The Environmental Protection Agency may estimate health risks from chemicals

In early May, the Environmental Protection Agency It has announced that it will divide the agency’s main arm arm for scientific research. According to a report From NPR, scientists have been informed of the 1500-year-old research and development office with approximately 500 new scientific research jobs that will be sprayed in other areas of the agency-and more discounts are expected to their organization in the coming weeks.

This reorganization threatens the presence of a small but decisive program in this office: Integrated Risk Information System program, usually referred to as IRIS. This program is responsible for providing independent research on the dangers of chemicals, and helping other offices within the agency to develop regulations for chemicals and vehicles that can pose a danger to human health. Program leader He left recently, Before announcing the restructuring.

Experts say the reorganization of the Environmental Protection Agency is likely to separate this decisive program-which has been targeted for decades by the chemical industry and right-wing interests.

Thomas Burke, founder and honorary director at the Johns Hopkins Institute of Risks, Public Policy Institute and former Assistant Deputy Assistant to the EPA Research and Development Office.

“The May 2 announcement is part of a greater and comprehensive effort to restructure the entire agency,” said Molly Vasilio, a spokeswoman for the Environmental Protection Agency. “The Environmental Protection Agency works urgently through the reorganization process and will provide additional information when available.”

The IRIS program was formed in the mid -eighties of the last century, designed to investigate the health effects of chemicals, as the best research available from all over the world to provide analyzes of potential risks from new and current materials. The program is raised with other offices within the Environmental Protection Agency to determine the best chemicals that are important to it that deserves more research and study.

Unlike other offices of the Environmental Protection Agency, IRIS does not bear organizational responsibilities; Instead, it only exists to provide the flag on which new possible regulations are established. Experts say this isolates the iris rates from external pressures that can affect research conducted in other areas of the agency.

“There is independence” in a central program like Iris, “says Jennifer Urmi Zavalita, a former deputy assistant at the Research and Development Office and a former science consultant at the Environmental Protection Agency. “They are not trying to evaluate the risk for a specific purpose. They only have risks and provide basic information.”

From its inception, IRIS has created a database for More than 570 Chemicals and compounds with possible assessments of human health effects. The research group does not only support this federal policy, but also helps in directing international and international regulations.

Berk says the IRIS database is the “Golden Standard for Healthy Chemicals.” “Almost all our organized pollutants, almost all of our cleaning operations, almost all our main successes in organizing toxic chemicals have been touched by an iris or IRIS employees.”

However, Iris has faced a great arduous battle in recent years. For one of them, there are a large number of chemicals that have been forced to review with the limited workforce. there More than 80,000 chemicals This was recorded for use in the United States, and chemical companies record hundreds of more every year. Some IRIS chemicals have been working on research for years, while some have recently drew a new audit. For example, the chemicals were forever – homogeneous materials this way because of their stability in the environment – under decades, but their recent spread in water and soil tests prompted Iris in 2019 To start creating the evaluation draft for five common types of these chemicals.