Toxic Communities: How EPA’s IRIS Program Fails the Public

Opening Statement By Chairman Brad Miller

Good morning and welcome to our second hearing on EPA’s Integrated Risk Assessment System – IRIS.

The glacial pace at which EPA is completing assessments of chemicals has real consequences for public health and tragic consequences for individuals and their families.

Completion of an IRIS assessment is just the first step in the process protecting people from dangerous exposures to toxic chemicals.  With an IRIS assessment in place, it is easier to deal with the cleanup of chemical contamination of the air or water, to adopt safer practices in the workplace and to consider steps to regulate toxic substances that can harm our children and our communities.

The Government Accountability Office’s recent report on IRIS concluded that EPA’s process for initiating and completing IRIS assessments resulted in proposals that are in preparation for more than 5 years, with some assessments taking more than a decade.  The new process that EPA and OMB instituted just this past April will add additional years to IRIS assessments.

The years of added study and discussion regarding IRIS assessments come on top of a regulatory process that is burdened with very time consuming steps for a complete risk assessment, cost-benefit analyses, and internal and external reviews as laid down in Executive Orders and statute.  Even after a regulation is finalized, it can be challenged in court and sent back to the Agency for revision.  When finally established a new regulation usually includes some time, often many years, for the affected parties to "transition" away from the practices that are being regulated.

During this entire process, exposures continue, toxic substances remain un-regulated or under-regulated in commerce, and contamination is not cleaned up or not cleaned up to a level that we think is actually safe.

Today we will hear from people who have lived, and are living with, these consequences.  These people will describe what their families and communities have endured for years – situations that no one would wish to experience for even one day.

While the failures of the IRIS database are not responsible for these experiences, the gaps in IRIS, and the improper intrusion of politics into database entries, have likely contributed to the situations that these people and their communities have had to deal with.  When state and local authorities get poor information, or no information, from IRIS regarding the health hazards of a particular pollutant, their response to pollution in a community is likely to be confused and confusing.  When citizens can’t turn to IRIS for information – and the database gets 20,000 web hits a year – then it is hard for them to know what they are fighting for in terms of clean-ups and health risks.

The worst thing about these families’ experiences is that they are likely to be repeated because exposures to the chemical that led to their problems continue.  Trichloroethylene or TCE was discovered in the early 1900s and has been on the market and widely used since the 1920s as a degreaser.  Discovery of its toxic properties eliminated its use as an analgesic in the 1930s and by the 1970s evidence in animal experiments indicated it might cause cancer.  It is one of the most frequently occurring contaminants in Superfund sites and it is present in air, drinking water, and soils.

EPA has been working on a revised TCE assessment since 1989.  Two years ago, following interventions by NASA, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense and OMB, the National Academy reviewed EPA’s draft IRIS assessment and the science available on TCE and said that: "evidence on carcinogenic risk and other health hazards from exposure to trichloroethylene has strengthened since 2001..…  Priority should be given to finalizing the risk assessment so that risk management decisions can be made expeditiously."

Expeditiously?  Expeditious is not a word that describes this situation.  GAO estimates that EPA will not complete their TCE assessment until 2010 – that’s twenty one years from their original start date.

If they complete the assessment in 2010, we will still be years away from regulatory action.  People will have been exposed to a known toxic substance for decades, for a generation, while the government engages in study after study.  Have we become so obsessed with getting the science right that we have lost sight of our real goal – protecting public health?  Or, is getting the science right a pretext for obstruction?

This system defies common sense.  It is broken, and it is condemning people to future health problems.

I now yield to my distinguished colleague, the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, Rep. Sensenbrenner, for an opening statement.

Witnesses

Panel

1 - Mr. Jerome Ensminger
Master Sergeant U.S. Marine Corps (ret). U.S. Marine Corps (ret).
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4 - Dr. David Hoel
Distinguished University Professor, College of Medicine Medical University of South Carolina Medical University of South Carolina
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3 - Dr. Linda Greer
Director, Health Program Natural Resources Defense Council Natural Resources Defense Council
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2 - Mr. Lenny Siegel
Executive Director The Center for Public Environmental Oversight The Center for Public Environmental Oversight
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