Despite a growing need to understand the impacts of chemicals on our health and environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will not re-open its specialized library for research on the properties and effects of new chemicals, according to documents posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). As a consequence, one of the world’s most comprehensive technical collections on pesticides and other compounds will be permanently lost.
The Office of Prevention, Pollution and Toxic Substances (OPPTS) Library, in EPA’s Washington D.C. Headquarters, had provided research services to EPA scientists who review industry requests for the introduction of new chemicals into the market. Without any public announcement or notice to its staff, EPA shut down the library in October 2006. Its holdings were dispersed and many journals “recycled.”
In December 2007, after nearly a third of agency libraries had been closed, Congress intervened and ordered EPA to re-open closed libraries but left it up to the agency to devise a plan. The details of EPA’s plan are now just becoming known. Rather than restore the OPPTS Library, EPA will instead –
Limit a re-opened EPA Headquarters Library (closed since September 2006) to a total of 150 square feet – an area smaller than a one-car garage. Within that small space, a tiny remnant of the original OPPTS Library holdings will be available as a “special Chemical Collection”;
This entire Chemical Collection will occupy one six-shelf bookcase totaling 18 linear feet. The rest of the EPA HQs Library will be contained in two bookshelves totaling 36 linear feet; and
This Chemical Collection will have no librarian assigned to it (though the restored HQ Library will have a single librarian and technician). By contrast, the OPPTS Library had three librarians and two technical staff.
+ Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
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