The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a new report on April 11, 2018, that finds that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) Program has made “substantial progress” in implementing recommendations outlined by the National Academies in previous reports. According to the April 11, 2018, press release, the transformation of IRIS began several years ago, after the release of a 2011 National...
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On September 6, 2017, at 10:00 a.m. (EDT), the House Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittees on Environment and on Oversight will hold a joint hearing on “Examining the Scientific and Operational Integrity of EPA’s IRIS Program.” The following witnesses are scheduled to testify: President Trump’s proposed budget request for fiscal year 2018 would have eliminated EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) Program, although the IRIS Program is included in...
Facing a government shutdown, late on April 30, 2017, lawmakers reached agreement on a spending bill that funds the federal government through September 2017, which is the end of Fiscal Year (FY) 2017. President Trump’s budget blueprint sought to slash EPA’s coffers by some 31 percent (and more if certain programs were eliminated from the base). The deal reached by lawmakers, however, would essentially fund EPA at its current levels and retain current staff...
According to press reports, Nancy Beck, Ph.D., DABT has been hired as the Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP). Dr. Beck holds a doctorate in environmental health from the University of Washington. For the past five years she served as the Senior Director for Regulatory Science Policy at the American Chemistry Council (ACC). For a decade prior to ACC, she was an...
On May 6, 2014, the National Research Council (NRC) released a Congressionally mandated, EPA-sponsored report finding that EPA has made "substantial improvements" to its Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) since 2011. While the report acknowledges these improvements, it provides recommendations for further IRIS enhancements. For instance, according to the National Academies' press release on the report, "to ensure that the IRIS program provides the best assessments...