In an uncommon high-level spat at the intersection of science and politics, the top editors at dozens of journals in endocrinology and related fields have published dueling editorials over the wisdom of chemical-safety regulations.
The latest salvo was fired on Wednesday, when the editors in chief of 20 journals posted an editorial warning that scientific studies over the years have clearly shown the harmful health effects of endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
They were responding to a July editorial by 18 other editors in chief alarmed by the European Commission’s consideration of new restrictions on such chemicals, now used in a wide range of products, including baby bottles and farm herbicides.
Disputes over chemical safety and trade-offs over risk are longstanding, and much of the argument in this case centers on whether governments should require chemical manufacturers to clearly prove safety or whether safety should be presumed if dangers can’t be shown definitively.
It’s a high-stakes issue for both Europeans and Americans, as policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic are facing possible updates to their general frameworks for assessing chemical safety.
The venue of the argument, however, is itself groundbreaking. Statements signed by the editors of multiple journals, and reprinted in their pages, are rare, and typically occur on matters of journal policy.
The lead author of the July editorial, Daniel R. Dietrich, a professor of toxicology at the University of Konstanz, in Germany, and editor in chief of Chemico-Biological Interactions, said he had been driven in part by a fear of deteriorating standards in higher education.
Students must have a fundamental understanding of how chemicals should be judged, and the insistence by some in Europe that chemical makers prove the safety of their products is “undermining the very core of our teaching,” he said.
The lead author of Wednesday’s commentary and an accompanying editorial, Andrea C. Gore, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Texas at Austin and editor in chief of Endocrinology, said the Dietrich editorial was unusual and she was wary of responding in kind.
“I do not think this is the best way to try to inform policy,” Ms. Gore said. “However, because this first editorial came out, it begged a response.”
Trans-Atlantic Dispute
In Europe the dispute is playing out amid efforts to update the European Union’s law regulating chemicals. Some E.U. lawmakers want to include “endocrine disruptors” as substances of high concern. Endocrine disruptors have been linked to conditions that include impaired sperm quality, early puberty, and cancers. One prominent such chemical is Bisphenol A, found in some types of baby bottles and other products.
In the United States, a bipartisan group of senators this year proposed the first overhaul in decades of the Toxic Substances Control Act, hoping to set the standard that “no unreasonable risk of harm to human health or the environment will result from exposure to a chemical substance” under “intended conditions of use.” They acted after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declined to use the current provisions of the law to add Bisphenol A and other chemicals to a list of items requiring heavier scrutiny.
The possibility of E.U. action was the last straw for the authors assembled by Mr. Dietrich, said Gio B. Gori, editor of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology and a former top official of the cancer division at the National Institutes of Health. Both he and Mr. Dietrich suggested demands for tougher regulation were being fed by those trading on emotions rather than science.
Their editorial, printed in four journals, accused their opponents of setting up an impossible situation for manufacturers by demanding proof of an “absence of effect” as a condition for the regulatory approval of a chemical.
Ms. Gore and her allies, who include some 80 signers of the commentary published in five journals and linked online by six others, accused the other side of ignoring basic scientific reality. “They based their commentary on a very limited amount of the scientific literature that is actually out there about the mechanisms, the health effects, the biological actions of endocrine disruptors,” she said. “They really misrepresent basic endocrinology and how hormones signal.”
One of her co-authors on the commentary, Åke Bergman, a professor of environmental chemistry at Stockholm University and associate editor at the Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, said he recognized that the team assembled by Mr. Dietrich consisted of “highly competent toxicologists.” But their overall specialization is not in endocrinology, and they appear not to be familiar with the latest research in the field, Mr. Bergman said.
Conflicts of Interest
Mr. Dietrich pointed out that the authors of Wednesday’s articles include scientists who have extensive connections to environmental organizations and who might be regarded as following those groups’ agendas. But he acknowledged that he and many of his co-authors have extensive employment histories in industry, a status that could be seen by outsiders as affecting their credibility.
Either way, Ms. Gore said, she did not want to see the editorial pages of scientific journals, which are outside the standard peer-review process, become a routine venue for airing scientific-political controversies. Mr. Dietrich said he had felt compelled to use the resources available to him, given the emotions that critics of industrial chemicals have raised.
Ms. Gore said she had used more-traditional methods of pursuing her agenda, such as publishing magazine articles and meeting directly with lawmakers, and planned now to resume that approach. “As far as I’m concerned the conversation is over in this particular medium,” she said. “But I think the conversation needs to continue in other media.”
