EPA Draft Finds Formaldehyde Poses Leukemia Risks But Stalls Study

摘要

After years of additional study and scientific review, EPA has again preliminarily found that formaldehyde poses leukemia and other cancer risks, according to Democratic senators, who say the draft finding has prompted Trump EPA appointees to block release of the assessment and they are urging Administrator Scott Pruitt to quickly release it. Pointing to Pruitt's "back to basics" agenda for EPA, Sens. Tom Carper (DE), Ed Markey (MA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) say in a May 17 letter to Pruitt that in their opinion, "assessing chemicals for their effects on human health is a basic part of EPA's mission to protect human health" and urge the administrator to "ensure there are no further efforts to delay or block the publication of this assessment that has serious implications for public health." Relevant documents are available on InsideEPA.com. (Doc. ID: 211962) The senators say they have learned that the latest draft Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessment of formaldehyde was completed "during the fall of 2017," but has yet to proceed through the regular intra-agency review process normally undertaken before the document is released for inter-agency review, public comment, and peer review. They argue that "EPA by now should have published the assessment for public comment," but that it has not because "multiple political appointees within EPA have expressed reluctance to move the assessment through the agency review process, have repeatedly set up briefings on the assessment only to later cancel them, and/or have insisted that IRIS first set up briefings for industry stakeholders before completing agency review."