IRIS: Bad Science, Real World Consequences
American Chemistry cited CEI’s publication by Senior Fellow Angela Logomasini on the IRIS.
In February 2019 the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) provided some important perspective on those real world implications:
“Thanks to IRIS’ junk science, medical sterilization plants may close, putting people out of work and imperiling public health with the potential of increased disease transmission. Because there are no good substitutes, the elimination of [EO] for medical product sterilization would be ‘significant, and likely disastrous’ for public health and ‘would introduce the real risks of increased morbidity and mortality,’ according to the Ethylene Oxide Sterilization Association.”
That CEI publication is referring to the IRIS assessment of ethylene oxide (EO) that created concerns about EO exposures 19,000 times lower than occur naturally in the human body. So, according to IRIS, the natural production of EO from our own bodies represents a hazard to human health and the environment. That’s bad science.
