Monday, August 31, 2009

EPA's Chemical Backlog Long And Lingering

By Michelle Williams  

John Stephenson

Director of GAO's Natural Resources and Environment Division

The Environmental Protection Agency's process for assessing chemicals joined some dubious company in January when the Government Accountability Office added it to its list of programs at high risk of waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement.

GAO is concerned that EPA's Integrated Risk Information System, the database that houses the assessments of toxic chemicals, might become obsolete because of how long it takes to complete the assessments. This is a problem because the information from the database is used by EPA to decide how to best regulate the chemicals. In one of its reports, GAO noted that some of the chemicals that have been in the process the longest are likely to cause cancer or other serious conditions.

John Stephenson, GAO's Director of Natural Resources and Environment, says EPA is making slow progress under new chief Lisa Jackson, but "we want to continue to be vigilant."

NationalJournal.com recently met with Stephenson to discuss the process and how EPA is handling it.

NJ: Do you think this is as serious as revamping the financial regulatory system, another one of the high-risk programs?

Stephenson: Oh, absolutely. I mean, think of all the chemicals that are used in all the products that we use every day. We're all exposed to chemicals. Chemicals are wonderful things if used properly, but ensuring that they are used safely and protecting consumers in general from those chemicals is, we feel -- what can be more important than that?

NJ: At the rate EPA is going, how long will it take to finish?

Stephenson: There are 540 chemicals that have chemical risk assessment information in the database. The requirement is that we will re-look at those dangerous chemicals once every 10 years. There are new chemicals that need assessments; some have been in the assessment process for a decade or longer. So at the current pace, which is one, two or three a year over the past several years, they'll never finish the job.

NJ: Should the public be concerned?

Stephenson: I think so. I mean, rule-making at the Environmental Protection Agency is kind of a mundane process. But at the end of the tunnel, that's what leads to, say, a label on pesticides, on cautions on how to use that pesticide to make sure you don't come into contact with it. Or if it's a very, very dangerous chemical, ban the chemical outright and force the chemical industry to find a safer alternative.

NJ: Why has it taken EPA so long to complete these assessments?

Stephenson: Well, at first it was kind of a process issue. There were actually too many points at which other federal agencies, other stakeholders, would have a chance to comment. We think the process should be very open. It was not in the past. A lot of times the administration would declare the process deliberative and not for public view.... And we think the planning was lax. They could have done a better job on which chemicals are in need of assessments so that the academic community and the research community could bring to bear all the assessments that were recent in the area for a given chemical. There are lots of things that they could do to speed up what had become an eight-to-10-year process to what we think is a more reasonable two-to-three-year process.

NJ: Dioxin, a chemical that EPA has recognized as a likely human carcinogen, has been in the assessment process for almost two decades. Why is it taking so long to assess dioxin?

Stephenson: It's hard to tell. You've got to think the end result of these assessments is that someone's going to have to do something, going to clean it up, and it's going to cost a lot of money. So there's a lot of care and attention being given to just how risky is this chemical; what would we need if we put a chemical control designation on it; what would it cost to clean it up? The Department of Defense uses many of these chemicals, and so they would be tasked with cleaning up. Should there be a standard or regulation for a chemical? And there's a legitimate concern about the scientific research. There's generally research that's contradicting on both sides of the argument. And they have to sift through all that research. But we think better planning and shortening the process in general should be feasible for all chemicals.

NJ: What were some of the recommendations you gave EPA to help them improve the process?

Stephenson: Transparency was important, better planning on the front end, having research available, not stopping an assessment to wait for research -- all these things led to the time-consuming nature of it [in the old process]. You would finish an assessment, you'd think you were finished, a new piece of research would be introduced, you'd go back to the drawing board. So it was an endless cycle of assessment and reassessment and they never finalized anything. All the while the public is at risk from this chemical if it is indeed dangerous.

NJ: In May, EPA announced its new assessment process to revitalize the program. Are they on the right track?

Stephenson: We think that the new process, as unveiled by Administrator Jackson, is largely responsive to our recommendations. Nevertheless, they only completed one or two assessments in the last fiscal year up until the time of the testimony. So the way we put it is that it's a step in the right direction, but we want to continue to be vigilant.

NJ: Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Stephenson: They are employing a risk-based approach. They know what family of dangerous chemicals should be assessed, and we hope they're focusing their resources on those and letting the less dangerous chemicals wane. But it's just too soon to tell....

Again, this is the first step to determining how to control dangerous chemicals. And if you can't get the first step completed, then you can't get steps 2 and 3 completed and the public is not protected. That's our view. If it takes 10 years, that's 10 years unnecessarily the public is at risk from a given chemical.

In a related video, NationalJournal.com's Michelle Williams asks whether she and others should be worried about EPA's backlog of chemical assessments.