The meeting originally scheduled for Sept. 15 and canceled due to weather conditions posed by Hurricane Floyd has been re-scheduled. The National Toxicology meeting will hold a public meeting, Oct. 21 and 22 to discuss suggestions for revising the government's process of declaring substances as known or reasonably anticipated to be causes of cancer.
The meeting will begin at 9 a.m at the Doubletree Hotel, 1750 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland.
Some industry representatives have asked that their experts be involved earlier in the multi-year process and have repeated opportunities to comment and critique the data on which decisions are reached. Another suggestion is that more time be allowed for oral comments by the public, outside scientists, industry and unions. Although written comments of any length are permitted, oral comments have often been limited to five minutes.
The NTP publishes the authoritative federal Report on Carcinogens, a listing of known human carcinogens and substances for which there is more limited data, but sufficient to cite them as "reasonably anticipated to be human carcinogens." Before a listing is published, new research as well as data from older published studies are compiled, and three scientific panels review the data and make recommendations. Then, the director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program evaluates the data and the actions of the review groups to make his recommendations.
The public is invited to hear a short description of this process and to comment on suggestions that have been made or that will be made during the meeting by industry scientists and attorneys, academia, and the public, many of whom have pre-registered to speak at the meeting. Among the suggestions are proposals to:
-- Expand the use of unpublished data in the review.
-- Involve experts from potentially affected industries repeatedly during the review.
-- Hold reviews for the Report on Carcinogens in the Washington, D.C., area rather than in North Carolina. (The National Toxicology Program is headquartered at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park between Raleigh, Chapel Hill and Durham in North Carolina and reviews have generally been held in the NIEHS conference center there.)
-- Allot more time for public/industry/union/outside-scientific comments.
The press and electronic media are welcome to attend and cover the meeting. The public and media can register with and/or present comments to Ms. Angie Wilson, NIEHS P.O. Box 12233, A3-07, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 or at wilson9@niehs.nih.gov
People sending written comments or registering to make oral comments are asked to provide their affiliation, mailing address, phone, fax, e-mail, and sponsoring organization (if any). The meeting will be chaired by Bernard Goldstein, M.D., director of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute at Rutgers and University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey.