**GAO-09-774T**                      Published: Jun 11, 2009. Publicly Released: Jun 11, 2009.                  

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## Highlights

The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) contains EPA's scientific position on the potential human health effects of exposure to more than 540 chemicals. Toxicity assessments in the IRIS database constitute the first two critical steps of the risk assessment process, which in turn provides the foundation for risk management decisions. Thus, IRIS is a critical component of EPA's capacity to support scientifically sound environmental decisions, policies, and regulations. GAO's 2008 report on the IRIS program identified significant concerns that, coupled with the importance of the program, caused GAO to add EPA's processes for assessing and controlling toxic chemicals as a high-risk area in its January 2009 biennial status report on governmentwide high-risk areas requiring increased attention by executive agencies and Congress. This testimony discusses (1) the findings from GAO's March 2008 report Chemical Assessments: Low Productivity and New Interagency Review Process Limit the Usefulness and Credibility of EPA's Integrated Risk Information System and related testimonies and (2) GAO's preliminary evaluation of the revised IRIS assessment process EPA issued on May 21, 2009. For this testimony, GAO supplemented its prior audit work with a preliminary review of the new assessment process and some IRIS productivity data.

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## Topics

Natural Resources and Environment

Chemical agentsChemical exposureChemical regulationChemical researchChemicalsData integrityHealth hazardsInformation disclosureInformation infrastructureInformation managementInteragency relationsPolicy evaluationProgram evaluationPublic healthRegulatory agenciesReporting requirementsRisk assessmentRisk managementToxic substancesAssessmentsTransparency