Document ID: EPA-HQ-OPPT-2021-0415-0001
Agency: epa
Document Type: Notice
Title: Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC); Request For Nominations of Ad Hoc Expert Reviewers To Consider for Participation in Two Early 2022 Reviews
Posted Date: 2021-10-27T04:00Z

[Federal Register Volume 86, Number 205 (Wednesday, October 27, 2021)]
[Notices]
[Pages 59382-59383]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2021-23362]

[[Page 59382]]

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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

[EPA-HQ-OPPT-2021-0414 and EPA-HQ-OPPT-2021-0415; FRL-9146-01-OCSPP]

Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC); Request For 
Nominations of Ad Hoc Expert Reviewers To Consider for Participation in 
Two Early 2022 Reviews

AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

ACTION: Notice.

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SUMMARY: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requests public 
nominations of scientific experts to consider for service as ad hoc 
reviewers assisting the SACC with two peer review topics anticipated 
for early 2022: The draft EPA TSCA Systematic Review Protocol; and the 
draft EPA TSCA Screening Level Approach for Assessing Ambient Air and 
Water Exposures to Fenceline Communities. Any interested person or 
organization may nominate qualified individuals to be considered 
prospective candidates for these reviews by following the instructions 
provided in this document. Individuals may also self-nominate.

DATES: Nominations should be provided on or before November 17, 2021. 
For additional instructions, see Unit I.B. of the SUPPLEMENTARY 
INFORMATION.

ADDRESSES: Nominations. Submit your nominations to the Designated 
Federal Officials (DFOs) listed under FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Contact the listed Designated Federal 
Official (DFO) for the topic of interest or call our main office at 
(202) 564-8450:
    Systematic Review: Dr. Todd Peterson, DFO, email address: 
[email protected].
    Exposures to Fenceline Communities: Dr. Alaa Kamel, DFO, email 
address: [email protected].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

I. General Information

A. Does this action apply to me?

    This action is directed to the public in general. This action may, 
however, be of interest to those involved in the manufacture, 
processing, distribution, and disposal of chemical substances and 
mixtures, and/or those interested in the assessment of risks involving 
chemical substances and mixtures. Since other entities may also be 
interested, the Agency has not attempted to describe all the specific 
entities that may be affected by this action.

B. What should I consider as I prepare my nominations for EPA?

    1. Submitting CBI. Do not submit CBI information to EPA through 
regulations.gov or email. If your nomination contains any information 
that you consider to be CBI or otherwise protected, please contact the 
DFO listed under FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT to obtain special 
instructions before submitting your nomination.
    2. Request for nominations to serve as ad hoc expert reviewers to 
assist the SACC. As part of a broader process for developing a pool of 
candidates for SACC peer reviews, EPA solicits the public and 
stakeholder communities for nominations of prospective candidates for 
service as ad hoc reviewers. Any interested person or organization may 
nominate qualified individuals to be considered as prospective 
candidates. Individuals also may self-nominate.
1. Peer Review Topics Anticipated for Early 2022
    Individuals nominated for the two SACC reviews anticipated for 
early 2022 should have expertise in one or more of the following areas:
     Systematic review: Individuals nominated for peer review 
of the draft systematic review protocol should have expertise in one or 
more of the following areas: Systematic review approaches of human 
health and ecological hazard, exposure topics and fate. All experts, 
including those representing other fields of interest, who have 
experience with engineering, machine learning, artificial intelligence 
techniques and natural language processing approaches as applied to 
systematic review are also needed. Understanding of the TSCA risk 
evaluation process is highly desirable for the context of this peer 
review. Familiarity with systematic review tools like DistillerSR 
(Systematic Review Software), SWIFT (Sciome Workbench for Interactive 
computer-Facilitated Text-mining; SWIFT-Active Screener and SWIFT-
Review), Health and Environmental Research Online (HERO) database and 
the Health Assessment Workspace Collaborative (HAWC) is highly 
desirable.
     Exposures to fenceline communities: Individuals nominated 
for peer review of the draft EPA TSCA Screening Level Approach for 
Assessing Ambient Air and Water Exposures to Fenceline Communities 
should have expertise in one or more of the following areas: Chemical 
fate and transport via ambient air and water pathways; atmospheric 
modeling of fate, transport, and human exposures; human health, 
exposure and risk assessment for airborne and/or waterborne chemicals; 
expertise estimating environmental air releases of chemicals from a 
variety of sources and databases such as Chemical Data Reporting; 
experience developing air dispersion methodologies and/or models to 
estimate ambient air concentrations and impacts to human populations; 
expertise estimating environmental water releases of chemicals from a 
variety of sources and databases such as Chemical Data Reporting, 
Toxics Release Inventory, Discharge Monitoring Report; experience 
developing methodologies and/or models to estimate chemical 
concentrations in ambient/source/drinking water and impacts to human 
populations; and public health protection for at-risk communities.
2. Nominations
    Nominees should be scientists who have sufficient professional 
qualifications, including training and experience, to be capable of 
providing expert comments on the scientific issues for these reviews. 
The following information should be included for nominations: Contact 
information for the person making the nomination; name, affiliation, 
and contact information for the nominee; and the disciplinary and 
specific areas of expertise of the nominee. Nominations should be 
provided to the DFOs listed under FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT on or 
before the date listed in the DATES section of this notice.
    SACC members and ad hoc reviewers are subject to the provisions of 
the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch 
at 5 CFR part 2635, conflict of interest statutes in Title 18 of the 
United States Code and related regulations. In anticipation of this 
requirement, prospective candidates for service on the SACC will be 
asked to submit confidential financial information which shall fully 
disclose, among other financial interests, the candidate's employment, 
stocks and bonds, and where applicable, sources of research support. 
EPA will evaluate the candidates' financial disclosure forms to assess 
whether there are financial conflicts of interest, appearance of a loss 
of impartiality, or any prior involvement with the development of the 
documents under consideration (including previous scientific peer 
review) before the candidate is considered further for service on the 
SACC. Those who are selected from the pool of prospective candidates 
will be asked to attend the public meetings and to participate in the 
discussion of key issues and

[[Page 59383]]

assumptions at these meetings. In addition, they will be asked to 
review and to help finalize the meeting minutes.
3. Selection of Ad Hoc Reviewers
    The selection of scientists to serve as ad hoc reviewers for the 
SACC is based on the function of the Committee and the expertise needed 
to address the Agency's charge to the Committee. No interested 
scientists shall be ineligible to serve by reason of their membership 
on any other advisory committee to a Federal department or agency or 
their employment by a Federal department or agency, except EPA. Other 
factors considered during the selection process include availability of 
the prospective candidate to fully participate in the Committee's 
reviews, absence of any conflicts of interest or appearance of loss of 
impartiality, independence with respect to the matters under review, 
and lack of bias. Although financial conflicts of interest, the 
appearance of loss of impartiality, lack of independence, and bias may 
result in non-selection, the absence of such concerns does not assure 
that a candidate will be selected to serve on the SACC. Numerous 
qualified candidates are identified for each review. Therefore, 
selection decisions involve carefully weighing a number of factors 
including the candidates' areas of expertise and professional 
qualifications and achieving an overall balance of different scientific 
perspectives across reviewers.
    At this time, EPA is seeking nominations to create a pool of ad hoc 
experts who can be available to the SACC to assist in reviews conducted 
by the Committee. EPA anticipates selecting experts from this pool, as 
needed, to assist the SACC in their review of both designated topics. 
The Agency will consider all nominations of prospective candidates for 
service as ad hoc reviewers for the SACC that are received on or before 
that date. However, final selection of ad hoc reviewers is a 
discretionary function of the Agency.
    EPA plans to make a list of candidates under consideration as 
prospective ad hoc reviewers for these reviews available for public 
comment. The lists will be posted on the SACC website at http://www.epa.gov/tsca-peer-review or may be obtained from the OPPT Dockets 
at http://www.regulations.gov.

II. Background

A. Purpose of the SACC

    The SACC was established by EPA in 2016 under the authority of the 
Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, Public 
Law 114-182, 140 Stat. 448 (2016), and operates in accordance with the 
Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) of 1972. The SACC supports 
activities under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), 15 U.S.C. 
2601 et seq., the Pollution Prevention Act (PPA), 42 U.S.C. 13101 et 
seq., and other applicable statutes. The SACC provides independent 
scientific advice and recommendations to the EPA on the scientific and 
technical aspects of risk assessments, methodologies, and pollution 
prevention measures and approaches for chemicals regulated under TSCA.
    The SACC is comprised of experts in toxicology; environmental risk 
assessment; exposure assessment; and related sciences (e.g., synthetic 
biology, pharmacology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, biochemistry, 
biostatistics, physiologically based pharmacokinetic modelling (PBPK), 
computational toxicology, epidemiology, environmental fate, and 
environmental engineering and sustainability). The SACC currently 
consists of 17 members. When needed, the committee will be assisted by 
ad hoc reviewers with specific expertise in the topics under 
consideration.

B. Background for Each Area of Review

1. Systematic Review
    The draft TSCA Systematic Review Protocol includes a revised 
generic approach for TSCA-related approaches taking into account 
previous peer review comments from SACC reviews of risk evaluations on 
the first 10 chemical assessments and more recent recommendations from 
the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) 
review of the Application of Systematic Review in TSCA Risk 
Evaluations. In addition to the revised generic approach, this peer 
review package will include appendices containing chemical specific 
information that is relevant for searching, screening, data evaluation 
and evidence integration for the next chemical risk evaluations being 
conducted by OPPT.
2. Exposure to Fenceline Communities
    The draft EPA TSCA Screening Level Approach for Assessing Ambient 
Air and Water Exposures to Fenceline Communities will be developed as a 
path forward decision to address potential air and water exposures to 
fenceline communities which may be excluded from other Agency statutes. 
EPA will use this screening level approach to reassess seven of the 
first ten TSCA chemical risk evaluations for the air pathway and five 
of the first ten TSCA chemical risk evaluations for the water pathway 
to determine if there is a potential for unreasonable risk to these 
communities. The methodology will be assessed for air exposure on the 
following chemicals: 1-bromopropane, methylene chloride, N-
methylpyrrolidone, carbon tetrachloride, trichloroethylene, 
perchloroethylene, and 1, 4-dioxane and water exposure for the 
following chemicals: Methylene chloride, N-methylpyrrolidone, carbon 
tetrachloride, trichloroethylene, and perchloroethylene. If the agency 
finds unreasonable risk that cannot be addressed through current risk 
management approaches, the agency will conduct additional comprehensive 
exposure assessments and supplement the risk evaluation for that 
chemical with the updated information.
    Authority: 15 U.S.C. 2625 et seq.; 5 U.S.C. appendix 2 et seq.

    Dated: October 20, 2021.
Michal Freedhoff,
Assistant Administrator, Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution 
Prevention.
[FR Doc. 2021-23362 Filed 10-26-21; 8:45 am]
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