EDF Health

Selected tag(s): In vivo

Testing for endocrine disruption: Are we there yet?

By / Published: December 22, 2009

Cal Baier-Anderson, Ph.D., is a Health Scientist.

After long delays, the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs recently issued endocrine disruptor screening test orders for dozens of high-priority pesticide ingredients.  Endocrine disruptors are chemicals capable of interfering with the action of hormones that regulate biological processes such as development, growth, reproduction and metabolism.  The test orders require pesticide manufacturers to evaluate their chemicals using a specific battery of tests.

Identifying which chemicals are endocrine disruptors can help protect people and the environment from harmful exposures.  So, with test orders now in the hands of pesticide manufacturers, will we finally get the data we need? Read More »

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Using ChAMP to Advance Alternative Testing Technologies

By / Published: June 16, 2009

Cal Baier-Anderson, Ph.D., is a Health Scientist and Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

Many of the screening-level hazard data being collected and analyzed under ChAMP that pertain to human health are derived from traditional laboratory animal studies.  The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recently offered a “new paradigm for toxicity testing” in its 2008 report Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: a Vision and a Strategy.  Can ChAMP hazard data be used to facilitate the development of new testing strategies?  Read More »

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Questionable risk decisions under ChAMP: Chlorobenzenes Category

By / Published: April 27, 2009

Cal Baier-Anderson, Ph.D., is a Health Scientist and Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

Our analysis of EPA’s risk decision under ChAMP for this category of toxic chemicals vividly illustrates how EPA has failed to adopt a health-protective approach to its screening of HPV chemicals.  Rather, it misclassifies or understates these chemicals’ hazards, asserts that existing regulations are sufficient even when they are quite old or do not cover identified exposures, and naively assumes that children will not be as exposed as adults to consumer products used in the home unless they are intended for their use.  Finally, this case demonstrates that manufacturers are not reporting to EPA even readily available information on their chemicals’ uses.  Read More »

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The Next Mile Marker on the Road to High Throughput In Vitro Screening?

By John Balbus / Published: June 24, 2008

John Balbus, M.D., M.P.H., is Chief Health Scientist.

A new paper by Shaw et al., published in May in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “suggests a generalizable and scalable method for the systematic characterization and comparison of novel nanomaterials” using high throughput in vitro tests.  Does this mean that the National Academy of Sciences’ vision for toxicity testing in the 21st century – proposed for conventional chemicals – is already here for nanomaterials?  Not quite.  Read More »

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On the Road to In Vitro Testing: Are We There Yet?

By John Balbus / Published: March 18, 2008

John Balbus, M.D., M.P.H., is Chief Health Scientist.

EPA’s recently released draft Nanotechnology Research Strategy (NRS) proposes a tiered testing system to evaluate human toxicity of nanomaterials.  It puts in vitro tests, or those done in test tubes and petri dishes as opposed to living animals, front and center.  EPA says the results of the first, in vitro tier will be used for guidance on “what health endpoints to monitor” and the second, in vivo tier will then help “identify those in vitro assays that correlate with in vivo nanomaterial toxicity or health effects.”

Wait a second.  If the in vivo testing is necessary in order to figure out what the in vitro testing results really mean, how can the agency use the in vitro testing results to figure out what health endpoints to monitor?  This cart and horse confusion is a serious matter. Read More »

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