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More than 100 Capitol Hill staffers as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and agency professionals attended a Congressional Science Briefing Thursday, December 10 entitled, “Advances in Toxicity Testing to Inform Chemicals Policy.” The panel consisted of James S. Bus, Steven P. Bradbury, Melvin E. Andersen, and Daniel Krewski. George M. Gray, of Risk Science and Management, LLC, served as the moderator. Rep. David Wu (D-OR) was the honorary host for the luncheon briefing that was held in the Rayburn House Office Building. Rep. Wu also was the first recipient of the 2009 SOT Congressional Leadership Award for his commitment and dedication to supporting sound science as a basis for effective decision making.
The briefing covered a variety of topics surrounding the current testing methods used for evaluating the toxicity of chemical substances. Panelists also explored how improvements in understanding and evaluating toxicity can be used to effectively modernize the management of toxic chemicals in the United States. Dr. Bus, of Dow Chemical Company, former SOT President, presented an overview of the current state of toxicity testing and offered some insights into how animals testing will be done in the future. He noted that animal testing provides an “extensive reservoir of knowledge for framing future testing strategy.” Dr. Andersen, of the Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences, addressed the future of toxicity testing and pointed out that the vision of the committee that drafted the National Research Council’s report, Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and A Strategy was that, “routine toxicity testing will be conducted in human cells in vitro by evaluating perturbations of cellular responses in a suite of toxicity pathway assays.” Dr. Bradbury, of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), talked about the needs of meeting the new testing paradigm from a regulatory perspective and explored the EPA’s strategy plan for evaluating the toxicity of chemicals. He explained that the EPA hopes to “improve our chemical risk management approach by transitioning to new integrative and predictive 21st century techniques for human health and ecological assessments.” Dr. Krewski, of the University of Ottawa, provided remarks about the “Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century” report. He talked about the legal community’s reaction to the report and stressed that in order for the vision to become a reality there must be “national and international coordination, a reorientation of the risk assessment practice to focus on prevention of perturbation of toxicity pathways, and ongoing oversight by the National Research Council.” More information about the Congressional Science Briefing is available on the Policymakers section of the SOT Web site.
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SOT —Dedicated to Creating a Safer and Healthier World by Advancing the Science of Toxicology. © 2012 Society of Toxicology. All rights reserved. | |||||||||||
