WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - A chemistry industry association has accused the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of controlling an outside group tasked with reviewing the agency’s proposed regulations on formaldehyde by stocking it with friendly scientists and limiting public access and comment on its work.
The American Chemistry Council, in complaint in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, says the National Academy of Sciences and the EPA have repeatedly violated federal law by ignoring conflicts of interest and limiting public access to information about the committee reviewing the agency’s assessment of formaldehyde, a widely used industrial chemical.
Formally known as the National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine or NASEM, the group operates under the Federal Advisory Committee Act establishing committees to evaluate federal regulations. That law requires scientific advisory committees to be “fairly balanced” and independent of government agencies, yet there are no members with private industry experience on the committee studying the EPA’s Integrated Risks Information System, or IRIS, proposals for formaldehyde, ACC said.
The NASEM study director, Dr. Kathryn Guyton, isn’t involved in the actual peer review but “plays an active and substantive role” in the process, ACC said in its July 20 complaint. She was previously a career scientist with the EPA within the IRIS program and was actively involved in developing the agency’s formaldehyde assessment in 20121. When solicited NASEM members from former colleagues at EPA and thanked the agency for thanked EPA “for these great suggestions,” ACC said.
“This substantive, years-long involvement with the Assessment is omitted from Dr. Guyton’s biography on NASEM’s website, but it appears to create a conflict of interest,” ACC said. “Her own work will necessarily be the subject of the Committee’s review.”
The peer review committee includes Dr. Lauren Zeise, who runs the California Environmental Protection Agency’s office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, which works with the EPA’s Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment. Dr. Zeise withdrew from a previous NASEM group over this relationship.
Dr. Ivan Rusyn worked with the IRIS program from 2011 to 2013 and the EPA peer review guidelines recommend against using the same peer reviewer on sequential assessments of the same program, ACC says. Dr. Lianne Sheppard is chair of the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and received an EPA grant for studying long-term exposure to air pollution. She has also closely collaborated with the lead author of studies the committee will review, ACC said, without disclosing this to the public.
Much of the information in the complaint was obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests after NASEM refused to provide it, ACC said. The IRIS program is of high interest to chemical companies because the Justice Department can cite its findings as fact in court, the ACC said.
The EPA issued a draft assessment of formaldehyde in 2010 and asked NASEM to create a committee for independent scientific review. That committee in 2011 found “significant deficiencies” in the EPA assessment process. In 2021 and 2022 ACC criticized the process, saying EPA appeared to be limiting NASEM’s independence.
“Only a thorough, transparent, and unbiased review by a fairly balanced and properly composed NASEM Committee can ensure that the government does not rely on its flawed IRIS Assessment,” the group said. ”Unreliable reports on formaldehyde promoted by the federal government create concrete and particularized injuries to members of ACC that regularly use the chemical to create products that modern society is dependent upon.”