EPA dodging deadlines, adorable mouse to blame.

[From the February 2009 Issue of Discover Magazine.]
[Chronology available on the EPA site.]

In 1996, the Environmental Protection Agency passed the Food Quality Protection Act and amended the Safe Drinking Water Act to require extensive testing for endocrine disruptors - chemicals that emulate organic hormones and have been linked to infertility and deformed sex organs. Just shy of 13 years later, testing has yet to begin. The latest setback? Controversy over lab rats.

The Sprague Dawley is tough. In a rare example of the government making too good of a choice, this rat strain is simply so well adapted to laboratory testing that some fear the possibility of false negatives. Its innate resistance to known endocrine disruptors combined with a fecundity that stands out even among rodents allow it to survive and continue mating under conditions that would devastate the endocrine system in a human.

“People say, ‘Look these rats suffer a 50 percent decrease in sperm and they still reproduce.’ They say, ‘If you had a guy who had a 50 percent decrease in sperm, he’d be infertile!’” Gary Timm, a senior environmental EPA scientist, said in an interview with Discover magazine.

The holdup hasn’t been all about rats, however. For over a decade, the EPA set up committees who in turn set up subcommittees in search for the most accurate way to test substances whose detrimental effects wouldn’t be seen or felt for generations. Endocrine disruptors, a category so broad as to include any synthetic product that emulates or, well, disrupts the production of natural hormones, range from big names like DDT to everyday plastics and bug spray. The EPA’s awkward lunge in the dark has been so long in coming that even Congress has grown fed up with the receding deadlines. In the 2008 appropriations bill, Congress mandated that endocrine testing was to begin in the summer. The summer of 2008, I mean. Testing is scheduled for early 2009 now.

It’s only the end of January at the moment, so if one were to stretch the definition of early to its limit, that’s a new five month lease on life for a lot of rats. Its an even longer lease on life for the newest medical bogeyman. Testing has not yet begun and once started will not end soon. Results will be postponed, at the very least, into the next decade and the chemical industry is already standing in line to dispute the findings.

If you’re somewhat antsy at the thought that things you touch everyday are slowly killing you instead of mice, you can check a handy list of things to avoid here.