Suzan Mazur: Does the US government essentially leave it up to industry to police itself regarding harmful chemicals, endocrine-disrupting and otherwise? Heather Patisaul: Essentially, yes.
Suzan Mazur: Since the Food and Drug Administration has no mandate to test for or to label America's food regarding toxic chemicals or endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and the Environmental Protection Agency has not been testing and labeling products contaminated with EDCs either-can we assume that Americans are being poisoned because of government failure to regulate? Heather Patisaul: Yes.
Suzan Mazur: A lot of the data EPA would be using in its high-throughput approach would be coming from industry that created the chemicals.
If you believe that, then industry has never produced a toxic chemical.
OK, chemical X is toxic-how much are people exposed to chemical X? Step 3 is risk assessment.
EPA says, OK chemical X is toxic, but public exposure to chemical X is low-so we're not going to regulate it.
That's how in the US we can end up with higher exposures than in other countries to some chemicals-and really toxic chemicals that are still on the market.
The FDA has done virtually nothing on regulating not just EDCs but any toxic chemicals in our food.
There are probably some academic scientists working in that field, but there's not going to be a lot of movement until we get some action regarding these overtly toxic chemicals the government just can't seem to regulate.
Most of the toxic chemicals negatively impacting life are from the petrochemical industry.
There needs to be an overhaul of chemical policy in the US. There is no political will to do so, and scientific panels, such as WHO, are being infiltrated by industry representatives planted as scientific experts.
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