Ensuring Lautenberg Act Has Resources to Minimize Animal Testing

To successfully implement the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act—which requires the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce and replace animal testing—the EPA and stakeholders need to dedicate significant resources to the development and validation of human-relevant toxicological test methods, according to a new Physicians Committee commentary in Bloomberg BNA’s Daily Environment Report.

The Lautenberg Act restricts animal testing because of problems including species differences (e.g., applying data from rats to humans), cost, and time and provides incentives for the development and use of nonanimal methods—such as in vitro or epidemiological studies and computational methods—that provide information of “equivalent or better scientific quality.” The authors recommend Adverse Outcome Pathways as a method to help regulators organize and interpret existing chemical safety data and prioritize nonanimal tests that are needed.