EPA to Correct Error Made With Industry’s Asbestos Data (1)

The Environmental Protection Agency’s preliminary conclusions that some workers face too much risk of contracting cancer from their exposure to asbestos may change due to an error the agency made, EPA staff said Monday.

Louis Scarano, acting lead of the EPA team that prepared the agency’s draft evaluation of the risks from the cancer-causing mineral, didn’t say how the correction—removing duplicate worker exposure data—would affect the agency’s final risk estimates.

But correcting the worker exposure data may alter the agency’s conclusion, he told the EPA’s Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC), a panel of nonagency scientists critiquing the agency’s draft ...