[CPEO-MEF] Getting the Fox out of the Henhouse

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

[Please excuse the duplicate postings. - LS]

Getting the Fox out of the Henhouse:
Restoring the Integrity of EPA's Process for Determining the Toxicity of 
Industrial and Military Chemicals

Testimony by Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight

before the
Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight
House Committee on Science and Technology
June 12, 2008

Executive Summary

The Environmental Protection Agency's Integrated Risk Information System 
(IRIS) is the foundation of most of the federal, state, and tribal risk 
management decisions that determine the safety of the air we breathe, 
the water we drink, and soil under our feet. The quantitative judgments 
embedded in IRIS may read like a foreign language or quantum physics to 
most Americans, but they affect our health, our environment, and our 
property.

Unfortunately, over the past several years, the White House and federal 
agencies that are among the world's greatest polluters have hijacked 
EPA's authority to conduct human health risk assessments. EPA's April 
announcement of a new IRIS process simply institutionalizes an approach 
- used for perchlorate and trichloroethylene (TCE) - that unnecessarily 
puts Americans at risk. In lay terms, the fox is now managing the henhouse.

In my prepared testimony I tell the story of trichloroethylene. Federal 
agencies have delayed and perhaps prevented the establishment of more 
protective health standards for TCE, following a pattern that appears to 
be a precedent for the new IRIS process. In 2001 EPA issued a Draft 
Human Health Risk Assessment for TCE. Though its Science Advisory Board 
generally endorsed that study, EPA - under pressure from the White House 
and federal polluting agencies - withdrew the 2001 findings. It turned 
the issue of TCE toxicity over to the Interagency Working Group and sent 
it to the National Academies of Sciences for re-review. Meanwhile, EPA 
scientists significantly weakened the standards they were using to guide 
vapor intrusion investigations in my community of Mountain View, 
California. Though in July 2006 the Academies of Sciences told EPA and 
the other agencies to move quickly to promulgate a TCE standard, EPA has 
done little.

EPA risk findings make a difference. It's the difference between 
response and inaction in the bedroom of Jane's son in Mountain View, 
California. It's the difference between water treatment and inaction in 
Shirley's former home in Bayport, Minnesota. According to an Air Force 
scientist, it's a difference of $5 billion in the cost of groundwater 
treatment at 1400 Defense Department sites.

People impacted by TCE, perchlorate, and other toxic substances have 
called upon EPA to withdraw its recent IRIS changes and instead create a 
process based upon the three following principles:

1. All stakeholders, including the affected public, private polluters, 
and federal polluting agencies, should have the same access to the 
decision-making process for the assessment of hazardous substances.

2. Federally funded risk-relevant research should be managed by agencies 
that do not have conflicts of interest - that is, agencies that will 
incur significant costs or encumbrances associated with more protective 
health and environmental standards should not control these research 
activities.

3. The entire process of assessing hazardous substances should be 
carried out in the sunshine, with oversight by the public, the press, 
and by Congress.


...

To download all of Lenny Siegel's prepared testimony, go to
http://www.cpeo.org/pubs/IRISTestimony.pdf

To download other statements from the hearing, as well as the webcast, 
go to 
http://www.science.house.gov/publications/hearings_markups_details.aspx?NewsID=2217

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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