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STATUS OF ENDOCRINE DISRUPTOR SCREENING AND TESTING ACTIVITIES IN THE US: IMPLEMENTATION OF THE EDSTAC RECOMMENDATIONS
Citation:
Kavlock, R J. STATUS OF ENDOCRINE DISRUPTOR SCREENING AND TESTING ACTIVITIES IN THE US: IMPLEMENTATION OF THE EDSTAC RECOMMENDATIONS. Presented at Teratology Society Meeting, Scottsdale, AZ, June 22 - 27, 2002.
Impact/Purpose:
Disseminate material to scientific meeting
Description:
The last two decades have witnessed a growing concern for chemicals that have the potential to adversely affect the normal functioning of the endocrine system. In 1996, the US Congress passed the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) that mandated the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to initiate a screening program for estrogenic chemicals and other hormonal effects as deemed necessary to protect human health. In a 1998 report, an advisory committee to EPA (the EDSTAC or the Endocrine Disruptor Screening and Testing Advisory Committee) called for the evaluation of human and wildlife effects caused by alteration in function of the estrogen, androgen and thyroid hormone systems in order to meet the intent of FQPA. Their recommendations included a battery of Tier 1 screening assays (ligand binding and transcriptional activation, uterotrophic, Hershberger, female pubertal development, fish reproduction and amphibian metamorphosis) to identify endocrine action and Tier 2 tests (multigenerational-type protocols) to characterize adverse biological outcomes. This presentation will review the status of implementing the recommendations of EDSTAC. The implementation process is being guided by a second advisory committee (the Endocrine Disruptor Methods Validation Subcommittee or EDMVS) and involves protocol standardization, interlaboratory comparisons, and battery composition. One of the more contentious issues has related to shape of the dose-response curve for endocrine disruptor modes of action. Recently, EPA issued an interim policy that given the current state-of-the-science, it is premature to require testing for substances for low-dose effects within the screening program. Using a number of criteria (e.g., production volumes, environmental persistence, known health effects, and quantitative structure-activity relationships for ligand binding), the first 200 chemicals to be submitted for screening will be proposed by the EPA in December 2002 and finalized in December 2003. Finally, a new research effort within EPA has started to look at how molecular biological approaches such as genomics can be used in the next generation of endocrine disruptor screening tests. [This is an abstract of a presentation and does not represent EPA policy]