[Federal Register Volume 69, Number 77 (Wednesday, April 21, 2004)]
[Notices]
[Pages 21525-21527]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 04-9045]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
[FRL-7650-7]
Science Advisory Board Staff Office; Request for Nominations for
the Science Advisory Board Formaldehyde Review Panel
AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
ACTION: Notice.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
SUMMARY: The EPA Science Advisory Board (SAB) Staff Office announces
the formation of a new SAB review panel known as the Formaldehyde
Review Panel (FRP), and is soliciting nominations for members of the
Panel.
DATES: Nominations should be submitted by May 12, 2004.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Any member of the public requiring
further information regarding this Request for Nominations, or a paper
nomination form, may contact Dr. Suhair Shallal, Designated Federal
Officer (DFO), by telephone/voice mail at (202) 343-9977, via e-mail at
[email protected], or at the following address: Suhair Shallal,
PhD., Science Advisory Board Staff Office, U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (Mail Code 1400F), 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.,
Washington, DC 20460. General information about the SAB can be found in
the SAB Web site at: http://www.epa.gov/sab.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Background: The EPA SAB Staff Office is
announcing the formation of a new review panel and soliciting
nominations for members of the panel. This panel is being formed to
help provide advice to the Agency, as part of the SAB's mission,
established by 42 U.S.C. 4365, to provide independent scientific and
technical advice, consultation, and recommendations to the EPA
Administrator on the technical bases for EPA policies and regulations.
The work of this panel is expected to continue until the review is
complete. The SAB
[[Page 21526]]
is a chartered Federal Advisory Committee that reports directly to the
Administrator. The FRP will provide advice through the chartered SAB.
The FRP will comply with the openness provisions of the Federal
Advisory Committee Act (FACA) and all appropriate SAB procedural
policies, including the SAB process for panel formation described in
the Overview of the Panel Formation Process at the Environmental
Protection Agency, Science Advisory Board (EPA-SAB-EC-COM-02-010),
http://www.epa.gov/sab/pdf/ecm02010.pdf.
EPA's National Center for Environmental Assessment (NCEA) had
requested that the SAB conduct a peer review of the set of three
toxicological reviews including: formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and vinyl
acetate. All three of these documents were to be reviewed
simultaneously. Accordingly, the SAB Staff Office announced in a
Federal Register notice dated March 4, 2003 (68 FR10241) the formation
of a SAB Review Panel (Formaldehyde, Acetaldehyde, and Vinyl Acetate
Toxicological Reviews panel) and sought public nomination of experts to
serve on the panel. At this time, NCEA has requested that the SAB
conduct a peer review of the Formaldehyde Toxicological Review document
first. The Acetaldehyde and Vinyl Acetate Toxicological Reviews will be
peer reviewed at a later date. Formaldehyde is listed as a hazardous
air pollutants (HAPs) on the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 and is
associated with significant ambient exposures. The SAB is being asked
to conduct this review because of its previous review of the draft
formaldehyde risk assessment update (EPA-SAB-EHC-92-021), the precedent
setting nature of the assessment using mode of action and biologically
based models, and the high priority with respect to programmatic
relevance of this document.
The overall charge to the FRP is to review the Formaldehyde
Toxicological Review for consistency in application of the Agency's
proposed revised cancer guidelines and principles of mode-of-action
modeling, with special emphasis on: (a) Weight-of-the-evidence issues
to identify key events; (b) the use of pharmacokinetic and
pharmacodynamic data; (c) motivation for dose surrogate and effect
measures; (d) model structures for interspecies dosimetric adjustment;
(e) model structures or dose-response analysis; (f) data-derived
uncertainty factors for interspecies and intrahuman variability; and
(g) leveraging of data on critical health effects and model structure
sharing between routes and across chemically-related compounds to help
inform alignment of the estimates.
SAB Request for Nominations: The SAB Staff Office is requesting
nominations of recognized experts with one or more of the following
expertise: (a) Inhalation dosimetry modeling (e.g., computational fluid
dynamics (CFD) modeling), (b) physiologically based pharmacokinetic
(PBPK) modeling, (c) biologically-based dose-response (BBDR) modeling
for cancer, (d) epidemiology including exposure reconstruction, (e)
biochemistry, (f) inhalation toxicology and respiratory physiology, (g)
gastrointestinal tract toxicology and physiology, (h) pathology, (i)
carcinogenesis including leukemia, (j) respiratory biology and
immunology, (k) toxicology (including, genetic, reproductive,
developmental), (l) quantitative risk assessment, and (m) biostatistics
and mathematical modeling.
Process and Deadline for Submitting Nominations: Any interested
person or organization may nominate qualified individuals to serve as
panel members in the areas described above. Nominations should be
submitted in electronic format through the Form for Nominating
Individuals to Panels of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Science Advisory Board provided on the SAB Web site. The form can be
accessed through a link on the blue navigational bar of the SAB Web
site at: http://www.epa.gov/sab. To be considered, all nominations
should include the information requested on that form. Anyone who is
unable to access nominations on the SAB Web site can obtain a paper
copy of the form by contacting the DFO, as indicated above. The
nominating form requests the following: (1) Contact information about
the person making the nomination; (2) contact information about the
nominee; (3) the disciplinary and specific areas of expertise of the
nominee; (4) the nominee's resume; and (5) a general biosketch of the
nominee indicating education, expertise, past research, recent service
on other advisory committees or with professional associations, and
recent grant and/or contract support. Nominations should be submitted
in time to arrive no later than May 12, 2004. From the nominees
identified by respondents to this notice and through other sources
(termed the ``Widecast''), the SAB Staff Office will develop a smaller
subset (known as the ``Short List'') for more detailed consideration.
Criteria used by the SAB Staff Office in developing this Short List are
given at the end of the following paragraph. The SAB Staff Office will
contact individuals who are considered for inclusion in the Short List
to determine whether they are willing to serve on the Panel. The Short
List will be posted on the SAB Web site at: http://www.epa.gov/sab, and
will include, for each candidate, the nominee's name and their
biosketch. The Short List also will be available from the DFO listed
above. Public comments will be accepted for 14 calendar days on the
Short List. During this comment period, the public will be requested to
provide information, analysis or other documentation on nominees that
the SAB Staff Office should consider in evaluating candidates for the
Panel. For the SAB, a balanced Panel is characterized by inclusion of
candidates who possess the necessary domains of knowledge, the relevant
scientific perspectives (which, among other factors, can be influenced
by work history and affiliation), and the collective breadth of
experience to adequately address the charge.
Public responses to the Short List candidates will be considered in
the selection of the Panel members, along with information provided by
candidates and information gathered by SAB Staff Office independently
on the background of each candidate (e.g., financial disclosure
information and computer searches to evaluate a nominee's prior
involvement with the topic under review). Specific criteria to be used
in evaluating individual nominees include: (a) Scientific and/or
technical expertise, knowledge, and experience (primary factors); (b)
absence of financial conflicts of interest; (c) scientific credibility
and impartiality; (d) availability and willingness to serve; and (e)
ability to work constructively and effectively in panels. Those Short
List candidates ultimately chosen to serve on the Panel will be
appointed as Special Government Employees (SGEs). Therefore, all Short
List candidates will be required to fill out the ``Confidential
Financial Disclosure Form for Special Government Employees Serving on
Federal Advisory Committees at the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency'' (EPA Form 3110-48). This confidential form allows Government
officials to determine whether there is a statutory conflict between
that person's public responsibilities as an SGE and private interests
and activities, or the appearance of a lack of impartiality, as defined
by Federal regulation. The form may be viewed and downloaded from the
SAB Web site at: http://www.epa.gov/sab/pdf/epaform3110-48.pdf.
[[Page 21527]]
Dated: April 15, 2004.
Vanessa T. Vu,
Director, EPA Science Advisory Board Staff Office.
[FR Doc. 04-9045 Filed 4-20-04; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6560-50-P