puts the site “on the road to remediation.” Nowhere, however, does EPA mention that this road is longer and more tortuous than it could or should have been. As I elaborated in an earlier entry, EPA’s selected remedy (its “preferred alternative”) provides for capping a much smaller area of contaminated sediment than another alternative EPA considered but rejected. Its selected remedy also delays the dates by which cleanup levels for DDTs and PCBs will be attained relative to the alternative – putting off until further in the future the time by which fish from the waters …
Just about a month ago, the New York Times published a story in which it documented an alarming failure on the part of federal and state officials to enforce the principal federal law designed to protect the quality of the nation’s surface waters, including rivers, lakes, and streams. According to that story, fewer than three percent of identified violations of the Clean Water Act result in fines or other significant punishments by state officials. These violations have the potential to threaten the health of people who use the affected waters drinking, swimming, fishing, and other purposes. Yet, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has rarely stepped in to reclaim authority to administer the Act from states failing to fulfill their responsibilities to protect water quality through vigorous enforcement efforts.
EPA officials were well aware of these problems. This summer, less than six months after becoming President …
The EPA today released a 15-page Clean Water Act Enforcement Action Plan prepared by the agency's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.
Back in early July, Lisa Jackson had directed the enforcmeent office to develop a plan, and to "report back to me within 90 days with your recommendations." The EPA seems to be saying the plan released today is the final ("EPA Administrator Announces Plan to Retool and Reinvigorate Clean Water Enforcement Program.")
The announcement came as the House Transportatoin and Infrastructure Committee held a hearing this morning on CWA enforcement, including testimony from Jackson and various stakeholders.
We'll have more on this later.
This item cross-posted from Legal Planet.
On Friday, the New York Times carried a story about Tim DeChristopher, the economics student in Utah who bid on federal oil and gas leases at an auction last December as a form of protest against global warming. DeChristopher was the winning bidder on 14 parcels, but admits that he never had either the intent or the ability to pay the $1.7 million he bid. He is now facing criminal charges of interfering with an auction and making false statements on a bidding form. DeChristopher’s attorney has argued that he should be allowed to present a necessity defense to a jury. In a hearing last month, the judge was unpersuaded, but did give the defense time to submit a written brief in support of its claim.
As the Times reports, the necessity defense is a long shot in a …
I thought that the Alan Carlin story -- the 'suppressed' climate change skeptic at EPA -- was over.
After the initial debunkings, the story kept going, but then I thought the NYT really put it to rest in late September. Apparently not for everyone.
Carlin, many have noted, is an economist at EPA, not a climate scientist. He has one Ph.D. - in economics. But that's no matter. The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel wanted more on the story, and wrote this. Strassel refers to Carlin as a "career EPA scientist." What a scoop!
Congratulations to CPR Member Scholar and board member Rob Verchick! Rob has been appointed to the position of Deputy Associate Administrator in the EPA's Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation (OPEI).
On September 24, arguments began in Oklahoma v. Tyson, a 2005 lawsuit filed by the Oklahoma Attorney General against poultry companies operating in the Illinois River Basin. The lawsuit alleges violations of federal environmental laws, state and federal public nuisance law, and state statutes regulating pollution of waterways. Oklahoma’s legal strategy is unique: the state is bringing the suit under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA, more commonly known as the Superfund Law) to target the nonpoint source pollution of water. Success for Oklahoma in this case would signal a serious development in protecting water from nonpoint source pollution.
The defendant companies – 11 poultry producers including Tyson Foods, Cargill Turkey , Peterson Farms, Simmons Foods, and others – contract with large-scale poultry farmers across the basin, which covers 1 million acres between Oklahoma and Arkansas. They provide the farmers with the chicks, feed, and other …
