According to recent reports, the United States is dramatically changing its position ahead of the next round of negotiations towards a treaty to address plastic pollution. This move will bring closer alignment with a group of “high-ambition” countries that advocate for strong measures in the treaty, including production limits on new plastic and processes to identify and control chemicals of concern. The Society welcomes this shift in US policy towards the treaty. As longstanding participants in the treaty process, we have consistently argued for production limits and measures to address chemicals of concern as key elements towards a health-protective treaty that helps reduce exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in plastic. Endocrine Society members met with the US delegation this summer to urge them to align more closely with the high-ambition countries through support for stronger regulation of EDCs. We look forward to working with delegations from countries around the world at the next meeting of the negotiation committee this November to build support for these and other health-protective provisions and advance towards swift adoption and implementation of the treaty.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced decisions on several pesticides undergoing registration review, including certain organophosphate pesticides (OP) that interfere with the endocrine system and cause neurotoxic effects. As our US EDC Task Force reviewed the information supporting EPA’s decisions, we became extremely concerned that the EPA is proposing to eliminate safety factors for certain pesticides due to negative results from a developmental neurotoxicity battery including in vitro tests that are insufficiently sensitive and not fit-for-purpose. The reduced safety factors would allow exposures at levels that may be harmful to neurodevelopment; last year, the Endocrine Society called for EPA to ban the pesticide DCPA (dacthal) due to effects on thyroid development in juveniles that only became apparent after the appropriate in vivo studies were reported to the agency. Earlier this month, EPA did in fact ban products containing DCPA due to effects on thyroid hormone levels, and we hope that EPA will treat the review of OP pesticides with the same rigor as encouraged in our comments submitted last week.
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