THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCES, ENGINEERING, AND MEDICINE
Division on Earth and Life Studies
Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology
Committee to Review EPA’s IRIS Assessment Handbook
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Congressional Briefings
Tuesday, February 1, 2022 – 2:00 p.m.
and
Friday, February 25, 2022 – 11:30 a.m.
via Zoom
on
Review of U.S. EPA's ORD Staff Handbook for Developing IRIS Assessments
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program develops human health assessments that focus on hazard identification and dose-response analyses for chemicals in the environment. The ORD Staff Handbook for Developing IRIS Assessments (the handbook) provides guidance to scientists who perform the IRIS assessments in order to foster consistency in the assessments and enhance transparency about the IRIS assessment process.
At the request of the EPA, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reviewed the procedures and considerations for operationalizing the principles of systematic reviews and the methods described in the handbook for determining the scope of the IRIS assessments, evidence integration, extrapolation techniques, dose-response analyses, and characterization of uncertainties.
These briefings were for members of Congress and congressional staff only. The report was publicly released in November 2021 and can be found, in its entirety, on the Web site of the National Academies Press