RISK U.K. proposes risk assessment based on genetic variations The U.K. government has proposed using data from the Human Genome Project to develop a sophisticated system of risk assessment for chemicals in the environment. Instead of using an average person as a reference, such a system would allow for genetic variations in the way different people react to chemicals. The proposal was raised by David Shannon, chief scientist at the U.K. Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, at a conference in London in July. He envisaged that developments in human genome mapping and physiological modeling could help modernize chemical risk assessment. "It might be possible to identify the genes that convey sensitivity to a particular group of chemicals and use this information to offer more risk management options " Shannon said. He suggested that "the information emerging from the Human Genome Project may allow the human population to be considered as a series of subgrouDS who might be genetically more or less sensitive to a particular chemical " This approach coiild help partirnlarly vulner-
able grouDS such as the elderly and children
Can certain chemical-sensitive genes be identified?
The next step, said Shannon, is to "develop guidelines for research program and policy objectives." The United Kingdom is lagging behind the United States, which has funded significant research mainly through the Environmental Genome Project, in this area. Michael Warhurst of the environmental group Friends of the Earth said he believes environmental genetic screening will increase protec-
tion for the individual but will demand complete regulatory reform. "Using an average person to base limits on is out of date. The regulatory system needs to be reformed and reoriented toward the individual. Present limits will not be sufficient for people with acute sensitivities to a particular chemical." Warhurst also pointed out that industry must become more open about its products' chemical constituents. "At present, there is no right to know what goes into a product, so a sensitive person can't avoid potentially harmful chemicals. We need to open the system up and force industry to tell us more about what goes into [its] products." Warhurst is confident that this kind of system will become law and could be implemented quite rapidly. "The Human Genome Project estimates it will have a complete human sequence by the end of 2001. Medical screening for prescription drugs will come in over the next few years, having been funded by the pharmaceutical industry. Environmental screening will soon follow, but there will be big problems if the regulatory system can't cope, or is overtaken by events." MARIA BURKE
The proposal is still at an early stage.
Cacophony of comments stalls multiple chemical sensitivity report A draft report on multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) may not be released in final form because of the diversity of opinion on the syndrome, according to the report's co-chair. "We are grappling with a dilemma that may defy resolution," said Richard Jackson, report cochair and director of the National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, Ga. Jackson was referring to the final release of A Report on Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, developed by a panel of 11 government officials and released for public comment on the Web in August 1998. Developed to guide
public health officials, the draft received hundreds of comments from a broad spectrum of stakeholders. They ranged from a rejection of the findings and recommendations by advocates for MCS, all the way to a dismissal of the same from MCS antagonists, who insist that MCS is a psychosocial problem, said Jackson. "With an issue as polarized as this, is it possible to come up with a document that is useful to the local officials?" Jackson said. The American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine in Arlington Heights 111 asked ATSDR officials this summer to release the final report Since being recognized by allergist and immunologist Theron Randolph in 1952, MCS has suf-
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fered from a weak reputation among many in the medical community. MCS is generally understood as a group of symptoms, such as malaise, that patients associate with very low levels of exposure to common household products (ES&T 1998, 32 (21), 508A-509A). MCS has a host of problems; medical specialists cannot agree on a definition; many doubt that the relationship between exposures and symptoms has been clinically proven; little agreement exists on theories of the underlying mechanisms; and there are no validated clinical criteria for diagnosis. Several medical organizations, including the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology, and the American
