What’s safe and what’s not? The failure of chemical regulations to protect our health | Wellington

Toxicology developed initially in response to the consequences of high dose exposures experienced by workers and by people living near or on heavily contaminated sites. It was ill-equipped to deal with discoveries beginning in the late 1980s that low doses of hormonally-active chemicals— endocrine disruptors— could cause adverse effects at parts per billion and parts per trillion, levels far beneath the exposure levels upon which traditional toxicology was focused.

Basic assumptions at the core of how toxicology was used to determine what was safe, and what was not, were found not just wanting but fundamentally flawed. These discoveries have revealed that our system for determining chemical safety needs profound revisions if the public health agencies charged with protecting health are to carry out their mandate successfully.

Dr. Pete Myers is founder, Board Chair and Chief Scientist of Environmental Health Sciences, a not-for-profit organization promoting public understanding of advances in scientific research on links between the environment and human health. Myers co-authored “Our Stolen Future,” the first book for general audiences to explore how synthetic chemicals disrupt hormone signaling in people and wildlife, contributing to a growing epidemic of hormonally-related diseases and disabilities.