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Previous by Date: Subject: Re: Reproductive Health and Safety in a Biotech Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2010 20:59:20 -0700 Author: Paul Sonnenfeld

Next by Date: Subject: Re: Reproductive Health and Safety in a Biotech Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2010 21:18:37 -0500 Author: Melinda Toumi

Much worse is the fact that only a few hundred chemicals out of the more than 140,000 chemicals already registered for use in the European Union have had any type of reproductive or chronic testing at all.  I just got back from safety training in the Netherlands for art conservation lab workers at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.  They are becoming aware that even most of the common chemicals they use are untested.  The new Globally Harmonized Safety Data Sheets say "no data available" when cancer or reproductive tests have not been done.  The Precautionary Principle would suggest pregnant women avoid exposure to a great number of chemicals--not just the few for which there is data indicating they might cause birth defects or reproductive or developmental effects.  Monona Rossol

You will find that, actually, we know very little about which chemicals are hazardous with respect to reproductive human health.  When you think about it of course, you see immediately that it not easy to obtain the necessary information since we cannot experiment with pregnant women or potential fathers as our experimental subjects.  We must resort to using animals and then figure out whether or not the results of such evaluations can be applied directly or in modified form to humans.
 
Good Luck!  You'll need it.
 
Jay Young

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