[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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