[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]


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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.

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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

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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.


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    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