Environment & Energy Daily: A reformed federal chemicals law should rely heavily on biomonitoring in order to have data about chemicals that are ending up in humans, a panel of experts told a Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee yesterday.
There are currently tens of thousands of chemicals in commerce today, and U.S. EPA lacks important data on many of those substances. As Congress moves forward with reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act, several federal scientists and public health experts said lawmakers should give EPA the authority and resources to begin prioritizing by understanding which chemicals are found in people.
Biomonitoring, which tests blood and urine samples for chemicals, is one of the most effective ways of understanding which chemicals are actually ending up in people, said Henry Falk, acting director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has the largest national biomonitoring program.
“Biomonitoring thereby serves as one important tool in identifying and reducing or preventing exposures and potential health problems,” Falk said.
CDC uses biomonitoring for a variety of public health purposes, Falk said, including identifying sub-populations with higher exposure levels than average and tracking trends over time.
For example, CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which is released every two years, has been measuring lead exposure since 1976. The agency was able to track that human blood lead levels declined in parallel with declining levels of lead in gasoline, which offered support for EPA’s regulations to reduce lead levels in gasoline.
“There’s no question that chemicals are essential to our modern lives … but when we use these products, the chemicals in them can end up in our bodies,” said Superfund, Toxics and Environmental Health Subcommittee Chairman Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.). “And when the chemicals used in flame retardants, plastics or rocket fuel show up in our children’s bodies, we have a potentially dangerous situation.”
Lautenberg is expected to introduce a TSCA reform bill soon. Several sources say the Senate and the House are trying to introduce similar versions of the bill around the same time. Across the Hill, the House Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), is meeting next week to discuss persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals.
EPW Committee ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.) cautioned that while biomonitoring is useful for tracking exposure levels, the data must be interpreted in context.