At the beginning of May, THE Environmental protection agency announced that it would divide the main arm of the agency dedicated to scientific research. According to a report From NPR, scientists from the Research and Development Office of 1,500 people were invited to apply around 500 new scientific research positions that would be sprinkled in other areas of the agency – and expect new discounts to their organization in the coming weeks.
This reorganization threatens the existence of a tiny but crucial program hosted within this office: the integrated risk information system program, commonly known as IRIS. This program is responsible for providing independent research on the risks of chemicals, by helping other offices within the agency establishing regulations for chemicals and compounds which could constitute a danger to human health. The program leader recently left, Before the announcement of the restructuring.
The reorganization of EPA, according to experts, will probably interrupt this crucial program – which has been targeted for decades by the chemical industry and right -wing interests.
“Unfortunately, at the moment, it seems that the polluters have won,” explains Thomas Burke, founder and emeritus director of the Johns Hopkins Risk Sciences and Public Policy Institute and former deputy administrator of the EPA Research and Development Office.
“The announcement of May 2 is part of a larger and complete effort to restructure the entire agency,” said EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou, Wired in an email. “EPA works quickly thanks to the reorganization process and will provide additional information when they are available.”
Trained in the mid -1980s, the IRIS program was designed to study the impacts on the health of chemicals, by sticking the best research available from around the world to provide analyzes of the potential dangers of new and existing substances. The program gives other offices within EPA to identify the best chemicals that deserve more in -depth research and studies.
Unlike other EPA offices, the IRIS program has no regulatory responsibility; There is rather only to provide a science on which to base new potential regulations. Experts say that this instills assessments produced by IRIS from external pressures that could influence the research carried out in other areas of the agency.
“There is independence” in being in a centralized program like Iris, explains Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, also a former main assistant assistant of the Office of Research and Development and former scientific advisor to EPA. “They do not try to assess the risk for specific use. They simply assess the risks and provide basic information. ”
Since its creation, Iris has created a database Over 570 Chemicals and composed with evaluations of their potential effects for human health. This set of research not only underpins federal policy, but also helps to guide state and international regulations.
The IRIS database is “the gold stallion for health assessments for chemical pollutants”, explains Burke. “Practically all our regulated pollutants, practically all our cleanings, practically all our main successes in the regulation of toxic chemicals have been affected by IRIS or IRIS staff.”
However, Iris has faced an important climbing battle in recent years. On the one hand, there is the number of chemicals that he had to review with a limited workforce. There is more than 80,000 chemicals who have been registered in the United States, and chemical companies register hundreds of others each year. Some of the chemicals that have worked in research have been concerned about years, while some have recently carried out a new exam. For example, chemicals forever – synthetic materials thus named because of their persistence in the environment – have been used for decades, but their recent prevalence in water and soil tests has encouraged iris 2019 To start creating assessment projects for five common types of these chemicals.