Former EPA Research Chief Proposes Provocative Overhaul Of IRIS Program

摘要

As the leaders of EPA's influential Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) struggle to make the program more rigorous and increase its productivity, former Bush EPA research chief George Gray is suggesting the agency alter the types of risk estimates the program publishes, a change he argues would reduce uncertainties and improve the program. But Gray's proposal at an Oct. 15-16 EPA workshop was met with concern from agency speakers, including a regional office scientist and an economist who both raised concerns about the limitations of the approach. Gray, now an environmental health professor at George Washington University, was among the speakers at a workshop EPA hosted to discuss some of the recommendations the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) provided for the IRIS program in a report released last spring. Gray argued that by publishing margin of exposure (MoE) risk estimates rather than reference doses, the IRIS program could reduce the uncertainty and science policy inherent in its risk estimates and as a result, increase its productivity.