[Federal Register Volume 74, Number 56 (Wednesday, March 25, 2009)]
[Notices]
[Pages 12847-12848]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: E9-6683]
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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
[FRL-8775-8]
Notice of Availability for the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency's Strategic Plan for Evaluating the Toxicity of Chemicals
AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
ACTION: Notice of document availability.
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SUMMARY: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is announcing
the availability of the final document The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency's Strategic Plan for Evaluating the Toxicity of
Chemicals (EPA 100/K-09/001). The purpose of the Strategic Plan is to
serve as a blueprint for EPA in incorporating advances in molecular
biology and computational sciences into toxicity testing and risk
assessment practices across the Agency. The Strategic Plan is centered
on three interrelated components: (1) Toxicity pathways identification
and use of this information in screening and prioritization of
chemicals for further testing, (2) the use of toxicity pathways
information in risk assessment, and (3) the institutional transition
necessary to implement such practices across EPA. This Strategic Plan
describes an ambitious and substantive improvement in the efficiency
and effectiveness of the process by which environmental pollutants are
evaluated for toxicity and risk. A workgroup of EPA's Science Policy
Council oversaw the development of this document, incorporating input
obtained from an external peer review.
ADDRESSES: The final document is available electronically through the
EPA Office of the Science Advisor's Web site at: http://www.epa.gov/osa/spc/toxicitytesting/. A limited number of paper copies will be
available from EPA's National Service Center for Environmental
Publications (NSCEP), P.O. Box 42419, Cincinnati, OH 45242; telephone
1-800-490-9198 or 513-489-8190; facsimile 301-604-3408; e-mail
lmit.com">NSCEP@bps-lmit.com. Please provide your name and mailing addresses and
the title and EPA number (as given above) of the requested publication.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Melissa Kramer, Office of the Science
Advisor, Mail Code 8105R, Environmental Protection Agency, 1200
Pennsylvania Avenue, NW., Washington, DC 20460; telephone number: (202)
564-8497; fax number: (202) 564-2070, e-mail: [email protected].
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: EPA recently took the lead in commissioning
the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies to
develop a long-range vision for toxicity testing and risk assessment.
Their 2007 report, Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and a
Strategy (http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11970), envisions a
landmark transformation that focuses on identifying and evaluating
``toxicity pathways,'' i.e., cellular response pathways responsible for
adverse health effects when sufficiently perturbed by environmental
agents under realistic exposure conditions.
To build upon the transformative changes advocated in the NRC
document, while ensuring an internally coordinated and integrated
approach, EPA established a cross-Agency workgroup under the auspices
of its internal Science Policy Council. This workgroup produced The
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Strategic Plan for Evaluating
the Toxicity of Chemicals that provides a framework for EPA to
comprehensively move forward to incorporate this new scientific
paradigm into future toxicity testing and risk assessment practices.
This new paradigm has the potential to address increasingly complex
issues that EPA faces in evaluating environmental contaminants for
risks to human health and the environment. For example, it is expected
to create more efficient and cost-effective means to screen and
prioritize for further assessment the tens of thousands of chemicals
that are already found in the environment. The new paradigm should
facilitate evaluating the susceptibility of different life-stages and
genetic variations in the population, understanding the mechanisms by
which toxicity occurs, and considering the risks of concurrent,
cumulative exposure to multiple and diverse chemicals, while at the
same time significantly reducing reliance on animal testing for
assessing human risk.
[[Page 12848]]
Dated: February 18, 2009.
Kevin Y. Teichman,
Acting EPA Science Advisor.
[FR Doc. E9-6683 Filed 3-24-09; 8:45 am]
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