Call for better testing of the hazards of new chemicals
Some 12,000 new chemicals are registered with the American Chemical Society daily. Though few make it into the environment, many scientists are calling for “swifter and sounder” testing when evaluating the risks of these new substances, since U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency lack information about their environmental hazards when they are mass produced.
Writing in a letter in the journal Science, eight societies representing 40,000 scientists from the fields of genetics, reproductive medicine, endocrinology, developmental biology and others, expressed concerns about improved testing requirements due to chemicals like the plasticizer bisphenol A, or BPA, subject of more than 300 studies finding adverse health effects in animals.
“Hormones control everything—our basic metabolism, our reproduction,” said Patricia Hunt, a professor in the Washington State University School of Molecular Biosciences and corresponding author of the letter. “We call them endocrine disruptors. They’re like endocrine bombs to a certain extent because they can disrupt all these normal functions.”
