Integrated Risk Information System Progress Reports to Congress

• 2015 Updates
• 2012 Updates
• 2011 Updates

2015 Updates

On April 28, 2015, EPA released an IRIS Progress Report and Report to Congress. This report, responsive to language in the 2014 Consolidated Appropriations Act and submitted to Congress on February 6, 2015, provides Congress, stakeholders, and the public further updates on the status of the IRIS Program's implementation of recommendations from the National Research Council (NRC) in 2011, and summarizes the recommendations of the more recent NRC Review of the IRIS Process, released in 2014.

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

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.