IRIS Progress Reports
2012 Updates
On June 5, 2012, EPA released an IRIS Progress Report to Congress. This report, delivered to Congress on April 20, 2012, provides Congress, stakeholders, and the public with an update on the IRIS Program and EPA’s progress toward implementing the recommendations from the National Research Council (NRC), received in April 2011, for improving the development of IRIS assessments. July 12, 2011 Press Release
IRIS 2012 Progress Report to Congress
Related link: IRIS process on developing human health risk assessments
2011 Updates
In July 2011, EPA announced a plan to further strengthen and streamline its IRIS Program, in response to the April 2011 recommendations by the National Research Council. These improvements included: reduced assessment size; fuller discussions of methods and criteria used to evaluate hazards; clearer description of rationale and criteria for screening studies; use of uniform approaches to choose studies and evaluate their findings; and describing the determinants of weight that were used to synthesize the evidence. In addition, EPA is working to set up a dedicated advisory committee to provide advice to EPA on draft IRIS Toxicological Reviews and the IRIS Program. EPA will also create a peer consultation step early in the development of major IRIS assessments. Continually improving the IRIS Program is an ongoing priority for the Agency, and these efforts work towards this goal.
IRIS 2011 Progress Report
- IRIS Progress Report – July 2011 (PDF) (14 pp, 445 KB, about PDF)
- Fact Sheet: Strengthening the IRIS Process - 2011 (PDF) (2 pp, 42 KB, about PDF)
- Revised IRIS Process Questions & Answers (PDF) (6 pp, 107 KB, about PDF)
- Press Release July 12, 2011
- House Science Committee - Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight hearing summary & testimonies
- IRIS Blog post by Paul Anastas (former ORD Assistant Administrator) July 2011
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