Pesticide Makers Could Skip Some Animal Skin Tests, EPA Says

摘要

Pesticide makers could reduce laboratory time and costs by no longer testing certain ingredients on the skins of experimental animals to determine if those chemicals would harm people, under draft guidance from the EPA. The Environmental Protection Agency gets sufficient information from other required safety tests, so the skin tests provide “little to no added value in regulatory decision making,” the agency said in its Wednesday notice. It’s seeking comments on the draft guidance, set to be released Thursday. 1.The EPA wants to expand guidance it issued in 2016 to include data pesticide makers must provide for their active ingredients-the specific chemicals that control or kill pests. That guidance initially allowed companies to waive certain animal skin tests for pesticide products, or mixtures of active ingredients and other chemicals that may help the product disperse or otherwise improve its function. Data from such tests are used to decide, for example, if gloves need to be worn when working with a product. 2.The 2016 guidance came after the agency found that in 95% of cases, label restrictions based on oral tests of pesticide products would have been equally or more protective than information from skin tests. That meant companies were wasting time, money, and the lives of the animals, which are killed after the experiment. 3.The EPA’s expanded guidance makes its regulatory approach consistent with Canada’s, which in 2017 allowed companies to waive animal skin tests for both pesticide products and their active ingredients, the agency said. 4.The pesticide office’s updated policy also is a further step toward the directive EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler set last September, urging the agency to reduce its requested mammalian studies and funding for them by 30% by 2025, and eliminate them entirely by 2035.