“The fact that these studies aren’t being included means there’s a very good chance there are some chemical assessments where we should have reached different conclusions,” said another EPA staff member who is familiar with the chemical assessment process. The information comes in the wake of evidence of dysfunction and corruption in the EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics that five whistleblowers have provided to The Intercept, the EPA inspector general, and members of Congress since July. All five remain employed by the agency and are working with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, an organization that represents whistleblowers.
According to the emailed response from the agency, “EPA routinely uses all studies submitted to the agency, including 8e submissions, in TSCA new and existing chemical risk evaluations.” The statement acknowledged the difficulty of using the internal database, called CIS, on which the reports were loaded. “Some aspects of navigating CIS may be cumbersome, especially for assessors with less experience in doing so, and EPA has developed plans and proposals for updates and modernization, but their implementation has been hindered by a lack of resources,” it said.
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