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endocrine disruption
| ACC is engaged with the scientific community and government agencies in a broad effort to understand the potential of chemicals to interact with the endocrine system and cause adverse health and ecological effects at environmentally relevant exposure levels. |
Contact: Tiffany Harrington
Phone: 703-741-5583
The chemical industry contributes to basic scientific research on public health and safety through research and testing of products by individual companies and by the industry’s pioneering Long-Range Research Initiative (LRI). Through this research and testing, the industry, government agencies and the public are assured that reliable and up-to-date scientific information informs public policy and serves as the basis for product stewardship. ACC members’ product stewardship programs reflect an integrated business process for identifying, managing and minimizing the health, safety and environmental risks throughout all stages of a product's life. These activities include engaging proactively to address concerns that certain substances could have the potential to interact with the endocrine system and cause adverse health and ecological effects at environmentally relevant exposure levels.
In 1996, in response to public concern that some substances may interfere with endocrine processes in humans and wildlife, Congress directed the EPA, through the Food Quality Protection Act (Public Law 104-170), to develop a screening program for evaluating the potential of substances to induce hormone-related health effects. When the law passed, EPA assessed the current state of the science and found that there were few, if any, scientifically valid screens and tests to use to study the potential endocrine activity of chemical substances. Therefore EPA initiated an extensive research and development program, composed of both basic and applied research, to develop, standardize and validate the necessary endocrine test methods. The EPA has expended over $100 million dollars since 1996 on this joint applied- and basic-research effort.
The Council has been, and continues to be, actively involved in this scientific endeavor by sponsoring technical studies, reviewing lab reports and by participating with the broader scientific and stakeholder communities on EPA’s standardization and validation advisory committees. EPA’s activities in developing the Agency’s Endocrine Disruptor Screening and Testing Program (EDSP) can be reviewed at http://www.epa.gov/scipoly/oscpendo/. EPA is anticipating completion of the final stages of validation of a number of test methods in 2007 and initiating testing of specific substances in 2008.
Although endocrine screening per se has not yet been formally initiated by EPA, for a number of high profile chemicals, significant scientific data on potential endocrine activity, or lack thereof, are already available. See http://www.bisphenol-a.org/ and http://www.phthalates.org/. For many other substances, even if specific endocrine screening has not already been conducted, by basing risk assessment on dose response and adverse health effects, risk assessment methods cover all modes of action (including endocrine). Therefore, even if the mode of action of a substance isn’t known with 100% certainty, risk assessment methods are health protective.
Understanding and weighing the complex scientific, toxicological and medical evidence on the endocrine hypothesis is challenging. An academic project of the University of Ottawa's Institute for Population Health provides up-to-date authoritative information on endocrine modulation and endocrine disruptors and offers perspectives of independent scientific experts on reproductive and developmental health outcomes in humans. http://www.emcom.ca/
To learn more about endocrine screening and the picture that has developed over the last 10-years by the scientific community regarding the endocrine hypothesis see State of the Science and Policy for Endocrine Disruption. This document discusses the endocrine disruption hypothesis, national and international efforts to develop validated testing protocols, and the current status of scientific research and understanding of the purported effects of environmental exposures, including the “low-dose” hypothesis.
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