Report: EPA To Publish Risk Evaluation Standards

The Environmental Protection Agency this week reportedly plans to release details about how the first 10 high-priority chemicals will be studied under new federal chemical legislation.

Bloomberg reports that the agency will release those scope documents, as well as its final processes for conducting risk evaluations, on Thursday.

The EPA late last year announced the initial chemicals to be evaluated under the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act, a sweeping overhaul of outdated environmental laws that, in part, revised how regulators studied the thousands of chemicals used in commerce.

The scope documents will specify the agency's concerns and the exposures and populations it will consider during the evaluation process.

The EPA also plans to publish rules Thursday broadly stipulating how it will identify chemicals, assess them for risk and conduct risk evaluations.

Dow Chemical, Procter & Gamble and industry groups reportedly offered input to the agency on both the rules and documents.

"We believe that the public will benefit from releasing the scopes at the same time as the rules because the scopes reflect our first efforts to implement the new risk evaluation process and the framework rules provide important context for that work,” Nancy Beck, a former American Chemistry Council official named by the Trump administration to lead the EPA Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, told Bloomberg.