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From Harriet Blake, 6ABC, April 16, 2009

From the National Center for Environmental Research concerning the exposure to EDC from pesticides.

• Evidence suggests that environmental exposure to EDCs may cause adverse health effects in human and wildlife populations.

• Considerable uncertainty exists regarding the relationship(s) between adverse health outcomes and exposure to environmental contaminants.

• In 1996, through the enactment of the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA), the U.S. Congress directed EPA to screen pesticides for estrogenic activity in humans using validated studies or other scientifically relevant information and gave the Agency discretionary authority to screen for other endocrine effects as well.

• The Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments (SWDA) of 1996, authorized EPA to screen drinking water contaminants for similar activities.

• ORD (Office of Research and Development) strives to improve our knowledge and understanding of endocrine disruptors in the environment so that we can improve our methods of assessment and risk management

• ORD’s Endocrine Disruptor Research Program conducts both basic and applied research to develop the fundamental scientific principles used by the EPA program and regional offices in making risk assessment decisions.

The EPA will have the makers of 67 pesticide chemicals test their products this summer to see if their chemicals are responsible for disrupting the endocrine systems.

The testing will be done through the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (ESDP) set up by the EPA, which commonly relies on companies to test their own products.

The list of all 67 chemicals can be found here. The EPA stresses that this list is not a definitive collection of known endocrine disruptors. The chemicals selected were chosen because there is a high potential for human exposure through food and water, residential activity or agricultural pesticide application. Many of the chemicals found on the list are present in commonly used lawn treatments, insect sprays, solvents and other household products.