In early May, The Environmental Protection Agency announced that it will split the body's main arm for scientific research. According to a report by NPR, scientists from the 1,500-person R&D office were told to apply about 500 new scientific research positions to new scientific research positions in other areas of the institution and hope to further cut their organization in the coming weeks.

This restructuring threatens the existence of tiny but crucial programs contained in the office: the Integrated Risk Information System Program, commonly known as the IRIS. The program is responsible for providing independent research on chemical risks, helping other offices within the agency develop compounds for chemicals and compounds that may pose a risk to human health. Leaders of the program recently left ahead of the restructuring announcement.

Experts say the EPA’s restructuring could undermine this critical program, which has been targeted by the chemical industry and right-wing interests for decades.

“Unfortunately, it seems now that the polluters have won,” said Thomas Burke, founder and emeritus director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Risk Science and Public Policy, a former deputy assistant assistant administrator for the EPA Office of Research and Development.

“The May 2 announcement is part of a comprehensive effort to reorganize the entire agency,” EPA spokesman Molly Vaseliou told Wired in an email. “The EPA is working quickly through the reorganization process and will provide additional information when available.”

The IRIS program was founded in the mid-1980s to investigate the health effects of chemicals and compile the best studies from around the world to provide potential hazard analysis of new and existing substances. The program agreed with other offices in the EPA to identify the most important chemicals worthy of further research and research.

Unlike other offices in the EPA, the IRIS program has no regulatory liability. Instead, it is simply to provide science for underlying potential new regulations. Experts say this can isolate external stress assessments of iris production, which may affect research in other areas of the agency.

Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta said he was former principal deputy assistant assistant administrator for the Office of Research and Development and former EPA science consultant Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta said, “independent.” "They are not trying to assess risks for a specific purpose. They are just trying to assess risks and provide basic information."

Since its inception, Iris has created a database of over 570 chemicals and compounds and has evaluated its potential human health impacts. The institutions of this study not only provide the basis for federal policy, but also help guide state and international regulations.

Burke said the iris database is the "gold standard for health assessment of chemical pollutants." “In fact, almost all of our regulated contaminants, almost all of our cleanup efforts, and almost all of our major success in regulating toxic chemicals are touched by IRIS or IRIS staff.”

However, in recent years, Iris has faced a huge and arduous battle. First, it must review its huge number with limited manpower. There are over 80,000 chemicals registered in the United States, and chemical companies have added hundreds of them each year. Some chemicals, iris, are working on research, have been a concern for many years, and some have recently undergone new reviews. For example, permanent chemicals (named for persistence in the environment) have been in use for decades, but the recent prevalence in water and soil testing has prompted Iris to start evaluating five common types of these chemicals in 2019.