13. Environmental Protection Agency · Notable

Make chemical decisions risk-based rather than hazard-based like IRIS

Partially done

Printed page 433 13. Environmental Protection Agency

“Ensure that decision-making is risk-based rather than defaulting to precautionary, hazard-based approaches like the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS).”

What has happened

Sep 23, 2025 Partially done
EPA proposed to rescind or revise the 2024 amendments to the TSCA risk evaluation framework rule, including the provisions requiring EPA to consider every condition of use and every exposure route and pathway, the single whole-chemical risk determination, and the bar on assuming personal protective equipment — the precautionary defaults the Quote objects to. Alongside it, ORD was dissolved into the program offices and its scientists moved to OCSPP (#1165). IRIS itself is still publishing, and the framework rule is still a proposal, so the hazard-based default has not been removed.
- EPA proposed rule: Procedures for Chemical Risk Evaluation Under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)
  Primary Executive branch Sep 23, 2025
- EPA Announces Next Phase of Organizational Improvements to Better Integrate Science into Agency Offices
  Primary Executive branch May 2, 2025
May 23, 2025 Attempted
Executive Order 14303, Restoring Gold Standard Science, tells every agency that employees "shall be transparent about the likelihood of the assumptions and scenarios used" and that "highly unlikely and overly precautionary assumptions and scenarios should only be relied upon in agency decision-making where required by law", and requires agencies to evaluate "the realistic or reasonably foreseeable effects of an action". It is a government-wide directive; it names neither IRIS nor the chemicals program and changed nothing at OPPT by itself.
- Executive Order 14303: Restoring Gold Standard Science
  Primary Executive branch May 23, 2025

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

One negative search covered the OCSPP chemicals and pesticides asks on pp. 433-435.
partial follows the rule that a proposed rule is partial where an earlier directive exists: EO 14303 of 2025-05-23 is that directive, and the proposal implements it inside the chemicals program.
#1165 (major, partial) covers the elimination of ORD programs including IRIS; this ask is about what OPPT’s decision-making defaults to, which is why the framework rule matters more here than the reorganization does.

Action: restrict
Object: Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) hazard-based approach at OPPT
ID: 1139