The EPA is moving forward on plans to perform risk assessment of chemicals in the US market without the use of vertebrate animals. Animal testing requires a great deal of time and money, and causes suffering to animals for obtaining results that are not always relevant to humans.

Based on changes in the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) (see IBO 6/15/16), the EPA now has authority to evaluate health risks in everyday products by obtaining pertinent toxicity information from manufacturers. The revisions to the TSCA also require the EPA to explore alternative methods to test chemicals that do not involve experimentation on vertebrate animals. Such methods include high-throughput cell assays that examine how biological pathways can harm human health and data analysis software that predicts the outcome of a chemical on human health by comparing its properties to other chemicals in the database.

The TSCA regulates approximately 80,000 chemicals. By establishing alternative testing methods and technologies, the EPA can narrow its focus for chemical risk evaluation, creating a further opportunity for using newly created techniques to analyze existing information for regulating bodies. Promising applications of these novel technologies include exposure prediction and bioactivity.

Currently, the EPA is working with the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM) to replace six toxicity tests that rely on vertebrate animals with alternative tests that comply with Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development standards, and is using high-throughput models for assays for screening endocrine disrupters. However, a major challenge for the EPA is that the Agency is unaware of many of the new technologies and advancements being made in-house by industry, as these technologies are not standardized or commonly shared.

The EPA has until the statutory deadline of January 22, 2018 for promoting alternative testing methods.

Source: Chemical & Engineering News