Summary

Requires the EPA to reorganize how certain chemical hazard and dose-response assessments are done and managed: responsibility for ongoing chronic-exposure assessments (previously in IRIS) is shifted to the relevant EPA program offices when those offices determine a need, assessments must follow new scientific standards and weight-of-evidence principles, and the Office of Research and Development must keep and update a centralized chemical assessment database. The bill also creates an internal steering committee to coordinate assessments and avoid duplication, sets criteria for accepting third-party assessments, and requires ORD to certify every two years that completed assessments met the new standards (first certification due two years after enactment).

Key Points

• Shifts responsibility for many chronic-exposure chemical assessments from IRIS to the EPA program offices that need them.
• Requires program offices to assign toxicity values with ranges and uncertainty and to consider all relevant datasets for human health risk representation.
• Creates a Hazard Identification and Dose-Response Steering Committee to coordinate assessments and prevent duplication.
• ORD must maintain a centralized chemical assessment database that preserves prior IRIS assessments and updates changes to toxicity values.
• Establishes binding scientific standards for covered and third-party assessments emphasizing best available science, transparency, uncertainty characterization, and reproducibility.
• Allows consideration of third-party assessments if they meet the new scientific standards and have independent review.
• Mandates biennial ORD certification to Congress that completed covered assessments used the required scientific standards, beginning two years after enactment.

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