Chemical safety ranks among the highest priorities in the world. Hazardous chemical spills receive the appropriate attention from the press and regulators, along with federal, state, and local officials. The issues which remain mysterious are surrounding the chemicals which are intertwined in our everyday lives. Consumer products and manufacturing processes which use chemicals which are destructive on the environment fall under the purview of the chemical regulators.
Federal, state, and local agencies have regulators who keep track of chemicals which are registered with the government. Of course, the caveat is that a large number of chemicals which are used in industry are not registered for various reasons. One of which is due to the backlog of chemicals which are entered on the Toxic Substance Control Act. More on that later.
The take-home message is that the Environmental Protection Agency is responsible for updating chemical inventories of all chemicals used in the United States. Chemicals which could present a hazard to human health or the environment. The assessment tool which the Environment Protection Agency uses is called the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS). More information can be found here about IRIS.
Congress is in charge of oversight over the EPA to ensure that the organization is carrying out the duties discharged to the from our elected officials. Every few months, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is called in front of Congress to testify about any potential issues, conflicts, or general questions which might arise out of everyday operation and oversight. Usually, such Congressional hearings are not problematic. The hearings are a back and forth discussion/update to our elected officials. Lately, with the Trump Administration, the hearings have been highly unusual.
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler along with other EPA officials seem to believe that the EPA does not need to answer to Congress at all. This has caused considerable concern in Congress.
A letter from Congresswoman Bernice Johnson states the problems at the EPA with Congress:
July 18, 2019
The Honorable Andrew Wheeler
Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency
1301 Constitution Ave. NW
Washington, D.C., 20460
Dear Administrator Wheeler,
I write to follow up on the repeated requests the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology ("the Committee") has issued to EPA regarding the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program. Over the past five months, EPA has stonewalled this Committee--preventing a coequal branch of government from conducting Constitutionally-mandated oversight. I am deeply troubled by this lack of cooperation with our efforts to evaluate a program so vital to ensuring the health and safety of the American people, and this behavior fits into a disturbing pattern of obstruction and disrespect of Congressional authority.
EPA's intransigence and continued disregard for Congressional oversight demands has made it clear that use of compulsory power by this Committee is in order.
Background on Committee Inquiries
EPA's IRIS program is responsible for characterizing the health hazards of chemicals, through hazard identification and dose-response assessments, which are particularly important for understanding how chemicals impact children, pregnant women, the elderly, and the immunocompromised. IRIS last completed an assessment of formaldehyde in 1990, and since that time, significant new data has emerged. In 2009 researchers at the National Cancer Institute, the U.S. National Toxicology Program and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) all released study results linking formaldehyde to leukemia. At that same time, IRIS had already initiated work on a draft for an updated health hazard assessment for formaldehyde. The draft was released in June of 2010. In January 2018, your predecessor, Administrator Scott Pruitt, confirmed to the Senate that the formaldehyde assessment had been finalized, concluding that formaldehyde causes leukemia, but that it was being held up (Ref. 1).
However, on December 19, 2018, EPA quietly removed formaldehyde and nine other chemical assessments from its program outlook, effectively stopping all efforts to finalize the reviews already in progress (Ref. 2). When pressed for an explanation by Members of Congress and the press, EPA defended its decision to reduce the IRIS workflow by nearly half by citing the need to conserve time and resources (Ref. 3) and pointed to a newly-instituted prioritization process involving a two-part survey of EPA program offices. The Agency has rebuffed the Committee's attempts to understand the prioritization process and how the benefits of eliminating several late-stage chemical assessments, including formaldehyde, outweigh the harms to the public.
Committee Requests for Information from EPA
On February 5, 2019, Committee staff emailed EPA Congressional Affairs requesting a staff-level briefing on the IRIS program and its dropping on the formaldehyde review from its December 2018 program outlook. After a back-and-forth regarding scheduling, EPA Congressional Affairs requested that "all congressional requests for briefings [be] sent via a formal letter from the member."(Ref. 4) This is highly unusual and constitutes an artificial barrier to information to which Committee staff is entitled in order to perform their role.
On March 4, 2019, I wrote with three of my colleagues in the Senate to EPA to request documents relating to EPA's elimination of the IRIS formaldehyde assessment (Ref. 5). My Senate colleagues were informed by EPA Congressional Affairs that EPA intended to treat the request as a Senate Minority request rather than a House Majority request, as my signature was not listed first (Ref. 6). We understand this as EPA's attempt to undermine the authority of a Chairwoman. The deadline for materials requested was April 5, but we have yet to receive any responsive documents.
On March 27, 2019, the Committee held a hearing entitled "EPA's IRIS Program: Reviewing its Progress and Roadblocks Ahead." At this hearing, we reviewed the Government Accountability Office's March 4 report on IRIS, wherein GAO found that political appointees within EPA are hindering the program's productivity, communication, and transparency. This included EPA's opaque process of selecting priority chemicals, its order that IRIS cease releasing documentation to the public, it's undermining of the chronically understaffed IRIS program through staff reassignments and the mysterious delay of the long-completed formaldehyde report. The Committee requested testimony from Dr. Kristina Thayer, head of the IRIS program. Instead, EPA sent Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator for Science, Dr. Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta. At the hearing, it became clear that Dr. Orme-Zavaleta was not involved in many of the decisions at the core of the Committee's investigation of the program, and she was not prepared by the Agency to answer basic questions about relevant events from the past year.
At the hearing, Congressman Paul Tonko inquired about the Office of Children's Health Protection's (OCHP) response to the IRIS prioritization surveys. Dr. Orme-Zavaleta affirmed that OCHP did respond to the second-round survey. Congressman Tonko asked Dr. Orme-Zavaleta if formaldehyde was one of the priority chemicals listed and she responded:
"I believe formaldehyde was one of the chemicals, but we can get back with you. I don't recall the full list."(Ref. 7)
EPA has failed to remit OCHP's survey response to the Committee despite repeated reminders.
On April 3, the Committee sent a letter to you requesting a briefing on the announcement that EPA was officially discontinuing IRIS's work on formaldehyde (Ref. 8). The letter outlined specific questions that were asked in the hearing that Dr. Orme-Zavaleta was unable to answer. EPA has yet to offer a date for this briefing.
On April 11, the Committee followed up on our March 27 hearing with formal questions for the record. To date -- four months after the hearing -- the Committee has not received any response. This failure to respond to routine questions for the record is highly unusual.
On April 24, an EPA Congressional Affairs staffer returned the Agency's edits to the Committee transcript, which are supposed to be clarifications to clerical errors in the stenographer's record. But in that message the staffer suggested an edit to the transcript that would change the substance of Dr. Orme-Zavaleta's response to another question regarding OCHP. The staffer asked the Committee to omit her assertion that OCHP's response came a day after the December IRIS memo was released (Ref. 9). This is an outrageous attempt to change the record in order to circumvent Congressional oversight and improve public perceptions of EPA's actions.
During a staff-level phone call on May 3, EPA Congressional Affairs attempted to change course altogether, claiming that Dr. Orme-Zavaleta never told the Committee that the Agency would follow up about OCHP's response to the second-round IRIS survey, despite the clear exchange documented in the hearing transcript. In any event, the second-round IRIS survey is also part of the response we would expect to receive in response to our March 4 document request.
During the May3 phone call, EPA Congressional Affairs also promised to deliver the following by May 10: responses to the March 4 bicameral letter, the OCHP second-round survey response, and responses to questions for the hearing record (Ref. 10). The Committee has yet to receive any of these items.
Your staff in Congressional Affairs has made every effort to obstruct the Committee's oversight, going so far as to attempt to change the substance of the record. At this point, the Committee has exhausted all non-compulsory means of conducting oversight over EPA. The Agency's obstruction of Congress is particularly disturbing considering the implications of the matter at hand for children's health.
EPA must provide to the Committee the following responsive material by the accompanying deadlines:
1) All documents responsive to the March 4, 2019 letter by August 1, 2019;
2) The OCHP second-round IRIS survey response by the close of business on July 19, 2019;
3) A date for the briefing requested in the April 3, 2019 letter must be agreed upon by July 22, 2019. The briefing must occur before August 7, 2019. David Dunlap, Kristina Thayer, and Tina Bahadori should be present and available for questions at the briefing;
4) Answers to the questions for the record sent on April 11, 2019, by August 1, 2019.
Please respond in full by the provided deadlines or the Committee will be forced to use compulsory measures.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss compliance with requests made to date, please contact Ms. Janie Thompson by 202-225-6376
Sincerely,
Eddie Bernice Johnson
Chairwoman
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
CC: Ranking Member Frank Lucas, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
The blatant disrespect for Congressional oversight by the EPA officials under the Trump Administration is very concerning. Anyone who is made aware of the letter above should be outraged at the inability of Congress to exert more power over the federal agencies such as the EPA to protect the average American. This protection should extend to the environment too.
Unfortunately, the current state of affairs in the government is a significant lack of regulation. Part of the problem is that the many federal, state and local agencies are understaffed. The Trump administration has advocated for a massive reduction in staff numbers at these agencies to save money. Although the question arises from saving money by understaffing agencies:
Who suffers from a lack of regulation?
The answer is the American taxpayer. The American consumer. The U.S. resident.
We pay for these agencies to enforce safety regulations to protect Americans from hazardous chemicals both to the environment and human health. Why is that enforcement not happening? The answer is in the letter above. A lack of direction exists at the top of these organizations. Which trickles down to the lower level staff not to carry out enforcement at the local level. This is deeply concerning.
Each of us should call our elected officials and demand greater oversight over federal agencies. The same agencies tasked with monitoring products which can negatively impact our health and the health of the environment.
Take action today.
We should demand nothing less.
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