U.S. EPA today announced steps to improve its assessment of health threats posed by chemicals, a program that has come under fire from a National Academy of Sciences panel.

Paul Anastas, the agency's assistant agency administrator who directs the Office of Research and Development, said EPA is making changes to its Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) that will make assessments "shorter, clearer, more concise and more transparent."

In addition, Anastas said EPA will create a new scientific peer review panel that will be charged with reviewing the science behind IRIS assessments.

"We feel an obligation to make these as accessible and transparent as possible," Anastas said on a conference call with reporters.

IRIS assessments serve as the basis for all EPA regulatory actions that limit chemicals in the environment or commerce.

The announcement responds to a recent NAS panel review of IRIS's formaldehyde assessment. While it agreed with some of the conclusions EPA made in the report, the panel criticized IRIS's scientific methodologies and dedicated an entire chapter to recommending ways IRIS should improve.

"Overall, the committee found that EPA's draft assessment was not prepared in a logically consistent fashion, lacks clear links to an underlying conceptual framework and does not sufficiently document methods and criteria used to identify evidence for selecting and evaluating studies," the NAS panel said (Greenwire, April 8).

Anastas said EPA is planning to follow through on the NAS panel's recommendations.

"We welcome those suggestions and are committed to incorporating them fully," he said.

In addition to the new panel, Anastas said future IRIS assessments will be shorter and will include more graphs and tabular representations of data. EPA will also evaluate the strengths and weakness of important studies that are used in IRIS assessments in a more uniform way.

EPA's announcement also comes two days before Anastas is set to testify before Congress on IRIS (E&E Daily, July 11).

Cal Dooley, the president of the American Chemistry Council, said he welcomed EPA's move because most of the group's concerns with IRIS were articulated in the NAS review.

"We're pleased that EPA recognizes they have a problem and that their IRIS program is in need of reform," Dooley said in an interview.

Anastas' announcement, however, stopped short of the council's call for all IRIS assessments to be submitted to NAS for review.

"We would also suggest that EPA should still submit IRIS assessments to NAS for peer review," Dooley said.