Environmental Defense Offers Support For New EPA Internet Tool

(25 September 2002 - Washington, DC)  Environmental Defense today applauded the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) launch of the “PBT Profiler”, a new online tool (www.epa.gov/oppt/pbtprofiler) for assessing three critical properties of chemicals - persistence, bioaccumulation potential and toxicity — that help determine their impact on health and the environment.  So-called “PBT chemicals” having all of these properties are particularly dangerous, DDT, PCBs and dioxins being a few notorious examples.

“For many of the chemicals that are made and used every day, there is surprisingly little publicly available information about their hazard,” said Dr. Richard A. Denison, a senior scientist with Environmental Defense.  “By providing good estimates for some of these properties and making them widely available via a user-friendly internet tool, the PBT Profiler is another significant step forward in addressing this ‘toxic ignorance’.”  Denison noted that the toxicity element in the initial version is limited primarily to assessing potential harm to fish, but provides a solid framework to which additional health-related indicators can be added as more data become available and estimation techniques are refined.

Environmental Defense, which created the popular Scorecard website (www.scorecard.org) several years ago, assisted EPA in testing and refining the new internet-based tool. 

Denison cited a wide range of potential uses for the PBT Profiler:  “Chemical manufacturers can use it to assess new chemicals they’re developing, while consumer product companies can screen potential product ingredients and compare alternative formulations.  Institutional and individual purchasers of chemical products can evaluate their ingredients, giving preference to “PBT-free” products.  And citizens can gain a greater understanding of the hazards posed by chemicals to which they may be exposed,” Denison said.

“Some important limitations also apply to the PBT Profiler,” said Denison.  “Chemicals estimated to be persistent and bioaccumulative (PB) but not toxic to fish can still be harmful due to toxicity to humans or other organisms.  Similarly, persistent and toxic (PT) or bioaccumulative and toxic (BT) chemicals are of concern especially in situations of frequent or continual exposure.  The Profiler cannot provide definitive assessments either of chemical hazard or of safety, and is best used to flag chemicals that need to be examined further.  And the estimates provided by the Profiler should not be used when reliable, measured data are available, nor do they reduce the need to develop such data.  Only then will we have fully confronted the challenge of toxic ignorance.”