The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a new strategic plan last week that is designed to allow it to better assess potential risks from chemicals by adopting new toxicity testing methods. The “U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Strategic Plan for Evaluating the Toxicity of Chemicals” outlines a new scientific approach that will allow EPA to assess risks from many chemicals and mixtures by adopting new toxicity testing methods that use recent advances in molecular biology, genomics, and computational sciences.

Readers of MassTortDefense who have an interest in toxic torts know the impact that government testing and evaluation of chemicals can have on litigation. Under the EPA’s traditional risk assessment approach, the agency relied mostly on data generated through the intentional high dosing of experimental animals. While this approach has provided EPA a basis for much regulatory decision-making over the past several decades, such testing has known limitations arising from the dose-response concept and inter-species variations. Traditional testing also has been less useful on complex issues such as cumulative exposures, life-stage vulnerabilities and genetic susceptibilities.

The new approach is to focus more on identifying and evaluating cellular response pathways responsible for adverse health effects when sufficiently perturbed by environmental agents under realistic exposure conditions. The new Strategic Plan is centered on three interrelated components: (1) the use of toxicity pathways identification and use of this information in screening and prioritization of chemicals for further testing; (2) the use of toxicity pathways information in risk assessment; and (3) the institutional transition necessary to implement such practices across EPA.

In addition to the scientific bases, the new forms of testing, when fully implemented, will permit EPA to screen more environmental chemicals more quickly for potentially harmful effects. The strategic plan will also allow EPA scientists to look at how children may react differently to the same chemicals as adults, thus providing better health protection for children, says the Agency.

The EPA plan builds on the 2007 report, Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: a Vision and a Strategy, of the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science, regarding toxicity testing and risk assessment.