Science at EPA

Q: Administrator Ruckelshaus and others called for increasing the role of science in the decision-making process. How would you characterize the role science and scientists played in policy making, and how had that really changed, between the mid-Seventies, and the early Eighties?

MR. ALM: Bill initially called for greater use of risk assessment and for separating risk assessment from risk management. I believe he was generally successful in inculcating these values in the agency.

I think the agency does a pretty good job of working science into the decision-making process. The agency has a science advisory board and most of the regulations have a substantial amount of technical content behind them.

One of the problems, though, is that many of the statutes that EPA administers leave no room for scientific judgments. As a result, some things are done that may or may not make scientific sense. Some of the statutes presently require that certain regulatory actions take place, without regard to any knowledge about the risks involved. That sort of thing does not make a lot of scientific sense. So I think that, if there is any mismatch between science and what the agency does, it results from statutory enactments, many of which do not leave a lot of room for scientific matters.

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Science at EPA

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