The EPA’s Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program
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It’s all part of a massive EPA program to screen chemicals for effects on the body’s natural hormones (known as “endocrine disruption”). The program resulted from a 1996 law requiring the EPA to “develop a screening program … to determine whether certain substances may have an effect in humans that is similar to an effect produced by a naturally occurring estrogen, or such other endocrine effect as the [agency] may designate.” However, once in the hands of the EPA, this simple mandate quickly mutated into what threatens to become one of the largest animal-testing exercises of all time.
First, the EPA put together an advisory committee with representatives from environmental groups, industry, and all other interested parties … except the animal protection community. Then, on the advice of its committee, the EPA expanded the scope of its Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program to examine not only “estrogen-like” effects, but effects on “androgen” and “thyroid” hormones as well. Then the EPA took it even further by vastly expanding the program’s scope to include toxicity testing on birds, fish, amphibians, and invertebrates––far more testing than even the EPA says it needs to estimate chemical effects in humans.
So now the EPA is in the process of developing 14 new or revised tests––most of which are animal-poisoning studies and some of which kill more than 2,000 animals each! The wildlife toxicity tests alone could potentially quadruple the number of animals who are killed as a result of this massive program.
Another consequence of the EPA’s unnecessary expansion of its endocrine program is an unavoidable delay in getting the program off the ground. Despite its congressional mandate to implement the endocrine program within three years of the passage of the 1996 law, the EPA is nowhere close to fulfilling even its most basic mandate and is now more than five years behind schedule.
In an attempt to limit the damage brought on by would-be environmental and “wildlife protection” groups, PETA has filed a legal petition with the EPA, calling on the agency to limit the scope of its endocrine program to an assessment of effects in humans, as was specified by the 1996 law. The EPA is required to provide a detailed response to our petition, after which we will consider what further legal action may be necessary. Click here to download PETA’s petition.
How You Can Help
Please send polite letters to the EPA’s administrator requesting that he support PETA’s rulemaking petition and limit the scope of the EPA’s Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program to the assessment of endocrine effects in humans:
Lisa Jackson
Administrator
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Ariel Rios Bldg. (1101A)
1200 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.
Washington, DC 20460
202-501-1450 (fax)
Jackson.Lisa@epa.gov
Follow the links below to learn more about this program:
