CEI Calls on EPA to Scrap Model Used in Regulations

The Washington Examiner cited CEI’s paper by Senior Logomasini on the EPA’s IRIS program.

The libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute is calling on the Trump administration to scrap the EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS, which is used to model the harm a regulation seeks to resolve. The group says IRIS has significant problems that can be best resolved by scrapping it entirely, and allowing individual offices within the agency do their own risk analysis.

Risk analysis is a key tool in developing environmental regulations, helping regulators shape the stringency of regulations based on the future harm to public health that the rules are seeking to prevent.  

“Far from being the ‘gold standard’ for risk assessment, EPA’s IRIS has a long history of flawed risk assessments based on faulty research that have led the agency to release counterproductive regulations,” said Angela Logomasini, a senior fellow at CEI who authored the report.

She points out that concerns about IRIS have been raised by the Government Accountability Office, EPA’s Office of the Inspector General, Congress, and the National Academies of Sciences.

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