Several EPA offices involved in reviewing toxic chemicals for commercial use have been moving to approve alternatives to using live animals—called in vivo testing—as part of their regulatory testing requirements. In the latest development, the Agency’s Office of Pesticide Program (OPP) has issued a document describing a process for evaluating and implementing alternative approaches to traditional in vivo acute toxicity studies used to make regulatory decisions for pesticides under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).
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Much of the EPA’s work in alternative toxicity testing follows issuance of a 2007 report by the National Academy of Sciences, Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy. The NAS stated that using the results of animal tests to predict human health effects involves a number of assumptions and extrapolations that remain controversial. For example, said the NAS, test animals are often exposed to higher doses than would be expected for typical human exposures, requiring assumptions about effects at lower doses or exposures.