The United States government has a very poor track record of managing scientific programs.
An editorial in the May 25, 2015 edition of The New York Times points out that, after nearly four decades, both houses of Congress are moving to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).1 TSCA has been torpedoed repeatedly over the years, and bled white. Political considerations rule, despite the need for science-based management of the public health risks.
The revision passed by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee would increase funding for testing of compounds by $18 million in fees paid directly to the U.S. EPA. This 33% increase from user fees for the EPA would increase the funds for toxicity testing and control to about $70 million/year in fiscal 2016. In return, Congress expects the EPA to evaluate and report on 20 chemicals per year. That comes out to about 0.2 ppm, as the inventory of known chemicals was 55 million in 2010 and 97 million in 2015.2
Which chemicals to focus on is an important detail of the legislation. The Senate wants the EPA to select chemicals based on risk, while the lobbyists who have purchased access to the House bill would focus on important articles of commerce. For example, a firm might seek competitive advantage by having its chemical studied, while a competing chemical was waiting for completion of its study. Congress is bad, but big industry is worse.
The EPA needs a clear mandate to prioritize, develop and release its own data. E.G. Vallianatos and McKay Jenkins describe the perversion of science-based regulation at the EPA during the last 30 years.3,4 Firewalls need to be erected to prevent political meddling.
If the EPA is given an open choice, it could take advantage of the high-content screening protocols used for drug discovery and evaluation by employing organs on a chip (OOC) to study human toxicity without little risk to people. Working with live human tissue on chips could avoid problems of irrelevancy that arise with rat, dog and mice surrogates. The Senate bill also asks for testing of vulnerable groups including infants, pregnant women, the elderly and chemical-industry workers. This will be a daunting, perhaps impossible, challenge, unless in vitro models can be developed for the protected classes.
It is about time Americans benefit from technologies that could provide widespread health improvement. Hopefully, Congress and the White House can learn from their irresponsible management of TSCA up to now.
References
- http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/25/opinion/stronger-regulation-of-toxic-chemicals.html?_r=0
- http://www.cas.org/content/chemical-substances
- Valliantos, E.G. and Jenkins, M. The Poison Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA, Bloomsbury Press: New York, NY, 2014.
- https://www.americanlaboratory.com/Blog/171278-Book-Review-Poison-Spring-The-Secret-History-of-Pollution-and-the-EPA/
Robert L. Stevenson, Ph.D., is Editor Emeritus, American Laboratory/Labcompare; e-mail: [email protected].