The EPA will use comments by the review panel, comprised mainly of university scientists, together with public input made during a comment period that ended in September, to update information on perc for its Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS).
IRIS is a database of human health effects that could be caused by exposure to various substances. The risk assessment addresses potential cancer and non-cancer human health effects of perc exposure.
The EPA draft suggested that perc should be considered a likely human carcinogen, which would place it in the second highest of five categories under EPA’s cancer assessment guidelines, between the highest risk category “carcinogenic to humans,” and the third highest “suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential.”
The solvents industry is critical of aspects of the draft, and disagrees with the way in which the EPA evaluated the many studies of the effects of perc exposure.
