NEWS OF THE WEEK
EPA UNVEILS TESTING LIST PESTICIDES: Critics say EPA's endocrine disrupter screening program will miss dangerous chemicals
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PA HAS PUBLISHED for public comment a draft list of 73 pesticides and inert ingredients that will be tested under the agency's endocrine disrupter screening program (www.epa.gov/oscpmont/os cpendo). The agency stresses that the listed substances were chosen because of their potential for widespread exposure, not because they are suspected endocrine disrupters. The long-awaited list moves forward a program that was supposed to report its first results to Congress in 1999. That program has languished due to a lack of funding and personnel. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals interfere with hormonal action, causing a variety of effects, including harm to the reproductive tract. EPA testing of the listed pesticides will take place in two phases: Tier 1 tests will be quick screens to find potential endocrine disrupters; Tier 2 tests will be more définitive rodent assays.
BIODEFENSE SPENDING PREPAREDNESS: U.S. is not spending enough on prevention, group says
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ESPITE SPENDING more than $40 billion on biological defense since the terror attacks of Sept. 11,2001, the U.S. has allocated only $673 million to prevention efforts that are essential to im proving national security, the Center for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation (CACNP) says in its latest analysis. Spending to address the threat of bioweapons is now allocated among 11 federal departments and agencies. Such spending will approach nearly $50 billion if Con gress fully funds the Bush Administration's fiscal 2008 request of nearly $7 billion. Most of the biodefense money supports research, development, and acquisition of medical countermeasures and protective equipment. It also supports improvements in medical surveillance and detection of bioweapons, as well as preparedness at the state and local levels and in hospitals. Less than 2% of federal biodefense funding through fiscal 2007 has been al located for prevention efforts. In fiscal 2008, however, the Pentagon aims to double spending on prevention
The American Chemistry g Council calls the list "an im| portant milestone." It supports ζ EPA's screening program but g emphasizes that the agency's £ ο first imperative should be to validate all the screens and tests it plans to use, says ACC toxicologist Richard A. Becker. Critics have a different view of the program. Frederick S. vom Saal, a biology professor at the University of Missouri, contends that the program fails to prohibit the use of rodent strains that don't respond to known endocrine disrupters. "Also, the program doesn't prohibit the use of rodent chows that mask the effects of hormone disrupters," he notes. Critics also claim that 10 substances on the draft list are known endocrine disrupters, so it would be wasteful to retest them. For example, "atrazine is on the list, and EPA has already declared atrazine an en docrine disrupter," says Gina Solomon, a senior scien tist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Mark Maier, a toxicologist at CropLife America, calls the program '"wasteful and redundant" for different rea sons: "Pesticides are the most thoroughly tested chemi cals on the planet. Scientists have already looked for all the endocrine effects and found none."—BETTE HI LEMAN
efforts within its Cooperative Threat Reduction pro gram to prevent states or terrorists from developing or acquiring bioweapons. Alan Pearson, director of CACNP's Biological 8c Chemical Weapons Control Program, bemoans the government's meager prevention efforts. "The U.S. needs to devote more attention to preventing bioweap ons from being used. This is the hardest thing to do, but it's cheaper than response and cleanup," he says. The Department of Health 8c Human Services (HHS) receives the bulk of all biodefense dollars—$27.5 billion through fiscal 2008—with the National Institutes of Health garnering the largest share of the department's funding. A new program, the Biomedical Advanced Re search 8c Development Authority, which was established in April, will receive nearly $1.1 billion through fiscal 2008. Some of that fund ing will be used to manage the procurement of medical countermeasures for chemical, bio logical, radiological, and nuclear agents. On June 4, HHS announced a $500 mil lion contract with Bavarian Nordic A/S for 20 million doses of a next-generation smallpox vaccine (C8cEN, June 11, page 24). When manufactured, these doses will be stored in the Strategic National Stockpile, which is managed by the Centers for Disease Control 8c Prevention, for use in an emergency such as abioterror attack.—LOIS EMBER
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JUNE 18. 2007
One corridor of the Strategic National Stockpile.
