EPA Endocrine Managers Prepare New Policy To Outline Shift To New Tests

摘要

Leaders of EPA's long-struggling Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP) are drafting a policy document that will outline the agency's new, in vitro approach to the program, using these new methods to prioritize chemicals for screening in EDSP and eventually replacing some of the animal-based assays with the newer cellular methods. "We're going through a process we call the pivot. We're pivoting from traditional toxicology methods to" newer high-throughput cellular toxicity testing methods, Bill Wooge, with the EDSP program, told members of the agency's state pesticide and agriculture officials advisory committee at a meeting in Arlington, VA, April 14. "We're working on a policy document that will explain this pivot… and impacts it will have." Wooge described the pivot in part as "a return to using exposure for prioritization." He outlined a process of moving from the universe of an estimated 10,000 chemicals that EDSP's implementing language requires the program to screen for endocrine disruption to using new toxicity tests and biomonitoring data to prioritize chemicals for screening and then running those flagged chemicals through the second tier of animal-based EDSP testing for "dose-response analysis and adversity testing."