6 September 2005 - Humans face increased risk from ‘gender bending’ chemicals responsible for low sperm count, testicular cancer and premature puberty in girls due to over-reliance on animal testing, a government committee will hear today.

The Advisory Committee on Hazardous Chemicals, which meets today in London, will hear that ‘gender bending’ endocrine disrupting chemicals – believed to disrupt hormone systems and responsible for serious sexual malformations in fish – are present in a wide range of everyday products such as food packaging and cosmetics.

Toxicologist Gill Langley, will present her report Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals: A non-Animal Testing Approach – and warn the risk to humans will worsen if new EU safety rules for synthetic chemicals require the chemicals to be tested for safety on animals – as the effects of endocrine disruptors vary widely from species to species.

She argues animals don’t make good subjects for determining safety limits for human exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals and extrapolating relevant data is fraught with difficulties.

Green Party Euro-MP Caroline Lucas, who commissioned the study, said it made sobering reading – and provided clear evidence that requiring animal testing under a proposed new EU chemicals regime would be ineffective and misleading, and could even increase dangers to human health.

“This report makes quite clear that we need tough new rules to regulate the use of those synthetic chemicals which currently escape regulation despite being in widespread commercial use,” said Dr Lucas.

Dr Lucas, Green MEP for South-East England and a member of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee, said: “The European Commission is in the process of drafting its so-called REACH proposals in this area to bring those synthetic chemicals put on the market before 1981 – including some of the chemicals studied in this report – within the scope of EU regulation.

"Clearly synthetic chemicals are having an enormous impact on wildlife, human health and the environment – but the new rules we desperately need to govern their use in the manufacture of everyday products must not require new animal tests which would be ineffective and misleading as well as cruel."

The report, which is published by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) argues that an EU-wide moratorium on the use of endocrine disrupting chemicals should be adopted until an alternative non-animal test strategy is in place at EU level.

Dr Lucas, who is also Vice-President of the European Parliament’s cross-party animal rights group, said environmentalists and animal rights campaigners needed to work together to ensure the new regulations aren’t weakened by the powerful chemicals industry lobby.

“We need tough new rules to ensure our health, wildlife and environment is protected from the side-effects of synthetic chemical pollution – but these rules must be robust and backed by a new non-animal testing regime if they are to be effective,” she added.

ENDS