Introduction

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), an agency of Congress, has been asked by the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works to review EPA's human health risk assessment practices. The request referred to recommendations published in the 1994, National Research Council's report, Science and Judgement in Risk Assessment.

Since the 1994 report, EPA has made many modifications to its risk assessment practices. These modifications include developing new guidance documents, providing training, sponsoring research, and formalizing the peer review process. We are currently documenting and reviewing these modifications, and interviewing a wide range of EPA officials and stakeholder groups. We are surveying EPA risk assessors to find out how the modifications have affected your preparation of human health risk assessments within the past 5 years. Please help us inform Congress about EPA's risk assessment practices by responding to this survey.

The survey results will be considered along with multiple other sources of information, such as a review of the guidance documents and completed risk assessments and interviews with EPA officials, outside experts, and stakeholders. The examples you provide may be used, anonymously, to substantiate and illustrate the impact of the many risk assessment modifications EPA has undertaken in the past 10 years. We will not report information that identifies any individual.

Thank you for your time and effort in completing this survey.

Full Report: GAO-05-595

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