WASHINGTON, DC, January 22, 2009 (ENS) – The assessment and control of toxic chemicals by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was today added to the list of federal government programs, policies, and operations at high risk for waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement or in need of broad-based transformation.

The list is updated every two years and released at the start of each new Congress by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to help in setting oversight agendas.

Gene Dodaro, acting comptroller general of the United States and head of the GAO, released the 2009 list at a bipartisan briefing on Capitol Hill with leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Also added to the High Risk List are the regulatory system governing U.S. financial institutions and markets and the Food and Drug Administration’s oversight of medical products.

At the same time, Dodaro said, enough progress has been made to remove one item from the list – the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic control modernization.

These changes result in 30 government programs and operations on GAO’s 2009 High-Risk List.

Testing chemicals in a contract lab (Photo courtesy Validation Laboratories Inc)

“The three areas added to this year’s High-Risk List are all vital to the public’s well being,” Dodaro said. “It’s clear that basic changes are needed to how the federal government regulates the financial system, oversees medical products, and assesses and controls toxic chemicals.”

“I am hopeful that the inclusion of these issues will lead to greater scrutiny and spur needed reforms,” he said.

EPA’s ability to protect public health and the environment depends on credible and timely assessments of the risks posed by toxic chemicals. Its Integrated Risk Information System, which contains assessments of more than 500 toxic chemicals, is at serious risk of becoming obsolete because EPA has been unable to keep its existing assessments current or to complete assessments of important chemicals of concern, according to the GAO.

Overall, EPA has finished only nine assessments in the past three years. At the end of 2007, most of the 70 ongoing assessments had been underway for more than five years.

EPA urgently needs to streamline and increase the transparency of this assessment process, the GAO says.

The agency also requires additional authority than that currently provided in the Toxics Substance Control Act to obtain health and safety information from the chemical industry and to shift more of the burden to chemical companies to demonstrate the safety of their products.

Overall, the EPA is not the government department that appears most often on the GAO’s High Risk List.

“The Department of Defense continues to dominate the High Risk List,” Dodaro said. “The military’s lack of progress is of growing concern to GAO. DOD owns eight areas on the High Risk List outright, and it shares government wide responsibility for an additional seven areas.”

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WASHINGTON, DC, January 5, 2008 (ENS) – The Chesapeake Bay Foundation today filed a lawsuit to require the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reduce pollution of all kinds enough to remove the nation’s largest estuary from the federal impaired waters list.

Calling it “the most significant lawsuit in the history of Bay restoration,” with “unprecedented national implications,” the nonprofit foundation is asking the court to order EPA to reduce pollution from all sources – air, wastewater treatment plants, and urban, suburban, and agricultural runoff.

“We have asked that EPA accept its responsibility under the Clean Water Act. EPA must impose a legally binding pollution reduction budget, or cap, that will restore water quality,” said CBF President William Baker.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia following the expiry on Saturday of a legally required 60 day notice of intent to sue.

Runoff from a Silver Spring, Maryland shopping
center parking lot into Sligo Creek. This
tributary of the Anacostia River feeds into
the Potomac River and eventually empties
into the Chesapeake Bay. (Photo by ArknTina)

“While discussions have occurred, we have not been able to resolve our claims during the 60 day notice period,” said Baker.

“Despite EPA’s assertions to the contrary, CBF believes that after 25 years of failed policies the only way to ensure that EPA does its job is to have a court order requiring it,” Baker said.

Since 1983, EPA and the Bay states have signed three agreements to restore the Chesapeake Bay. The most recent, the Chesapeake 2000 agreement, committed to reduce pollution sufficiently to have the Bay removed from the federal impaired waters list by 2010.

EPA has acknowledged that the goal will not be met and there is now discussion of pushing that goal back to 2020 or beyond.

In addition, over the past several years, three EPA Inspector General’s reports and one Government Accountability Office report have detailed EPA’s leadership failures.

Baker blames the Bush administration for the declining water quality of the Chesapeake Bay.

“Over the last eight years the EPA, which has the responsibility to lead the effort to enforce the Clean Water Act, has abdicated leadership and weakened regulations that would have reduced pollution,” Baker said. “The rule of science and the rule of law have been subjugated to political dogma and a policy of deregulation that has wreaked havoc from financial markets to environmental protection.”

“Science has provided a roadmap for Bay restoration and EPA has the tools to get the job done,” he said. “The Bay is still polluted due to the lack of political will.”

The Chesapeake Bay is North America’s largest and most biologically diverse estuary, inhabited by 3,600 species of plants, fish and animals, the foundation explains to the court in its complaint.

Co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit are the Virginia State Waterman’s Association, the Maryland Watermen’s Association, the Maryland Saltwater Sportfishermen’s Association, former Maryland Governor Harry Hughes, retired Maryland Senator Bernie Fowler, former Virginia legislator and Natural Resources Secretary Tayloe Murphy, and former Washington, DC Mayor Anthony Williams.

In the January issue of the “Watermen’s Gazette,” Larry Sims, president of the Maryland Watermen’s Association, said, “We were supposed to reach certain goals by the year 2010 as outlined in the Chesapeake 2000 agreement, but now the EPA wants to prolong it to 2022. With any luck, this lawsuit will grab people’s attention and help put pressure on the federal government to live up to their end of the bargain.”

Unfortunately,” said Sims, “this is a nationwide problem as the EPA hasn’t necessarily done their job in any part of this country as far as protecting its resources.”

“With a new administration, there is hope for change,” Baker said. “This lawsuit will put Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts directly in front of the new EPA administrator.”

Chesapeake Bay from the shore at Stevensville,
Maryland (Photo by Rachhan)

“The Chesapeake Bay is a national treasure,” said Baker. “We believe that through this lawsuit, it can also become a model for pollution reduction and the restoration of water quality across the nation.”

Most of the Bay’s waters are degraded, admits the Chesapeake Bay Program, a partnership including the states of Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia; the District of Columbia; the Chesapeake Bay Commission; the U.S. EPA; and participating citizen advisory groups, including the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

In 2007, we were 21 percent of the way toward meeting Bay water quality goals, a drop from 23 percent in 2006, says the Chesapeake Bay Program, CPB.

The Bay’s critical habitats and food web continue to be at risk, the CPB acknowledges. Currently, the Bay’s habitats and lower food web are at 44 percent of desired levels, up from 40 percent in 2006.

Many of the Bay’s fish and shellfish populations are below historic levels, the CPB says. Currently, the Bay’s fish and shellfish are at 52 percent of desired levels, up from 48 percent in 2006.

To begin process of resolving its complaint, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation has provided a list of 33 actions that the federal government can take, including better enforcement of existing laws.

While the foundation did not release all the specifics, some components include:
# Requiring EPA to commit to achieve 80 percent of the pollution reduction goal by 2012, with full implementation by 2015

# Requiring EPA to take an active role in wastewater treatment plant permits to ensure compliance with pollution reduction goals and that there will be no net increase in pollution loadings

# Requiring tough construction stormwater permits at sites that discharge into impaired waters

# Adopting stringent limits for municipal stormwater discharges

# Requiring all power plants that generate air pollution that affects the region’s waterways to install existing technologies that would reduce that pollution

# Requiring that new and existing agricultural conservation funding be geographically targeted to practices that achieve the most pollution reduction

# Requiring that a portion of federal transportation funding be directed to stormwater management on highways

# Creating a costshare program to pay for implementation of best management practices for stormwater management

# Addressing injuries to recreational anglers and commercial watermen

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WASHINGTON, DC, September 18, 2008 (ENS) – U.S. hazardous waste regulations have not stopped exports of toxic used electronics to developing countries, partly because they are not being enforced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, finds a new report issued Wednesday by the investigative branch of Congress.

In the report commissioned by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Government Accountability Office says that in addition to the EPA’s poor enforcement performance, the regulations themselves are too limited to deal with the problem.

Obsolete CRT monitors awaiting export
from the United States. (Photo credit unknown)

The rules address only one type of electronics – the old-fashioned rectangular type of monitors called cathode ray tubes. CRTs are particularly harmful because they can contain as much as four pounds of lead, a known toxin.

But exports of other used electronics flow virtually unrestricted, even to countries where unsafe recycling practices can cause health and environmental problems. This happens, the GAO reports, because the existing hazardous waste regulations assess only how products will react in unlined U.S. landfills.

While more Americans are recycling old computers and more companies are taking them back for recycling, there is a “tsunami of CRTs coming that will end up in developing countries contaminating their land and waters,” said Jim Puckett of the nonprofit Basel Action Network, who first documented computer breaking in China in 2001.

“Thousands of laborers, former farmers were making $1 a day smashing, melting, cooking our old computers,” Puckett told reporters on a teleconference call about the GAO report on Wednesday.

“Whole villages were making their living burning little wires, cooking computer chips, beathing toxic fumes,” he said. “Vats of chips were soaked in acid to extract the gold and all the residues were flushed into the river.”

Woman cooking circuit boards over pool of
molten solder. Taizhou, China 2007. (Photo
© Stuart Isett courtesy Basel
Action Network)

When he returned to the same area last year, Puckett said the scene had expanded with many more workers breaking many more electronic devices.

He says that some of the lead recovered from these scrapped computers is returned to the United States in the form of toys and jewelry that can poison kids.

“We are hopeful that the GAO report will help us achieve a full ban on exporting toxic electronic waste to developing countries,” he said. “Then we can starting taking back and doing recycling.”

Federal legislation is needed, said Puckett, because the current patchwork of state laws and regulations is not effective, and under the Constitution states cannot regulate foreign trade. “They must punt on that and now they’re punting into a black hole,” he told reporters.

The average useful life of a computer is about two years. Americans dispose of at least 50 million computers a year or 3,000 tons each day, and millions more are stored in homes and corporate warehouses awaiting disposal. Each computer contains toxics such as lead, cadmium and mercury, which if disposed of improperly can harm people and the environment.

In January 2007, the EPA began regulating the export of CRTs under a rule that requires companies to notify the agency before exporting CRTs.

But companies easily circumvent this rule, GAO investigators found when they posed as foreign buyers of broken CRTs in Hong Kong, India and Pakistan, among other countries.

They identified 43 U.S. companies that expressed willingness to export these items. “Some of the companies, including ones that publicly tout their exemplary environmental practices, were willing to export CRTs in apparent violation of the CRT rule,” the report states.

Recent surveys made on behalf of the United Nations found that used electronics exported from the United States to many Asian countries are dismantled under unsafe conditions, using methods like open-air incineration and acid baths to extract metals such as copper and gold.

This boy was scavenging on a pile of broken
electronics at the Alaba market, Lagos, Nigeria.
2006. (Photo © Basel Action Network)

GAO observed thousands of requests for these items on e-commerce websites during a three month period, mostly from Asian countries such as China and India, but also from some in Africa.

“Some exported used electronics are handled responsibly in countries with effective regulatory controls and by companies with advanced technologies, but a substantial quantity ends up in countries where disposal practices are unsafe to workers and dangerous to the environment,” the GAO report states.

EPA officials acknowledged compliance problems with its CRT rule but said that because the rule is new, their focus was on educating the regulated community.

The GAO called this reasoning “misplaced” because investigators found so many exporters willing to engage in apparent violations of the CRT rule, even some who are aware of the rule.

The report faults the EPA for not assessing the extent of noncompliance. EPA officials told investigators they have neither plans nor a timetable to develop an enforcement program.

The GAO says hazardous waste regulations should be enforced and also expanded to include computers, printers, and cell phones.

To help make U.S. export controls more consistent with those of other industrialized countries, the GAO recommends that the United States ratify the Basel Convention, an international treaty governing the import and export of hazardous wastes.

Customs and other agencies need to improve identification and tracking of exported used electronics, the GAO recommends.

Congressman Gene Green, a Texas Democrat who chairs the House Subcommittee on the Environment and Hazardous Materials, told reporters on the teleconference that he considers the current EPA administration intransigent.

“The EPA is not as interested in doing what statutorily they should be on this and lots of other issues,” he said.

After the elections in November, said Green, “Whatever happens, we’re going to get ourselves a new EPA administrator.”

Congressman Mike Thompson, a California Democrat and founding member of the congressional E-Waste Working Group in 2005, said that when Congress reconvenes after the elections, “We’ll give a resonable time for a reconstituted working group to put something together, but if nothing emerges, then we’ll have to start from scratch.”

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WASHINGTON, DC, July 28, 2008 (ENS) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is ordering its staff to “not respond to questions or make any statements” if contacted by congressional investigators, reporters or its own Office of Inspector General, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, PEER.

“The order reinforces a growing bunker mentality within an EPA that is the subject of a growing number of probes into political interference with agency operations,” according to PEER, a service organization assisting federal and state public employees in natural resources agencies.

In a June 16, 2008 e-mail distributed throughout EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, managers were asked to “remind your staff” to comply with “these important procedures.”

These procedures forbid staff from speaking with any reporters or representatives of the Government Accountability Office or the EPA Inspector General. If contacted, EPA employees are not supposed to say anything but are to immediately refer the person to a designated public affairs official.

“Inside the current EPA, candor has become the cardinal sin,” said PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, an attorney. Ruch noted that while “this directive is of questionable legality, an agency specialist risks discipline or even termination for disregarding a direct order.”

“The clear intention behind this move is to chill the cubicles by suppressing any uncontrolled release of information,” said Ruch.

U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who chairs the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, today commented on the EPA e-mail to staff concerning procedures for responding to inquiries, saying, “Stephen Johnson is turning the EPA into a secretive, dangerous ally of polluters, instead of a leader in the effort to protect the health and safety of the American people.”

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson testifies
before the Senate Environment and
Public Works Committee. July 11,
2007 (Photo courtesy EPW)

By way of justification, EPA’s Office of Public Affairs defends the order as “standard operating procedures” to promote efficiency and consistency in responding to official investigations.

That office also contends this “procedure was developed in part to respond to a recent IG report” entitled “EPA Can Improve its Oversight of Audit Followup” issued in May 2007.

That cited Inspector General’s report, however, makes no such recommendation and is primarily about how EPA lacks an accountability system for correcting admitted deficiencies identified in previous IG audits.

The cited audit has absolutely nothing to do with reporters or the Government Accountability Office, GAO, which is the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress.

An additional concern is that the directive may illegally obstruct IG or GAO investigations, Ruch said.

Although the EPA Public Affairs claims that the IG “signed off on” the gag order it has not offered written confirmation of that approval. PEER’s inquiry to the EPA Inspector General’s General Counsel as to the propriety of this directive has gone unanswered.

Currently, the EPA Inspector General position is vacant.

Today, EPA is the target of intense congressional scrutiny, including attempts to subpoena agency files.

Following increasingly contentious hearings, Administrator Johnson has refused to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, but gave no reasons for his refusal.

On Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont canceled a hearing scheduled for July 30 at which Johnson was invited to present testimony about the EPA’s refusal to provide Congress with documents related to the public health risks of global warming.

Leahy said he called the hearing after an investigation in the Environment and Public Works Committee “uncovered what appears to be an effort by the Bush-Cheney administration to shield the truth about the effects of global warming from Congress and the American people by interfering with scientific conclusions and regulatory decisions that Congress intended to be answered by the science experts at EPA.”

“There are serious questions whether the White House improperly influenced EPA to deny California’s request for a Clean Air Act waiver,” Senator Leahy said. “This waiver would not only have allowed California to enforce tougher emissions standards, it would have allowed other states, including Vermont, to do the same.”

“This is only the latest skirmish in what has come to be called the Bush-Cheney administration’s war on science, in which powerful and well connected special interests get their way, at the expense of ordinary Americans,” the senator said.

“I am disappointed that the Bush administration has again chosen secrecy over accountability,” Leahy said. “They are preventing the Environmental Protection Agency from giving Congress information about its policies, and preventing us from learning what they are doing to enforce – or not enforce – vital laws meant to protect the water we drink and the air we breathe.”

The Judiciary Committee chairman called Johnson’s refusal to attend the hearing “yet another in a long line of examples of the Bush administration hiding behind a thick veil of secrecy.”

By contrast, 25 years ago EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus proclaimed that, “When I recently appeared before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, I promised that EPA would operate ‘in a fishbowl.’ I said, ‘We will attempt to communicate with everyone from the environmentalists to those we regulate and we will do so as openly as possible.’”

While this 1983 Ruckelshaus “fishbowl” policy was never rescinded, it no longer reflects agency practice.

“Ironically, EPA has brought a lot of these congressional hearings on itself by not being open,” said Ruch, questioning the need for such secrecy at a public health agency.

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WASHINGTON, DC, July 3, 2008 (ENS) – More than six years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, local first responders do not have tools to accurately and quickly identify the release of chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear materials in an urban environment, according to a new report issued by the Government Accountability Office, GAO, the investigative branch of Congress.

While the Department of Homeland Security, DHS, and other agencies have undertaken initiatives to improve first responders’ tools, these tools have many limitations for identifying chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear materials released in urban environments, either accidentally or by terrorists, the extent of their dispersion, and their effect on urban populations, the report warns.

The investigation was conducted at the request of a bi-partisan group of U.S. senators and members of Congress.

On the Senate side, they are Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Appropriations Commitee; Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Independent who chairs the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; and Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who is the ranking member of that committee.

On the House side, requesters are John Dingell, Michigan Democrat who chairs the Committee on Energy and Commerce; David Price, a North Carolina Democrat who chairs the House Subcommittee on Homeland Security; Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat who chairs the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations; and Christopher Shays, the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs.

The two primary tools for identifying chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear agents and their dispersion and effect are equipment to detect and identify the agents and plume models to track the dispersion of airborne releases of these agents.

To assess the detection equipment and urban plume modeling for first responders’ use, GAO personnel conducted the review from July 2004 to January 2008. They met with and obtained data from agency officials and first responders in three states – Connecticut, New Jersey, and Washington.

They found that no agency has the mission to develop, certify, and test equipment that first responders can use for detecting radiological materials in the atmosphere.

Department of Homeland Security officials told the investigators that chemical detectors are “marginally able” to detect an immediately dangerous concentration of chemical warfare agents.

But handheld detection devices for biological agents are not reliable or effective, they said.

The Department of Homeland Security’s BioWatch program monitors air samples for biothreat agents in selected U.S. cities but does not provide first responders with real-time detection capability.

Under the BioWatch system, a threat agent is identified within several hours to more than one day after it is released, and how much material is released cannot be determined.

The GAO found that the Department of Homeland Security has adopted few standards for chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear detection equipment and has no independent testing program to validate whether it can detect these agents at the specific sensitivities manufacturers claim.

DHS has a mission to develop, test, and certify first responders’ chemical and biological detection equipment, but testing and certification cover only equipment the department develops, not what first responders buy.

As of October 30, 2007, DHS had adopted 39 total standards for chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear equipment but had adopted only four standards for radiation detection instruments targeted at the interdiction and prevention of smuggling radioactive material and none for chemical and biological detection equipment.

The remaining standards address personal protective equipment such as respirators and protective clothing.

Interagency studies show that federal agencies’ models to track the atmospheric release of chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear materials have major limitations in urban areas.

A robot is used in a TOPOFF
exercise. (Photo courtesy U.S.
State Dept.)

DHS’s national Top Officials, or TOPOFF, exercises conducted to strengthen the nation’s capacity to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from large-scale terrorist attacks, have demonstrated “first responders’ confusion over competing plume models’ contradictory results,” the GAO reports.

The first TOPOFF was held in May 2000 in Denver, Colorado, and in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Denver participants faced a simulated chemical attack, while New Hampshire participants were confronted with a biological attack.

TOPOFF 2, conducted in May 2003 to simulate a radioactive release as well as biological and chemical releases, included over 8,000 participants in Seattle, Washington and Chicago, Illinois and involved participation by the Canadian government.

TOPOFF 3, held April 4-8, 2005 and sponsored by DHS’s Directorate for Preparedness, was the most comprehensive terrorism response exercise ever conducted in the United States, simulating biological attacks in New Jersey and chemical attacks in Connecticut. It involved over 20,000 participants representing more than 250 federal, state, and local agencies; private businesses; volunteer groups; and international organizations.

The GAO report found that confusion arose among first responders during these exercises when plume models developed for urban areas showed variable predictions.

The GAO reports that these models are limited in obtaining accurate data on the characteristics and rate of hazardous materials released.

In addition, the agency created to coordinate modeling predictions, the Interagency Modeling and Atmospheric Assessment Center, lacks procedures to resolve contradictory predictions, the GAO found.

Data on population density, land use, and complex terrain are critical to first responders, but data on the effects of exposure to chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear materials on urban populations “have significant gaps,” the report warns.

The GAO reports that scientific research is lacking on how low-level exposure to chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear material affects civilian populations, especially elderly persons, children, and people whose immune systems are compromised.

The GAO report contains four main recommendations for the Secretary of Homeland Security.

First, the secretary should reach agreement with agencies on who will have the mission and responsibility to develop, certify, and independently test first responders’ equipment for detecting hazardous material releases;

Then the secretary should ensure testing and validation of manufacturers’ claims about the detection equipment’s sensitivity and specificity;

In addition, the secretary should refine the procedures used by the Interagency Modeling and Atmospheric Assessment Center, IMAAC, for addressing contradictory modeling predictions in chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear events.

Finally, with IMAAC, the secretary should work with the federal plume modeling community to accelerate research and development on model deficiencies in urban areas and improve federal modeling and assessment capabilities, a process that could take several years. This recommendation was contributed by the Department of Commerce after a review of the GAO’s draft report.

After reading the draft GAO report officials at the Department of Homeland Security “concurred with our recommendations,” the GAO said, but advised considering alternative scenarios.

Penelope McCormack, acting director of the DHS-GAO Liaison Office stated in a letter of comment that in one alternative scenario, in the event of a terrorist attack first responders will use a variety of prescreening tools, and they will be assisted immediately by state and federal agencies that will bring the best available state-of-the-art detection equipment.

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WASHINGTON, DC, April 10, 2008 (ENS) – The U.S. EPA says it is expanding the process for recommending that a chemical be assessed for risk of harm to human health or the environment, “to increase its transparency and efficiency.”

But the senator who heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee says the changes really put the risk assessment process directly under the control of the White House.

“In my judgment, these changes to the EPA’s risk assessment program are devastating,” said Senator Barbara Boxer of California who announced she will call a committee oversight hearing to examine the agency’s entire toxics program.

“They put politics before science by letting the White House and federal polluters derail EPA’s scientific assessment of toxic chemicals,” she said. “In the near future, the Government Accountability Office will be issuing a study that I requested, which addresses these issues, and we anticipate an oversight hearing on the EPA’s toxics program shortly.”

The Integrated Risk Information System, IRIS, provides human health risk information describing the potential adverse health effects that may result from exposure to over 540 environmental contaminants.

IRIS includes descriptions of hazard identification and dose-response information, quantitative risk estimates for chronic non-cancer and cancer effects, and access to searchable scientific documentation.

The revisions to the IRIS process for developing chemical assessments announced today will include “listening sessions to allow for the broader participation and engagement of interested parties; and an even more rigorous scientific peer review of IRIS assessments.”

EPA contractors in hazard gear examine
the chemicals found on a suspect
property. (Photo courtesy EPA)

The EPA calls it “an expanded process for recommending a substance be assessed,” and promises “the earlier involvement” of other agencies and the public.

Dr. George Gray, assistant administrator of the Office of Research and Development, who announced the changes today, says he is “confident that these improvements will help our high quality risk assessment process become even more accessible to the scientific community.”

“We recognize that people outside of EPA use this system and have significant knowledge and expertise to offer,” said Gray. “Today’s improvements to the IRIS process will ensure that we continue to have assessments of the highest quality and a process that’s easy to understand and participate in.”

Sounds harmless, but Senator Boxer doesn’t think so.

Boxer says the policy released today “gives federal agencies, such as the Department of Defense, which is a major polluter, a privileged seat at the table to determine which chemicals get assessed and how those assessments are conducted.”

The senator says the change “formalizes a new process to be run by the White House that would take place behind closed doors due to the administration’s refusal to make federal agency comments public.”

Federal, state and international agencies use risk assessments to create public health protections, including drinking water standards, toxic waste cleanup levels, air pollution limits, controls on dangerous chemicals in food and consumer products, worker protections and other safeguards, Boxer points out.

Reforming the IRIS process has been an important goal of EPA Administrator,Stephen Johnson, as reflected in his Action Plan, the agency said in its announcement today.

Gray’s office says the changes were made to “create a more predictable, streamlined, and transparent process for conducting IRIS assessments.”

“A major goal is to define the important role that public and interagency comments and interactions play in the process, and to foster greater communication and sharing of relevant scientific information between experts, interested parties, and EPA,” the agency announcement states.

A one-step access to the major parts of the database has been designed into the online system so the quickviews, the summaries, the toxicological reviews, and the tracking database are more accessible, the agency says.

EPA has also, for the first time, initiated a “data call in” for information to support its literature review of a chemical, and is seeking public comment on this review.

No doubt these features will all be open for comment during the upcoming Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing.

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WASHINGTON, DC, January 24, 2008 (ENS) – The Department of Energy has “overstated accomplishments” of a program designed to employ nuclear scientists from the former Soviet Union who might otherwise pose a nuclear proliferation risk, the investigative branch of the U.S. Congress has found.

In addition, the program has recently targeted Iraq and Libya to help these countries develop projects to expand the use of civilian nuclear power by becoming client states for sales of U.S. nuclear fuel and reprocessing services.

This activity is outside the original scope of the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention program, according to testimony Wednesday before a congressional subcommittee by Robert Robinson, managing director natural resources and environment, with the Government Accountability Office, GAO.

Robinson said the Department of Energy, DOE, “overstated accomplishments on the number of scientists receiving DOE support and the number of long-term, private sector jobs created.”

Although DOE claims to have engaged over 16,770 scientists in Russia and other countries, this total includes both scientists with and without weapons-related experience, Robinson said.

GAO’s analysis of 97 projects involving about 6,450 scientists showed that more than half did not claim to possess any weapons-related experience.

Furthermore, officials from 10 Russian and Ukrainian weapons institutes told GAO investigators that the program helps them attract, recruit, and retain younger scientists and contributes to the continued operation of their facilities.

“This is contrary to the original intent of the program, which was to reduce the proliferation risk posed by Soviet-era weapons scientists,” Robinson said.

While the Energy Department says the program created 2,790 long-term, private sector jobs for former weapons scientists, the credibility of this number is “uncertain,” said Robinson, because DOE relies on “good-faith” reporting from U.S. industry partners and foreign institutes and does not independently verify the number of jobs reported to have been created.

In addition, Robinson told the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, the DOE has recently expanded the program to new areas.

“Specifically, DOE recently began providing assistance to scientists in Iraq and Libya and, through the IPP program, is working to develop projects that support the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership – a DOE-led international effort to expand the use of civilian nuclear power.”

“DOE expanded the program’s efforts without a clear mandate from the Congress and suspended parts of its IPP program guidance for projects in these new areas,” Robinson said.

Part of President George W. Bush’s Advanced Energy Initiative, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership would have “nations with secure, advanced nuclear capabilities provide fuel services – fresh fuel and recovery of used fuel – to other nations who agree to employ nuclear energy for power generation purposes only,” the Energy Department explains on its website.

The closed fuel cycle model envisioned by this partnership requires development and deployment of technologies that enable recycling and consumption of long-lived radioactive waste.

It was “at the State Department’s request” that the IPP program moved into Libya after the country decided in 2004 to abandon all weapons of mass destruction, a senior official of the National Nuclear Security Administration told the subcommittee.

Adam Scheinman said, “We also partner with the State Department in Iraq, and are prepared to engage elsewhere, including in North Korea if circumstances warrant it.”

Agreeing with Robinson that the IPP program requires “recalibration” because “Russia’s economy is stable and conditions in the closed cities are much improved,” still Scheinman said most of the program’s work remains in Russia.

“The absence of a high risk of scientist migration does not imply zero risk or that the job is done,” Scheinman said. “To the contrary, as long as proliferation demand exists, we have a requirement to cooperate with others to impede supply, whether that involves improved export controls, better border security, or scientist engagement.”

As to the overstatement of accomplishments, Scheinman said the program has engaged “many thousands of WMD [weapons of mass destruction] scientists and experts – an impressive achievement that serves our nonproliferation objectives and our nation’s security.”

The GAO recommends, among other things, that the Energy Department conduct a fundamental reassessment of the IPP program, including the development of a prioritization plan and exit strategy. The federal agency “generally concurred” with GAO’s findings, but does not believe that the IPP program needs to be reassessed.

To view the GAO report on the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention program, click here [www.gao.gov].

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