NEWS OF THE WEEK
EPA RETREATS ON REPORTING TOXICS EMISSIONS: Regulatory agency drops plan to ease annual requirement
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N A CONCESSION to Capitol Hill Democrats, the Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to partially reverse its plan to reduce the amount of information companies are required to publicly report about releases of hundreds of toxic chemicals. In September 2005, EPA disclosed in a letter to Con gress that it intended to develop a rule requiring Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) emissions data to be reported every other year instead of annually, as is currently mandated under the Emergency Planning & Commu nity Right-to-Know Act. Under that law, about 24,000 facilities are required to submit TRI reports on more than 650 chemicals they release into the air, land, and water. At the same time, EPA proposed a rule that would raise the threshold for reporting releases of the chemi cals from 500 to 5,000 lb per facility. The agency said
BISPHENOLA TRIGGERS CANCER TOXICOLOGY: Rat study indicates common environmental chemical may cause human breast cancer
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Bisphenol A
NEW STUDY finds the strongest evidence yet for the hypothesis that widespread environ mental exposure to bisphenol A during fetal life causes breast cancer in adult women. The research, led by Ana M. Soto, professor of anatomy and cellular biol ogy at Tufts University School of Medicine, in Boston, was published Dec. 6 in the online edition of Reproductive Toxicology (DOI: io.ioi6/j.reprotox.20o6.io.oo2). Soto and her colleagues exposed pregnant rats to bis phenol A at doses ranging from 2.5 to 1,000 ug per kg of body weight per day. By the time the pups exposed at the lowest dose reached the equivalent of puberty (50 days old), about 25% of their mammary ducts had precancer ous lesions, a proportion three to four times higher than among the nonexposed controls. Mammary ducts from all other exposure groups showed elevated levels of le sions. Cancerous lesions were found in the mammary glands of one-third of the rats exposed to 250 ug/kg/day. Bisphenol A, a known estrogenic compound, is ubiquitous in the environment. Many people receive exposures of about 2.5 |Lig/kg/day, and mammary gland WWW.CEN-0NLINE.ORG
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the change would allow more firms to use the short "Form A" rather than the longer, more detailed "Form R," thereby reducing the reporting burden, particularly on small businesses. Democrats, however, characterized the modifica tions as an attempt by the Bush Administration to gut the right-to-know law, which Congress passed in the af termath of the 1984 chemical disaster in Bhopal, India. In response, Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) in July blocked the confir mation of Molly O'Neill to serve as head of EPA's Office of Environmental Information. In late November, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson sent a letter to the two senators stating that the agency would no longer try to change the annual TRI reporting requirement. "It is welcome news that the Bush Administration is throwing out part of this bad plan, but they still need to get rid of the rest," says Lautenberg, who authored the 1986 right-to-know law. Lautenberg has released his hold on O'Neill's nomi nation but says he will introduce legislation that would prevent EPA from adopting any of the other proposed changes to the TRI program. An EPA spokeswoman says the agency plans to issue a final rule by the end of December on the proposal re garding use of the shortened form.—GLENN HESS
development in rats and humans is very similar. There fore, Soto says, "bisphenol A could be one factor caus ing the increase in breast cancer incidence over the past 50 years." Bisphenol A is used in the manufacture of polycar bonate plastics and epoxy resins. It is found in many food and beverage containers, including baby bottles. It is also found in canned food linings and dental com posites, and it leaches from all of these products. In one study, Soto notes, urine samples from 95% of the hu man subjects contained the chemical. According to Soto, a large body of previous research suggests bisphenol A might cause breast cancer. One study shows that the daughters of women who took the potent synthetic nonsteroidal estrogen diethylstilbestrol (DES) during their pregnancies between 1948 and 1971 have 2.5 times the normal incidence of breast can cer. Bisphenol A, which is structurally similar to DES, may act by a similar mechanism, she explains. "What is important to note is that Soto's research is not a one-shot finding," says Frederick vom Saal, professor of biology at the University of Missouri. "It follows five years of research demonstrating precan cerous changes in the mammary glands of mice with prenatal bisphenol A exposure. Now, Soto has switched to the rat, which is considered a much better animal model for studying human carcinogenesis." The Environmental Protection Agency has set a safe human intake dose of 50 |Lig/kg/day for bisphenol A. "On the basis of the effects observed in recent studies, this seems to be an unsafe level," Soto says.—BETTE HILEMAN
DECEMBER 11, 2006
