Chemicals Health Monitor

Danish EPA new survey alerts for the risk of EDCs exposure of pregnant consumers

Monica Guarinoni — 2012-05-10T09:51:18Z

A recent survey from the Danish Environmental Protection Agency evaluated the daily exposure risks of women in the child-bearing age to a number of suspected endocrine disrupting substances. Consumer products, indoor environment and food were investigated with special focus on substances like phthalates, parabens, pesticides, bisphenol A and triclosan. Some major conclusions were drawn from this study.

First, most Danish pregnant women are expected to be exposed to a combination of the selected substances, but not at levels that give rise to concern. Second, some pregnant women can, due to their consumption and behaviour, be exposed to a combination of potential endocrine disruptors at levels that give rise to concern. Third, combined exposure must be taken into consideration when assessing the risk from exposure to endocrine disruptors. And fourth, for some pregnant women, there is a need to reduce exposure to potential endocrine disruptors from food, indoor environment and consumer products.

The document states that total avoidance of exposure to endocrine disruptors is unlikely to be possible, although limiting exposure is easily within reach. This study can serve not only to raise awareness of pregnant women and women wanting to become pregnant, and those who advise and care for them, but also to inform decisions taken by regulators and policymakers.

The “Exposure of pregnant consumers to suspected endocrine disruptors” PDF survey can be found here.

Low dose effects of endocrine disruptors

Monica Guarinoni — 2012-05-10T09:50:38Z

Hundreds of scientific publications were analysed in a recent comprehensive review on endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) dose effects. Twelve scientists, including authors of groundbreaking studies on EDCs Frederick vom Saal, Theo Colborn, Tyrone Hayes and John Peterson Myers, engaged in a detailed discussion on the mechanisms behind two major concepts: low dose effects and non-monotonic dose response curves.

Low dose effects are defined as “those that occur in the range of human exposures or effects observed at doses below those used for traditional toxicological studies”. Non-monotonic dose response curves are “a nonlinear relationship between dose and effect where the slope of the curve changes sign somewhere within the range of doses examined”.

This review showed non-monotonic responses and low-dose effects phenomena to be amazingly common in studies of natural hormones and EDCs. The authors state that “whether low doses of EDCs influence certain human disorders is no longer conjecture” once one considers the association between environmental exposures to EDCs and human diseases.

The extended analysis of this enormous amount of information lead the authors to conclude that the effects of low doses cannot be predicted by the effects observed at high doses when nonmonotonic dose-response curves occur. This supports the idea that in order to safeguard human health, elemental changes in chemical testing and safety determination has to be undertaken.

Read the assessment “Hormones and Encodrine-Disrupting Chemicals: Low-Dose Effects and Nonmonotonic Dose Responses” scientific PDF review paper here.

A CHEM Trust and HEAL briefing: Regulating chemicals with endocrine disrupting properties

Monica Guarinoni — 2012-05-10T09:50:02Z

Chemicals should be defined as endocrine disruptors (EDs) on the basis of whether or not they have the ability to disrupt the functioning of the endocrine system in laboratory studies. The evidence should be drawn not only from all internationally agreed tests but also from other studies, including reviews of published scientific literature.

HEAL and CHEM Trust have produced the following briefing that explains why the level of potency of the endocrine disrupting properties should not be used as a first filter to decide which EDCs should be addressed and low potency ones have to be taken into account. Some of the arguments involved to justify this are that the exposure may occur at a time of special human vulnerability, semi-potent EDC may be produced in large amounts leading to high and widespread exposure, the potency filter presumes ‘safe threshold' which is unlikely and the EU political agreement simply mandated the identification of EDCs per se without consideration of potency.

The CHEM Trsut and HEAL briefing on regulating chemicals with endocrine disrupting properties can be found here in English and here in French in PDF.

Daily chemical exposure adds to obesity and diabetes risk

Monica Guarinoni — 2012-05-10T09:48:44Z

A scientific review of more than 240 papers published by CHEM Trust provides new urgency for banning certain chemicals to protect health. “Review of the Science Linking Chemical Exposures to the Human Risk of Obesity and Diabetes” was undertaken by two of the world's leading epidemiology researchers, Professor Miquel Porta of the Medical School of Barcelona University (Spain) and Professor Duk-Hee Lee of the School of Medicine of the Kyungpook University (South Korea). It summarises recent laboratory investigations and community-based studies linking increasing incidence of obesity and diabetes with exposure to certain common chemicals.

This review provides a strong incentive to minimise human exposure to all relevant hormone disruptors. This is especially important for women planning pregnancy as it appears to be the foetus developing in utero that is at greatest risk. The human population is exposed to these suspect chemicals on an everyday basis, mostly via food and consumer products. Some of the chemicals identified as suspects have already been banned, such as DDT and PCBs, but others are still on the market, such as Bisphenol A and brominated flame retardants.

The full PDF “Review of the Science Linking Chemical Exposures to the Human Risk of Obesity and Diabetes” report can be found here. The correspondent Executive Summary & Conclusions and leaflets can be also downloaded here.

Major report released on assessment of Endocrine Disruptors

Monica Guarinoni — 2012-05-10T09:47:49Z

The important report, “State of the Art of the Assessment of Endocrine Disruptors”, released by the European Commission, represents a major step forward in the discussion on the science on chemicals with endocrine disrupting properties and the development of policy to regulate them.

The voluminous assessment, written by Professor Andreas Kortenkamp and a specially-constituted research team, was contracted by the Directorate-General of Environment in the European Commission, a unit which is responsible for the overarching Strategy document guiding European Union actions on Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals.

The Report covers the following areas:

Definition of EDCs
Frameworks for Regulatory Testing & Screening
Scientific Results of Regulatory Significance (including Weight of Evidence Approaches, Low Dose Effects, Critical Windows of Sensitivity, Mixtures, Chemicals of Concern)
European Regulatory Framework
Proposals by EU Member State Authorities and Stakeholders
Testing Requirements and Decision Criteria
Research and Development Needs
Annex 1- Summary of the State of the Science (including Definitions, Overarching Issues, Human Health Endpoints, Wildlife Endpoints)
Annex 2- Summary of Expert Consultations on Approaches to the Regulatory Assessment of EDs (Experts from various European countries, competing economies internationally – USA, Canada, Japan, Intergovernmental Agencies, Industry and Public Interest Associations)
Annex 3- Comparative Analysis of Endpoints and Assays by Human Health and Wildlife Endpoint.

The report will inform both the revision of the EU Strategy on endocrine disruptors, now 12 years old, and the Commission's deliberations on how to improve existing and develop specific future EU regulatory processes that define, identify and regulate endocrine disrupting chemicals.

In particular, the report will serve to inform the EU's work over the next two years to develop the criteria that will be used to identify and regulate hormone disruptors under the EU Pesticides and Biocides laws, and to some extent REACH (the so-called industrial chemicals regulation). Later these criteria will potentially be deployed in other relevant EU laws, such as those on cosmetics, food contact materials, and toys safety.

The “State of the art Assessment of Endocrine Disruptors” final report can be found here (DG Environment, European Commission).

European Commission releases report on science of EDCs

Monica Guarinoni — 2012-03-07T11:13:44Z

A major step forward in the discussion and development of policy to regulate chemicals with endocrine disrupting properties occurred last week when the European Commission released an important report, “State of the Art of the Assessment of Endocrine Disruptors.”

The voluminous report, written by Professor Andreas Kortenkamp and a specially-constituted research team, was contracted by the Directorate-General of Environment in the European Commission, a unit which is responsible for the overarching Strategy document guiding European Union actions on Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals.

The report will inform both the revision of this Strategy, now 12 years old, and the Commission's deliberations on how to improve existing and develop specific future EU regulatory processes that define, identify and regulate endocrine disrupting chemicals.

In particular, the report will serve to inform the EU's work over the next two years to develop the criteria that will be used to identify and regulate hormone disruptors under the EU Pesticides and Biocides laws, and to some extent REACH *(the so-called industrial chemicals regulation). Later these criteria will potentially be deployed in other relevant EU laws, such as those on cosmetics, food contact materials, and toys safety.

The report is available as a pdf at State of the Art Assessment of Endocrine Disrupters, Final Report

Endocrine disrupting chemicals have been called hormone highjackers or gender benders among other things, because of their capacity to disrupt the natural hormone signaling functions, some of which are responsible for healthy development of reproductive organs.

Scientific research increasingly confirms their capacity, at very low levels of exposure, to disrupt a number of the body's systems, leading to neurological, metabolic, immune, reproductive and behavioral difficulties and to diseases such as diabetes, infertility, hormonally-linked cancers (breast, prostate, testicular), learning and developmental disabilities and other chronic health conditions.

Recent scientific literature unveils other worrying characteristics such as transgenerational effects. The chemicals with these hormone disrupting properties can be found in certain plastics, pesticides, flame retardants in electronics and soft furnishings, fragrances and additives in cosmetics and personal care products and many more products in daily use. These chemicals are being constantly detected in humans through human biomonitoring, and in other organisms and both indoor and outdoor environments through environmental monitoring.

Ubiquity is a characteristic of EDCs (e.g. schools, homes, health care facilities, work places, from all manner of products ranging from toys, food, food packaging, clothing, electronics, furniture, automobiles, building materials, to cleaning products) with large implications for public health.

Learning how to ascertain which chemicals substances have endocrine disrupting (ED) properties, and determining which uses should be regulated has been an ongoing concern, in the European Union, as well as in the United States and internationally. In principle, the European Union has already decided in 3 of its regulations that Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals must be strictly controlled or banned, but the development of some of the key details have been postponed or the enactment of specific new regulatory processes has not yet or only just begun.

Content of the Report

The Report covers the following areas: • Definition of EDCs • Frameworks for Regulatory Testing & Screening • Scientific Results of Regulatory Significance (including Weight of Evidence Approaches, Low Dose Effects, Critical Windows of Sensitivity, Mixtures, Chemicals of Concern) • European Regulatory Framework • Proposals by EU Member State Authorities and Stakeholders. • Testing requirements and decision criteria • Research and development needs • Annex 1- Summary of the State of the Science (including Definitions, Overarching Issues, Human Health Endpoints, Wildlife Endpoints) • Annex 2- Summary of Expert Consultations on Approaches to the Regulatory Assessment of EDs (Experts from various European countries, competing economies internationally – USA, Canada, Japan, Intergovernmental Agencies, Industry and Public Interest Associations) • Annex 3- Comparative Analysis of Endpoints and Assays by Human Health and Wildlife Endpoint.

Current testing and screening methods

The Kortenkamp report points out that current testing and screening methods, while useful, are inadequate for capturing the full range of ED effects. Furthermore, testing during critical windows of development is currently not being done with the most sensitive methods now available. Consequently, adequate information about what chemicals can act as EDs and when, is severely limited.

Identifying EDCs

One of the current views circulating in the discussion of how to best identify EDCs is to tackle the most powerful ones, and to exclude from consideration those below a certain level of potency. The Kortenkamp report suggests that proposed potency ‘cut-off' levels for chemicals with endocrine disrupting properties are arbitrary and scientifically unsound due to the lack of basic scientific information. The implication is that further research may indicate that there may be no safe levels of exposure to ED chemicals. Thus the report conveys that properly identifying EDCs means taking potency only as one amongst other identifying criteria, at most.

Weight of Evidence

The report recommends that a decision tree, based on a weight of evidence approach which considers the severity and irreversibility of effects as well as endocrine disruption modes of action, needs to be developed to screen chemicals for their ED capacity. Such a decision tree should be implemented on a non-sequential, non-rigid basis so that no chemical with ED properties falls through the cracks. Lack of information should not remove a chemical from consideration.

Mixtures

The report recommends as well that evaluation of the effects of chemicals mixtures is critically important, given that we all carry within our bodies reservoirs of chemical mixtures taken in through a variety of exposure pathways encountered every day throughout a lifetime. Professor Kortenkamp has produced another report entirely on this subject for the European Commission.

A Separate Category from other harmful chemicals

A final recommendation is that a separate category for ED chemicals be established in the EU. Such a category would accord EDCs equal importance to the existing categories of regulated chemicals such as PBTs (persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals) and CMRs (carcinogenic, mutagenic, and reprotoxic chemicals).

Although the Kortenkamp report evaluates and provides reccommendations for European regulations concerning pesticides and biocides and seeks to inform regulatory policies of REACH*, the paper and the discussions it will catalyze will also inform US regulators and Congressional bodies as these struggle to reform current US toxic chemical regulations. For example, the Toxic Substance Control Act, a set of regulations that determines how the United States defines and regulates toxic chemicals was promulgated more than 30 years ago, before scientific research had a solid grasp on the capacity of chemicals to wreak havoc in the human body through their capacity to mimic hormones.

The report and more information about the EU processes can be found on:

The Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) website at http://www.env-health.org/spip.php?article1395

The CHEM Trust website at http://www.chemtrust.or.uk/docs

The following publication “A CHEM Trust and HEAL Briefing: Challenges and solutions in the regulation of chemicals with endocrine disrupting properties” will be available shortly on the HEAL and CHEM Trust websites, in English, Spanish, French and German.

The European Commission's Endocrine Disrupters Website at http://ec.europa.eu/environment/endocrine/documents/studies_en.htm (The Kortenkamp report can be found by scrolling to the bottom of the page)

For a list of chemicals with endocrine disrupting properties visit:

The Endocrine Disruption Exchange at http://www.endocrinedisruption.com/endocrine.TEDXList.overview.php

The ChemSec SIN List 2.0 (chemicals subject to REACH ) at http://www.chemsec.org/list/sin-list-20

The European Commission's website on Combination Effects of Chemicals, featuring Professor Kortenkamp's contracted study on mixtures toxicity at http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/effects.htm

*REACH, the relatively new EU law governing the identification and use of industrial and toxic substances. (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and restriction of CHemical substances). REACH entered into force on 1 June 2007.

Concern mounts about chemicals contamination from unconventional natural gas

Monica Guarinoni — 2011-11-23T13:05:48Z

Concern in Europe is mounting about the threats of hazardous chemical contamination and subsequent public health consequences from the unconventional drilling for natural gas. The hydrofracturing of shale rock, or fracking, has seen huge controversy and public opposition in the USA, Australia, and elsewhere, and this form of drilling is now coming to Europe. For more details, see (...) - News on Diseases and Chemicals / Homepage headlines

Meeting on European Human Biomonitoring

Monica Guarinoni — 2011-11-23T12:10:18Z

Please see this article

French National Academy of Medicine on EDCs and Cancer

Monica Guarinoni — 2011-11-22T12:01:19Z

The French National Academy of Medicine has released a report which recognises that endocrine disrupting chemicals are contributing to the rising incidence of some hormone dependent cancers. This publication, which HEAL believes represents an important step forward in environmental health understanding, will hopefully prompt a major reflection in many other European countries.

An article in the major French daily newspaper, Le Monde, on 11 November, covered the report of the French National Academy of Medicine on the cancer risk from endocrine disrupting chemicals in the environment and food. A unofficial translation from the French language of the article follows:

"These chemicals, such as phthalates, bisphenol A (BPA) or certain pesticide residues are likely to disrupt the hormonal system and increase the incidence of certain cancers.

For thirty years, the academy noted, the incidence of prostate cancer has increased 5.2 times, while breast cancer incidence has doubled. Similarly, the incidence of testicular cancer has nearly tripled in young men since 1975. What part have endocrine disruptors - and particularly the BPA, the most ubiquitous of them – played in this development? This contribution is "very difficult to quantify," note the reporters who insist that a significant contribution to the increase is also diagnosis-related screening programmes.

Carcinogenic effects

But the Academy notes that "there is a convergent beam of sufficient data in rodents showing a carcinogenic effect of BPA at doses well below the permitted daily doses in humans." "The carcinogenic effects in rodents are delayed after exposure in utero or after birth", say the authors, who reviewed a portion of the scientific literature on the subject and conducted a series of hearings.

Similarly, the academy noted a link, especially among farmers, between pesticide use and prostate cancer - the same link was not found with breast cancer. Faced with the reality of "low-dose effects in rodents (...) not provided by traditional toxicology (...) observed for doses lower than the acceptable daily intake (ADI) by the health authorities," the Academy believes that "the authorities' strategy to determine the toxicological ADI" is "questionable".

For the Academy, a ban on BPA is premature in the absence of alternative technical solutions. But preventive measures need to be taken, particularly for people at risk: young children, people with hormone-dependent cancer, and pregnant and lactating women.

For example, "prohibit heating food in plastic packaging" in catering facilities (canteens, clinics, etc., "avoid storing mineral water in plastic bottles for a long time and at high-temperatures, which may be associated with a release phthalates." The institution ... says it is also necessary to "advise cashiers handling thermal receipts (containing BPA) to wear gloves, especially if they are pregnant" and to prevent the recycling of "packaging containing BPA or phthalates".

The article was written by Stéphane Foucart, and published on 11 November 2011.

The Report of the Academie de Medicine, Paris, about endocrine disrupting chemicals, including Bisphenol A was released on Wednesday, 9 November, and can be found here

France close to banning BPA in food contact materials

Monica Guarinoni — 2011-11-10T17:29:22Z

The French National Assembly voted on 13 October, by 348 votes for and 2 against, to ban bisphenol A (BPA) in all food contact materials from 2014. The decision, which now goes to the French Senate, followed closely on the heels of the publication of a report by the French National Agency for Food Safety, Environment and Labour (ANSES) which stated that low dose exposure to BPA resulted in health effects in sensitive populations. (Full report:).

Containers aimed at children under three will have to be BPA-free by the beginning of 2013 and all products should be labelled to warn sensitive populations of the potential dangers of exposure to the substance.
The ANSES report on the health effects of BPA was published 27 September 2011. Crucially, the Agency had studied a wide range of research papers instead of limiting its review to those produced under the so-called Good Laboratory Practice (GLP).
The report highlights health effects that have been proven in animals and suspected in humans, even at low levels of exposure. These effects may also depend greatly on individuals being exposed during different phases of their development, which means that it may be possible to identify categories of people who are particularly vulnerable to bisphenol A.
The Agency considers that it now has enough scientific evidence to priorise the prevention of exposure of the most susceptible populations, such as infants, young children, and pregnant and breastfeeding women. This objective entails reducing exposure to bisphenol A, mainly by replacing it in the food contact materials that are a main source of exposure of these populations. In this context, the Agency is submitting the findings of its work for consultation and has called for contributions, to be submitted by the end of November 2011, on any relevant scientific data concerning, in particular, the available substitutes and their safety and effectiveness.
HEAL member organisation in France, Reseau Environnement Sante was widely congratulated for the huge contribution it has made to raising the awareness of policy makers on this issue, and in ensuring attention to important non-GLP studies. RES press release is available here "Bisphénol A: le volontarisme français doit servir l'Europe !"
HEAL welcomed the decision of the French Assembly as an important step for health protection. Since no national ban can be kept in the long term without agreement at EU level, if the vote is upheld in the French Senate, the issue of BPA in food contact materials must now be dealt with at the European level.
A spokesman for the European Commission said the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) was currently studying Anses' report and that EFSA was expected to respond before the end of the year or by the beginning of 2012.