New Year, New EPA: How the Biden Administration Can Catalyze PFAS Action in 2021
Genna Reed, Senior Analyst | January 6, 2021, 1:53 pm EDT
During the past four years, awareness about per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) has been heightened, but not because of notable government successes. Instead, communities across the country have worked with scientists, legal teams, nonprofit organizations, members of Congress, and even film production companies to raise awareness about the need for remedies. With their leadership, there has been progress made, with dozens of pieces of PFAS legislation introduced and the passage of PFAS provisions in the 2020 and 2021 defense authorization bills, but there’s much more work to do to help us understand the extent of the PFAS public health threat, limit current PFAS pollution, and require polluters to pay for cleanup of legacy contamination.
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
On November 9, 2020, EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) released its long-awaited draft handbook that details the office’s process for developing chemical hazard assessments for its Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) Program. The ORD Staff Handbook for Developing IRIS Assessments (IRIS Handbook) gives useful insight into ORD’s process to develop its IRIS assessments, which provide important toxicological information that federal and state environmental agencies consider when making regulatory and cleanup decisions under multiple statutory programs. EPA will accept comments on the draft handbook and charge questions until March 1, 2021.
Background
EPA established the IRIS Program in 1985, with the goal of creating a database of human health assessments for chemicals found in the environment to ensure that evaluation of chemical toxicity was consistent across the Agency. Today, EPA’s public IRIS website provides mor
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