EPA to rebuild endocrine disruptor program

Abstract

After decades with little progress, the US Environmental Protection Agency plans to revamp an effort to evaluate pesticides for potential effects on estrogen, androgen, and thyroid hormones. The move follows a late-2022 lawsuit from environmental and farmworker groups and a scathing 2021 report from the EPA’s Office of Inspector General over endocrine disruptor testing delays. The EPA’s beleaguered Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program, created in 1998 to comply with changes to US food and drinking-water laws, has been on hiatus with no “effective internal controls in place since 2015,” according to the 2021 report. To get the program back on track, the EPA will request data from manufacturers for 30 pesticides that showed estrogen or androgen activity when agency scientists tested them with high-throughput assays and computational modeling , the agency announced Oct. 26. The 30 high-priority pesticides are part of a group of 403 pesticides that the EPA is reviewing