EPA, OSHA and CPSC accept non-animal system for screening chemicals' skin cor...( Major federal regulatory agencies ...)

Major federal regulatory agencies -- the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission B have agreed to accept chemical safety data from a synthetic skin test in lieu of an animal test, the National Toxicology Program announced today.

This is the first such general substitution of a non-animal test under a new federal program to reduce animal experimentation.

The regulatory agencies are preparing Federal Register notices to tell industry and other research institutions they can use the non-animal test for regulatory purposes. The regulatory actions were announced today by the National Toxicology Program, which is headquartered at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, N.C. NIEHS and other federal agencies support the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods, an organization established in 1997 to foster alternative and improved test methods.

The Food and Drug Administration also endorsed the acceptability of the method, but said that corrosivity testing for the types of products it regulates is likely to be limited. Also, on a limited basis, the Department of Transportation has already been accepting the method for certain chemicals.

The new test can replace, in many uses, a method in which a chemical or chemical mixture was placed on the intact skin of a laboratory rabbit. Several thousand rabbits have been used each year in the old test, according to one estimate.

Under ICCVAM=s sponsorship, a scientific panel performed a scientific review of the test and recommended it last year to the regulatory agencies. The panel said the new method could fully replace the use of animals for testing corrosiveness in some cases, while in others, when the chemical "passed" the screen as probably safe, an animal test would be required to confirm that
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Contact: Bill Grigg
grigg@niehs.nih.gov
301-402-3378
NIH/National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
20-Mar-2000