Report: EPA is failing to regulate toxic chemicals

The Environmental Protection Agency is unable to safeguard the public from dangerous toxic chemicals, according to a new report just released from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The GAO releases these reports with the start of every new Congress; the reports are intended to help government focus on areas that need improved oversight.

The report said the EPA’s ineffective evaluation and management of chemicals is as dire as the nation’s financial regulatory system and the Food and Drug Administration’s inability to regulate the medical and drug industries.

Health and environmental advocates reacted to the report, saying that it reflected what they had been warning for years, according to a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

“This just shows that the EPA is not any better able to protect Americans from risky chemicals than FEMA was to save New Orleans or the SEC was to cope with the financial collapse,” said John Peterson Myers, a scientist and author who has been writing about chemical risks to human health for more than three decades.

The GAO report chastised the EPA for its slow process, saying the agency needs to streamline.

Overall, the EPA has finished only nine assessments in the past three years. At the end of 2007, most of the 70 ongoing assessments had been under way for more than five years.

The report also said responsibility in this process must shift from the EPA to chemical companies. The chemical industry should have to prove that their chemicals are safe, rather than the burden of proof falling to the EPA to prove that a chemical is unsafe.

To download the GAO’s report, click here .