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ENVIRONMENT
Revised EPA guidelines for assessing the risk from chemicals that can cause cancer may lead to tighter regulation of some substances--and looser controls on others. EPA unveiled those guidelines last week along with a draft document saying children face higher risks from exposure to carcinogens than do adults. The reworked cancer risk assessment guidelines treat carcinogens differently based on how chemicals cause cancer. Currently, the agency starts with a default assumption that cancer risk increases linearly with more exposure to a carcinogen. The agency will abandon this assumption only if sufficient data are available that indicate otherwise.
This process has implications for regulation because controls on carcinogens that are not mutagenic are generally less stringent than those for chemicals that cause cancer through DNA damage (C&EN, Oct. 29, 2001, page 11). In addition to the revised guidelines, EPA released a draft document on assessing cancer risks from exposure to carcinogens in childhood. This draft addresses both cancer in children and risks of cancer later in life for adults who were exposed to a carcinogen as children. This marks the first time EPA has tried to quantitatively differentiate cancer risk according to the stage of life at exposure. The scientist who chaired EPA's effort on rewriting the agency's cancer risk assessment guidelines, James Cogliano, says the draft sets "adjustment factors" for children's cancer risk from mutagenic substances. EPA is proposing that children exposed when under age two have about 10 times the risk as a similarly exposed adult while youngsters exposed between the ages of two and 15 have about three times the risk. These adjustment factors could affect the outcome of EPA's risk assessments and, ultimately, regulation of carcinogens. The American Chemistry Council praises changes in the revised guidelines that emphasize the importance of data showing differences between humans and laboratory animals. The draft guidance on children's risk "is a good start," though it reflects "the difficulties in developing a science-based policy for addressing the risks of childhood exposures," ACC says. The revised cancer risk guidelines are a step in the right direction, says Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. However, she adds, "they would provide too many exceptions to the rule by giving polluters too many opportunities to paralyze the agency with pseudoscientific arguments" that urge the agency to abandon its default assumptions. |
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