EPA Shifts Timeline for Chemical Risk Evaluations

The EPA is giving the public more time upfront to comment on chemical risk evaluations before the agency’s advisers critique those same documents, the agency’s top chemicals official said. A new chemical risk evaluation release schedule that the Environmental Protection Agency is announcing will give the public at least 30 days, hopefully more, to review draft chemical risk evaluations before those documents are critiqued by the agency’s Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals, said Alexandra Dapolito Dunn, assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention. She updated Bloomberg Environment on the agency’s plans to complete 10 chemical risk evaluations no later than June 22. An independent attorney representing the group Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families expressed reservations about the timetable that the agency hopes to follow.