EPA Releases OMB Comments on Chemical Studies

As promised, the Environmental Protection Agency is releasing White House comments on EPA assessments of potentially toxic chemicals. Yesterday, EPA released the first batch of comments on four ongoing risk assessments.

OEOBIn May, EPA announced changes to its Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), a program that studies the health effects of chemicals and releases the findings on the EPA website. Under the new process, there are two opportunities for “interagency” review – that is, a chance for other government agencies, including the White House, to scrutinize and comment on EPA’s risk assessments.

The four comments released yesterday all came from the White House Office of Management and Budget. (Under the old process, OMB reviewed assessments, sometimes with detrimental results.) From my initial reading, they appear to abide by EPA’s stipulation that agencies only comment on the relevant scientific issues and refrain from injecting broader policy or political considerations.

The revised IRIS process required that interagency comments be posted on the EPA website. They can all be found here, www.epa.gov/ncea/iris/index.html, in the table under “New Assessments and Reviews,” then click on “Downloads and Related Links” on the next page. (For a fifth assessment, cerium oxide and cerium compounds, no comments are listed. I’m not sure if this is an oversight, or if no comments were filed.)

The whole idea of OMB review of IRIS assessments continues to give me pause. OMB is not a scientific agency, and it is unclear what value OMB officials add to IRIS. As I said, OMB and other agencies get two opportunities to review the IRIS assessments: once after EPA prepares an initial draft, and again just before a final version is published (after the assessment undergoes an external peer review).

What good does it do for an office in the White House to review a scientific study after it has been peer reviewed? Three of the four assessments on which OMB has commented thus far are in the second interagency review phase. For two of the assessments, OMB complements EPA for being “very responsive” to the peer review. But in the third, OMB included four pages of scientific concerns.

When EPA revised the IRIS process in May, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said, “The process will be entirely managed by EPA.” That was a critically important reform, because EPA should now be able to keep OMB in check. As long as EPA stays in control, there shouldn’t be any problems, but we should still keep a watchful eye on any OMB comments.

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