{"id":3869,"date":"2014-07-29T08:19:57","date_gmt":"2014-07-29T13:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/?p=3869"},"modified":"2024-02-12T11:01:36","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T16:01:36","slug":"national-academy-of-sciences-strongly-affirms-science-showing-styrene-is-a-human-carcinogen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/2014\/07\/29\/national-academy-of-sciences-strongly-affirms-science-showing-styrene-is-a-human-carcinogen\/","title":{"rendered":"National Academy of Sciences strongly affirms science showing styrene is a human carcinogen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Denison, Ph.D.<\/em>,<\/em> is a Lead Senior Scientist.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a ridiculously long road to get here, because of the delay tactics of the chemical industry.\u00a0 But yesterday a <\/span>panel of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)<\/span><\/a> fully backed the National Toxicology Program\u2019s (NTP) listing of styrene as \u201creasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We have blogged earlier about this saga.\u00a0 In June 2011, after years of delay, the NTP released its Congressionally mandated <\/span><\/span>12th Report on Carcinogens<\/span><\/a> (RoC), in which it upgraded formaldehyde to the status of \u201cknown to be a human carcinogen,\u201d and for the first time listed styrene as \u201creasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.\u201d\u00a0 The chemical industry launched <\/span>an all-out war<\/span><\/a> to defend two of its <\/span>biggest cash cows<\/span><\/a>, filing a lawsuit to try to reverse the styrene listing (<\/span>which it lost<\/span><\/a>), and seeking to <\/span>cut off funding for the RoC<\/span><\/a>. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In late 2011, the industry managed to get its allies in Congress to slip into the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012<\/a>, without any debate, a rider that mandated NAS to review the styrene and formaldehyde listings in the 12th RoC.\u00a0 Yesterday\u2019s NAS report on styrene is the first installment, with the second one on formaldehyde expected shortly.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The NAS report could not be more supportive of the NTP\u2019s listing of styrene, finding \u201cthat \u2018compelling evidence\u2019 exists in human, animal, and mechanistic studies to support listing styrene, at a minimum<\/i><\/b>, as reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.\u201d (emphasis added)\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The NAS committee both peer-reviewed the RoC listing and conducted its own independent review of the styrene literature \u2013 and in both cases found strong evidence to support NTP\u2019s original finding.\u00a0 According to <\/span>NAS\u2019 release<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The committee that wrote the report found that the listing is supported by \u201climited but credible\u201d evidence of carcinogenicity in human studies, \u201csufficient\u201d evidence from animal studies, and \u201cconvincing relevant information\u201d in mechanistic studies that observed DNA damage in human cells that had been exposed to styrene.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Note that a chemical can be classified as \u201creasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen\u201d if there is sufficient evidence in animals or<\/span> limited evidence in human studies; in the case of styrene, NAS affirmed that there are both types of evidence.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Moreover, NAS found that the available mechanistic evidence could actually support an even stronger classification of styrene, noting that \u201ca strong argument could be made to support the listing of styrene as a known human carcinogen if data derived from the study of human tissues or cells alone were considered sufficient.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In the end, the chemical industry managed to buy itself 3 years of delay, and temporarily tarnished the reputation of one of the world\u2019s leading authoritative bodies, one that reaches its conclusions only after an <\/span>exhaustive scientific assessment process<\/span><\/a> entailing reviews by four separate groups of expert scientists for each chemical.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

One can only hope that this sorry episode and waste of public resources will help to expose the narrow self-interest of the industry, which for years it has deceptively sought to wrap in a mantle of sound science.\u00a0 Now we know whose science is sound, and whose isn\u2019t.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.\u00a0 It\u2019s been a ridiculously long road to get here, because of the delay tactics of the chemical industry.\u00a0 But yesterday a panel of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) fully backed the National Toxicology Program\u2019s (NTP) listing of styrene as \u201creasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.\u201d …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,5009,56093],"tags":[39150,39160,8099,5022],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policy","category-health-science","category-industry-influence","tag-american-chemistry-council","tag-national-academy-of-sciences-nas","tag-styrene","tag-worker-safety"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3869"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12711,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3869\/revisions\/12711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3869"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}