Integrated Risk Information System Archives

Integrated Risk Information System

March 24, 2025

Dissolving EPA’s research arm may jeopardize toxic chemical protections

By Shannon Kelleher

The Trump administration’s plan to eliminate the entire research arm of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would have devastating impacts on toxic chemical research, destabilizing infrastructure that forms the scientific backbone of regulations that protect people and the environment, according to former agency leaders.

The move to dissolve the EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD), first reported by The New York Times last week, would stagnate new environmental regulations for years to come, the former EPA officials claim.

The ORD, which employs more than 1,000 scientists, operates six research programs that work to inform policy making on a range of environmental issues, including air and water quality, climate concerns, and chemical safety. ORD research topics include chemicals such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), pesticides, greenhouse gases and health-harming soot.

The administration reportedly plans to cut 75% of ORD’s staff and to relocate those left to other parts of the agency.

“What it means is that any child born in 2025 will grow up in an environment that has more contaminated air, more contaminated water, and more contaminated land than any previous generation that was born after the 1970s,” when Congress put in place major environmental statutes, said Betsy Southerland, a former EPA senior scientist and a director in the agency’s Office of Water. “Any new administration that comes in, it will take them years to rebuild that scientific expertise and capability,” she said.

If the Trump administration dismantles the EPA’s research office and rolls back existing environmental rules, it could force the nation into a fragmented, state-by-state regulatory approach reminiscent of a pre-1970s era when city air was thick with smog and oil-coated rivers caught fire, said Southerland.

November 2, 2023

EPA restarts assessment of health risks from nitrate in water

By Brett Walton

The US Environmental Protection Agency, reversing a Trump-era decision, is restarting a human health assessment of nitrate and nitrite, a move that has potentially far-reaching regulatory implications for one of the country’s most pervasive drinking water contaminants.

The EPA suspended its nitrate assessment in December 2018. It was one of nine chemicals that the Trump administration deemed no longer a priority for evaluation by the agency’s health assessment division known as the Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS.

That changed in June when the EPA quietly reinserted the nitrate assessment into the IRIS agenda “to address an agency priority.”

The decision to take a closer look at the chemical comes at a time of increased scrutiny and public concern over nitrate exposure and human health. Nitrate forms when nitrogen is exposed to oxygen in the air. An exponential increase in the use of synthetic, nitrogen-based fertilizers since 1950 supercharged the production of corn and soybeans. The number of large livestock feeding operations — and the amount of manure they produce — also increased rapidly.

Nutrients are essential to crop production. But the convergence of high rates of chemical fertilizer use and immense manure production led to well-documented risks to human health and the environment. In addition to generating heat-trapping greenhouse gases, over-application of nitrogen-rich fertilizer and manure contributed to steadily rising levels of nitrate in streams and groundwater, particularly in the 11 Corn Belt states across the Great Lakes and Midwest, California’s Central Valley, North Carolina, and Washington’s Yakima Valley.