The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE) has submitted comments to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that threaten to challenge the data quality of comments submitted by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), should EPA use them. The NRDC submitted comments to EPA on its draft risk assessment for land-applied biosolids that stated the draft risk assessment underestimated risks from dioxin and related compounds. CRE claims that the NRDC comments contain substantial inaccuracies, omissions, and biases, and lack reproducibility. These comments are precedent-setting in two ways: it is the first effort to use the Data Quality Act to address third party submitted information; perhaps more troubling, this effort also challenges information before it is used or relied upon by the agency. It is important to note that these comments by the CRE do not constitute a formal challenge under the Data Quality Act. The EPA’s Data Quality Guidelines clearly state that they only apply to information that the agency had publicly endorsed and disseminated as part of an action or in support of an official agency opinion. Therefore, any attempt to challenge NRDC’s comments under the data quality process would be dismissed immediately by EPA. However, the CRE slips around this problem by submitting comments that simply threaten to challenge the data if EPA were to utilize or rely on the information in its development of the risk assessment for land-applied biosolids. The CRE is misusing the Data Quality Act in an effort to influence an agency decision. The EPA Data Quality Guidelines provide, as required by the original guidelines set out by the Office of Management Budget (OMB), administrative mechanisms for affected parties to request a correction of information for data officially used by the agency. By using the threat of a possible future challenge the CRE is attempting to insert itself and its views on NRDC’s comments into internal EPA decisions. While the Data Quality Guidelines address the need for a pre-dissemination review of information, they do not include any official procedure for outside participation. Clearly, this was envisioned as an internal procedure, and while decisions could be questioned, the process should remain free of outside influence. The CRE comments also threaten to taint the public comment process for every agency. The entire concept behind utilizing public comment periods is that a democratic government should be participatory in its decisions and actions. The public comment process is supposed to allow agencies to better understand and address issues before final agency action by encouraging any and all parties to freely and openly comment on proposed decisions, rules and policies. However, it is vital that submitters feel that their opinions and positions may be submitted freely and openly without any requirements or standards, and that their comments can be useful to the agency. While other submitters can and do refer to comments submitted by another party, either to support or contradict, the CRE comments go far beyond this. The CRE comments are just short of an official challenge and seem to call on the agency to use a standard to judge and eliminate the NRDC comments from its consideration. While it is clear that information, including submitted comments, should meet data quality standards if an agency directly relies on or utilizes that information, there should not be any standard for, or discouragement of, submitting comments. However, the CRE comments could deter others from submitting comments in the future and weaken the importance and effectiveness of the public comment process.