Sponsors
The bill increases transparency and the potential for assessments that better reflect diverse scientific evidence, but shifts assessment responsibility to program offices in ways that could politicize, fragment, delay, or increase costs for regulators, communities, and industry.
State and local governments and hospitals/health systems will get clearer, standardized scientific standards with documented uncertainty and toxicity ranges, improving the basis for regulatory decisionmaking and transparency.
Hospitals, urban communities, and rural communities may see toxicity values that better reflect available science and diverse exposure scenarios because program offices must consider multiple datasets and use weight-of-evidence approaches.
Regulators and the public will have a single centralized chemical assessment database that retains IRIS assessments and tracks updates, improving access to toxicity values and a common repository for information.
State and local governments and hospitals: shifting assessments out of the centralized IRIS process to individual program offices could politicize or fragment hazard evaluations, producing inconsistent toxicity values across programs.
Urban and rural communities and hospitals: reassigning assessments to program offices may delay evaluations or create duplication if coordination fails, potentially slowing regulatory actions that protect public health.
Utilities, energy companies, and governments: requiring program offices to choose among multiple point estimates and risk-representation approaches could introduce subjective judgment and increase regulatory uncertainty for industries and impacted communities.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Shifts certain EPA chemical hazard assessments from IRIS to program offices, requires scientific standards and toxicity-value reporting, and creates an inter-office assessment database with biennial ORD certification.
Introduced January 3, 2025 by Andrew S. Biggs · Last progress January 3, 2025
Revises how EPA creates and maintains chemical hazard and dose-response assessments by moving responsibility for some assessments from the IRIS program to EPA program offices, requiring specific scientific standards and weight-of-evidence approaches, and directing the Office of Research and Development (ORD) to keep an inter-office chemical assessment database. It also requires program offices to produce toxicity values (with ranges, point estimates, and uncertainty info), retains existing IRIS assessments in the new database, and mandates biennial ORD certification and reporting to relevant congressional committees starting two years after enactment.