The rebuttal was written in response to a 2014 critique of their findings, produced by the consultancy Exponent and several universities, which claimed the UN report to be biased, inaccurate and not having sufficient evidence to back up the claimed links between diseases and EDCs.
In their response, UN experts highlight that that 2014 critique was funded by chemicals and pesticides lobby groups Cefic and ECPA, as well as their US counterparts who have been campaigning against regulation on endocrine disrupting substances, including within the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) currently under negotiation between the US and the EU.
The UN authors claim that the industry aims to confuse and mislead non-expert policymakers by creating a “false impression of scientific controversy”. They do so by using similar tools to the ones applied by the tobacco industry when fighting against plain packaging, the rebuttal said, by selectively quoting evidence and “mimicking” scientific critique by judging studies against unrealistic criteria. Cefic, an EU-wide chemicals industry representation, on the other hand sees this heated response as a sign that science in the area is far from settled.
The 2013 report linked EDC exposure to numerous disorders and diseases, such as breast and prostate cancer, genital malformation and declining wildlife populations. It called for more testing and argued that the effects of exposure to these substances “may be significantly underestimated”.
The Commission is now working on hammering out the criteria for identifying endocrine disruptors, a regulatory step legally overdue since 2013, and much of the debate focuses on whether to take a risk- or hazard-based approach in doing so.
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