OMB risk assessment plan called flawed

[Ron Burgundy]

AP - Federal agencies seeking to protect the public, the environment or setting rules in general often have to prepare risk assessments. A Bush administration attempt to standardize that process didn't work out, though, and will go back to the drawing board.

The Office of Management and Budget said it will not finalize its original proposal after the independent National Research Council called the plan "fundamentally flawed."

Steven Aitken, acting administrator for OMB's office of information and regulatory affairs, said his agency will study the report as well as comments from the public and other government offices and will "seek to develop improved guidance for risk assessment."

Aitken said OMB is pleased that the Research Council agreed on the need to improve the quality of risk assessments, and takes very seriously the panel's criticism of the original plan. OMB had asked the council to review the proposed standards, which it issued last January.

Many federal agencies conduct risk assessments as part of their regulatory activities, ranging from such topics as exposure to chemicals to the safety of construction projects.

But the Council said OMB's definition of risk assessment was too broad and said the proposed standards move into "territory beyond what previous reports have recommended and beyond the current state of the science."

"We began our review of the draft bulletin thinking we would only be recommending changes, but the more we dug into it, the more we realized that from a scientific and technical standpoint, it should be withdrawn altogether," John F. Ahearne, chair of the committee that wrote the report, said in a statement.

Ahearne is director of the ethics program at Sigma Xi, the scientific research society, based in Research Triangle Park, N.C.

The report said many of the standards are unclear and several topics are omitted.

The report also questioned OMB's definition of an adverse health effect as something than is clinically diagnosed. That ignores a basic public health goal to control exposures before they cause physical damage, the report said.

The NRC report urged OMB to issue a new standards outlining goals and general principles for risk assessments, but directing federal agencies to develop their own technical guidelines.

The National Research Council is an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, an independent organization chartered by Congress to advise the government on scientific matters.

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