The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has removed one database from its public website and slightly altered another due to a Data Quality Act (DQA) challenge submitted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber submitted the request May 26, 2004, asserting that physical and chemical property information in several EPA databases was erroneous because the data was inconsistent and contradictory between the different databases. The differing information leads to vastly different cleanup cost estimates for contaminated sites, according to the Chamber.

In a Jan. 14 news release, the Salt Institute announced that it would appeal the dismissal of its data quality case against the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI). The Salt Institute along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had filed suit against NHLBI claiming that statements made by the agency about health benefits from lower sodium diets did not comply with the Data Quality Act.

Shortly before the holidays, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a final version of its proposal to establish government-wide requirements for when and how federal agencies use scientific peer review. The "Final Information Quality Bulletin for Peer Review" makes modest changes to the revised proposal that OMB published April 28, 2004 with only a 30-day comment period. OMB’s announcement did not explain the seven-month delay until just before the holiday season, when many academics, scientists and public interest groups concerned with the policy were away on vacations.

In the first Data Quality Act case to be handled by the courts, a U.S. District Court has ruled that challenges under the DQA and its subsequent guidelines to agencies are not judicially reviewable. A previous court decision addressed the issue of reviewability, but the legal claim in that case was not limited to data quality.