Society Members Bring Endocrine Perspective to Global Meeting on Chemical Management

On December 15 through 17, the Endocrine Society discussed key endocrine concepts and principles that should be incorporated into the SAICM. Endocrine Society experts from the Global EDC Task Force, Th omas Zoeller, PhD, Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, MD, PhD, and Riana Bornman, MBChB, delivered comments at the second meeting of the SAICM Open-ended Working Group in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Society’s public comments emphasized the importance of considering several key characteristics of EDCs in chemicals management approaches. The Society noted that a single hormone will have changing eff ects at different times and places in the body during development and with different sensitivity; therefore, sensitive endpoints with predictive ability must be prioritized to identify endocrine disruptors. Additionally, hormones act at very low concentrations so the eff ects of very small amounts of endocrine disruptors need to be taken into account systematically. Finally, chemical interference with hormone actions during early development can have long-lasting, even permanent, consequences that might manifest years later, and endocrine disruptors can set up the body for mis-adaptation.

The Society also recommended a number of activities for SAICM to consider implementing toward the SAICM goal of “sound management of chemicals throughout their life cycle so that, by 2020, chemicals are produced and used in ways that minimize significant adverse impacts on human health and the environment.” The Society recommended that SAICM:

• Assemble a list of EDCs and sources of exposure from the UNEP/WHO State of the Science report and make it publically available and regularly updated on the UNEP website by 2015;
• Conduct substantial monitoring studies of EDCs by 2018 in countries selected in the four UN regions based on stakeholder proposals;
• Gather and disseminate examples of best available practices in reducing the use of 20 EDCs, including safer substitution, nonchemical alternatives, and risk-management by 2018;
• By 2020, derive strong public health and environmental protection policies from understanding of how chemicals disrupt normal physiology;
• Finally, prepare and conduct robust awareness-raising beginning in 2015 and continuing until 2020, involving healthcare and medical professionals and including outreach to vulnerable groups.