WASHINGTON (July 22, 2025) – The American Chemistry Council (ACC) today commended the House Appropriations Committee for including critical language in its FY2026 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies appropriations bill that prohibits funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program and bars the use of IRIS assessments in regulatory decision-making.
This important step reflects growing concern about the IRIS program’s lack of transparency, scientific rigor, and responsiveness to peer review and stakeholder input. The IRIS program has never been authorized by Congress, and since 2009 the program has remained on the GAO’s High-Risk List, which identifies government programs that are vulnerable to fraud, waste, abuse, or mismanagement.
“We applaud Chairman Tom Cole, Subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson, and Representatives Mike Cloud and Jake Ellzey for their leadership in offering this key language,” said Chris Jahn, President and CEO of the American Chemistry Council. “Their action sends a strong signal that regulatory decisions must be grounded in transparent, objective, and high-quality science.”
“American success relies on American chemistry. By advancing the use of sound science in EPA regulations, Congress is helping to protect American jobs, strengthen supply chains, and maintain our global competitiveness,” added Jahn.
The IRIS program has a troubling history of being out of step with the best available science and methods, lacking transparency, and being unresponsive to peer review and stakeholder recommendations. IRIS assessments have been used to justify regulatory proposals that threaten critical chemistries essential to American manufacturing, national defense, healthcare, and many other key industries.
ACC and a coalition of 81 leading stakeholders called on EPA to prohibit the use of IRIS assessments to develop, finalize, or issue a rule or regulation. We also called for the disbandment of the IRIS program and the return of responsibilities to program offices. ACC continues to strongly support the No IRIS Act, introduced earlier this year by Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) and Congressman Glenn Grothman (R-WI-06), which would permanently prohibit the use of IRIS assessments in federal rulemaking. The House Appropriations Committee’s action reinforces the momentum behind this legislative effort and underscores the urgent need for reform.
Recent examples of where IRIS assessments have or threaten to lead to controversial regulatory actions include:
- Formaldehyde Risk Evaluation: The EPA's final risk evaluation under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) relies on an IRIS value to propose workplace limits that are significantly lower than the recently updated European Union occupational limits. Formaldehyde is a critical chemistry needed for housing, agriculture, transportation, lifesaving vaccines, and national security.
- Ethylene Oxide Air Rules: The rules affecting critical industries like energy development, semiconductors, and healthcare rely on an IRIS value that is 23,000 times lower than naturally occurring levels of ethylene oxide in the human body.
- IRIS Review of Hexavalent Chromium: EPA’s recent IRIS assessment failed to adequately consider the weight of evidence and may result in drinking water standards which are far lower than the average background levels of naturally occurring hexavalent chromium in groundwater. This could impose massive costs on water systems nationwide with little to no public health benefit.
- IRIS Review of Inorganic Arsenic: The proposed IRIS value could be used to drive new regulatory levels for inorganic arsenic that are significantly lower than the background levels of arsenic in soil and water in many states with impacts to soil remediation programs, drinking water standards, crops and other food supplies.