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FREIA outcomes presented to members of European Parliament

by admin, posted in EC, outreach

The EDC-Free Europe coalition, is calling on future EU leaders to protect health and the environment from health-harming endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), by sharing its priorities for the upcoming policy mandate at an event at the European Parliament.  

EDCs are pervasive, found in everyday products, and place a substantial health and economic burden on Europe, with health-related costs from known EDCs estimated at €163 billion annually as of 2016—a figure likely far lower than the true cost.

“Future generations will judge current leaders on their response to the public health threats posed by EDCs and other harmful chemicals. The current EU chemicals regulations, namely REACH, need urgent updates to reduce exposure, suffering and thus also health costs.” Martin Hojsik, MEP, Renew Group states.

“EDCs are hazardous chemicals that disrupt hormone function and pose serious health concerns, contributing to reproductive cancers, diabetes, and neurodevelopmental disorders. EDC exposure is linked to falling sperm rates, early puberty, and can significantly impact ovarian function, contributing to fertility challenges that many people face. Especially the vulnerability of young children, already in the womb, underscores the potential for lifelong and multigenerational impacts.” Majorie van Duursen, Professor of Environmental Health and Toxicology at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam and FREIA project coordinator stated.

“We need strong preventative EU health policies against environmental health risks, such as EDCs, and much stricter and more streamlined regulatory oversight of harmful substances. This is essential for cancer prevention under the EU’s Beating Cancer Plan.” Alessandra Moretti, MEP, S&D said.

The coalition calls for expedited identification and regulation of EDCs, advocating for a transition toward an EDC-free, non-toxic circular economy. The coalition also stresses the importance of bolstering the EU’s leadership in international chemical governance and ensuring that citizens have access to justice and accountability regarding EDC-related issues.

“European citizens deserve protection from chemicals that jeopardise their health, with EDCs linked to certain cancers, diabetes, and developmental disorders. We urge EU policymakers to make healthy populations their top priority and act swiftly to eliminate these dangerous chemicals from our daily environments.” said Andreea Botoş, EDC-Free Europe Campaign Coordinator.  

To this end the EDC-Free Europe coalition urges EU leaders to adopt their suggestions: 7 Priorities to protect people and the environment from endocrine-disrupting chemicals full statement / short version

Notes:

EDC-Free Europe is a coalition of over 70 environmental, health, women’s, and consumer groups across Europe, united in concern over the health and environmental impacts of hormone-disrupting chemicals (EDCs).

This post is modified after the press release from the Health and Environment Alliance.

FREIA experts in WHO/UNEP panel to update EDCs State of Science report

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The World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) have installed an expert panel to work on the update of the 2012 Report on the State of the Science of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals. Among the appointed experts are FREIA members Majorie van Duursen and Sofie Christiansen.

In 2013, UNEP and WHO released the Summary for Decision-Makers, together with the main report, presenting information and key concerns for policy-makers on endocrine disruptors as part of the ongoing collaboration between WHO and UNEP. Concerns that were described include evidence in humans, laboratory animals, and wildlife that exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals can result in adverse effects and highlighted that an important focus should be on reducing exposure.

The update of the report is foreseen to take place between the third quarter of 2024 and the last quarter of 2025 in order for the new report to be made available to the seventh session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in December 2025.

Read more on the UNEP website.

FREIA recommendations to protect women’s health against endocrine disrupting chemicals

by admin, posted in release

Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) pose significant threats to women’s reproductive health. Following five years of research, the FREIA project has published recommendations for health promotion strategies and EU-wide policy action to reduce exposure.

Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are synthetic chemicals that interfere with the natural hormones in our bodies. Examples of EDCs include numerous pesticides, phthalates and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). It is beyond a doubt that EDCs impact health: exposure has been linked with various types of cancer, infertility and reproductive health problems, thyroid problems, early puberty, diabetes, and obesity.

Today, we still have gaps in our understanding into how endocrine disrupting chemicals affect women’s reproductive health, despite being present everywhere in our environment. This makes it difficult to identify, regulate and take protective measures against such chemicals. The recommendations for EU institutions, national governments, and healthcare professionals put forward by the FREIA research project cover methods to strengthen health promotion strategies as well as EU-wide legislation on EDCs, which include the following measures:

  1. Improve environmental health literacy and awareness of EDCs, by launching educational awareness-raising campaigns, integrating EDCs into secondary school curricula, and through improved product labelling and the development of mobile apps that allow consumers to easily identify the chemicals used in the products they buy.
  2. Increase environmental health training for health professionals,who are generally considered to be trusted sources for reliable information, according to a survey that was part of the research conducted by FREIA.
  3. Expand knowledge on the effectiveness of exposure prevention interventions and promotion strategies, by establishing human biomonitoring programmes to monitor EDC exposure levels among European populations, and by evaluating the effectiveness of interventions aiming to reduce exposure.
  4. Support the development and implementation of EU-wide legislation to reduce the use of and exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals, for example by ensuring the timely implementation of the EU Chemicals Strategy and by updating EU legislation (like the EU’s flagship chemicals legislation REACH) to ensure EDCs can be identified and regulated.

The report furthermore sets out effective interventions to reduce EDC exposure among individuals and clinical settings and provides an overview of perceptions about endocrine disruptors and reproductive health. It also gives examples of strategies and tips to reduce EDC exposure from different countries.

The report also features results from a survey among adults of reproductive age in the Netherlands, exploring citizens’ attitudes towards endocrine disruptors, actions to reduce exposures, and preferred information sources.

“With one in six couples struggling to conceive or carrying a pregnancy to term, taking action to safeguard female reproductive health against harmful endocrine disrupting chemicals could be a game-changer. Our research demonstrates interventions to reduce exposure are effective and reveals a huge potential to improve women’s health worldwide,” says Majorie van Duursen, Professor of Environmental Health and Toxicology at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam and FREIA project coordinator.

Génon K. Jensen, Executive Director at the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL), calls for action in the next EU legislature to restrict EDCs: “The omnipresence of endocrine disrupting chemicals in our daily lives continues to wreak havoc on people’s health. We owe it to current and future generations to ensure exposure is brought to a halt, by making sure EDCs such as PFAS and harmful pesticides are urgently phased out in the EU.”  

Click here to download the full report.

Click here to download factsheets and infographics from the FREIA project (available in different languages), which provide clearand concise information on endocrine disrupting chemicals and women’s health.

Visit the FREIA webinar series, bringing together leading scientists to talk about their findings after five years of research into the effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals on female reproductive health.

View this post on the website of the Health and Environment Alliance.

Policy brief released at EURION final event

by admin, posted in EURION, release

On 13 and 14 June 2024, the EURION cluster that connects the eight projects on developing test methods for endocrine disruptors – including FREIA – organised their final event in Brussels. The meeting was attended by almost 150 on-site participants and many online participants representing various stakeholders, including policy makers, scientists and NGOs from all over the world.

All projects presented their achievements of the past five years. Together, EURION produced over 100 new test methods and endpoints to identify possible EDCs, of which 40 are currently tested in multiple laboratories. In addition, the cluster delivered 35 computational models and tools, and provided a better understanding of mechanisms underlying EDC-mediated adverse health effects. The highlights of EURION are published in a policy brief.

from left to right: Asma Baig (ATHENA), Joëlle Ruëgg (ENDpoiNTs), Majorie van Duursen (FREIA), Karine Audouze (OBERON) Anna-Lissa Levonen (EDCMET) Rita Aroujo (DG RTD) Lorenzo Moroni (SCREENED) Juliette Legler (GOLIATH), Alex Mulet Indrayanti (DG RTD), Tuomo Karjalainen (former DG RTD), Henrik Holbech (ERGO) and Sharon Munn (JRC).

READ MORE
EURION announcement policy brief

Pauliina Damdimopoulou receives ERC Consolidator Grant for research on women’s fertility

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FREIA partner Pauliina Damdimopoulou has been awarded a EUR 2 million ERC Consolidator Grant (European Research Council) for the SAFER project (SAfeguarding female FERtility-development of human-relevant in vitro tools for reproductive toxicity). The research will investigate the impact of commonly occurring environmental chemical contaminants on women’s reproductive health. The grant is awarded under Horizon Europe, the EU’s programme for research and innovation.

Read the full announcement and interview with Pauliina on the site of the Karolinska Institute:

Read more

Some suspected endocrine disruptors alter ovarian function and may contribute to female infertility

by admin, posted in outreach

A new study from FREIA, published in Environmental Research, explored the association between potential endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) and female fertility in women attending fertility clinics in Sweden and Estonia.

Up to 1 in 6 women experience difficulties becoming pregnant or carrying pregnancy to term. Despite the increasing use of assisted reproductive technologies (ART), the success rates of these treatments remained the same.

Ovarian disorders are the cause for infertility in about 1 in 4 couples. The ovaries play an important role in hormone production and formation of oocytes (“eggs”). It is therefore reasonable to assume that human-made chemicals that disrupt the hormone system, i.e. endocrine disrupting chemicals or EDCs, contribute to the rates of infertility.

In this FREIA study, levels of 59 known and suspected EDCs were analysed in follicular fluid, the biological fluid surrounding oocytes, of 185 Swedish women and 148 Estonian women undergoing fertility treatment. Multiple chemicals were detected in all follicular fluids. In >90% of the follicular fluids, 3 metabolites of the phthalate DEHP, methylparaben, and 6 PFAS (PFOS, PFOA, PFHxS, PFUnDA, PFNA and PFDA) were detected and used to link with female fertility parameters.

The ovaries of women with higher levels of DEHP, methylparaben and possibly PFUnDA and PFOA responded less to fertility treatment, established by calculating the ovarian sensitivity index (OSI). There were indications that some PFAS lowered the success of fertility treatment, determined by chance of establishing a pregnancy or live birth.

Overall, this study provides additional evidence that DEHP can negatively influence female fertility. In addition, several other chemicals, i.e. methylparaben and some PFAS, were identified that may harm ovarian function and contribute to female infertility.

This study adds to the increasing evidence that EDCs can contribute to female infertility and warrants interventions to lower exposures.

Endocrine disruptors should not be assessed individually

by admin, posted in outreach

Six chemical substances possess endocrine disrupting effects – and especially combination effects when they are assessed together. Force Technology, DHI and researchers from FREIA partners at the DTU National Food Institute have performed risk assessments for the Danish Environmental Protection Agency.

Force Technology, together with DHI and researchers at the DTU National Food Institute, has evaluated six chemical substances for their risk of exerting endocrine disrupting effect.
The six substances were:

  • Butylhydroxyanisole (BHA),
  • Butylhydroxytoluene (BHT),
  • Butyl paraben,
  • Propyl paraben,
  • Octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane (D4),
  • Bisphenol A (BPA),

The risk assessment shows that exposure to the substances individually does not constitute a risk, but that the total exposure can be a cause for concern. This conclusion is based on recent exposure assessments for the six substances, as well as a hazard assessment of the substances’ endocrine disrupting properties.

The hazard assessment shows evidence that all substances have endocrine disrupting effects. However, the evidence is stronger for some of the substances (D4, BPA, butylparaben, propylparaben) than for others (BHA and BHT).

Endocrine disruptors are suspected to contribute to the increasing incidence rate of, for example, genital malformations, reduced fertility, the development of obesity and diabetes and compromised brain development. The substances can be found in a wide range of consumer products, including foods, food contact materials and medicines.

It is not enough to evaluate chemicals individually

In recent years several major research projects at the DTU National Food Institute have shown that combination effects of endocrine disruptors exist, and that these should be taken into account when risk assessing chemicals.

If you only evaluate the substances one at a time, you will underestimate the overall risk of endocrine disrupting effects. Therefore, the risk of the combined exposure from several different chemical substances from several different sources was assessed in this project.

Threshold value or not?

In EU it has been discussed in recent years whether or not there is a threshold value for lower effect of endocrine disruptors. It is possible that, as with carcinogens, there is no lower limit for endocrine disrupting effects. The calculations in the report were therefore made both with and without assumption of threshold values.

Read more

NOTE: this message was copied from the DTU website. The original message (posted 28 June 2022) can be found here.

Yuling Xie awarded Innovators Under 35 price

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Yuling Xie, Postdoctoral Researcher in the FREIA project, Queen’s University of Belfast, Belfast/UK was awarded the MIT Innovators Under 25 price. EmTech Europe unites leaders in academia, business and government to share ground breaking research-to-market advances and explore the latest breakthroughs in transformative technologies.

Since the term ‘endocrine disrupting chemicals’ (EDCs) was coined in the early 90’s, there have been calls for further research to improve our understanding of how EDCs impact both human and environmental health. The presence of endocrine disrupting chemicals in many everyday items such as clothing, food and cosmetics, makes our continuous exposure to them difficult to prevent. EDCs have not only been shown to effect fertility but may also result in transgenerational health risks, therefore research which leads to an even greater understanding of how these chemicals impact our health and cause disease is of utmost importance. 

Yuling Xie (Cher) began her research into EDCs during her postgraduate studies in Professor Lisa Connolly’s research group at Queen’s University Belfast, where she revealed how EDCs damage human health and the environment before switching her focus during her PhD to the metabolic effects of EDCs where she gained vast experience in assay development and optimisation. 

Cher has worked on developing high throughput test methods to identify chemicals with endocrine disrupting potential. Alongside her colleagues in the FREIA (Female Reproductive toxicity of EDCs: a human evidence-based screening and Identification Approach) project, Cher has expanded the knowledge of how EDCs impact female reproductive function. In addition to developing the high throughput test, Cher has also explored potential protective approaches to EDC exposure through the integration of nutritional studies to gain insight into how dietary intervention may help to counteract the negative effects of EDCs on our health. 

For more Innovators and information about the award: visit https://emtecheurope.com/innovators-2022/

Why Plastic?, We The Guinea Pigs

by admin, posted in outreach

“We the Guinea Pigs” investigates why we are still constantly – and increasingly – exposed to dangerous chemicals through our plastic use, even though researchers have warned us about the potential adverse health effects for decades. Some of the most cutting edge scientific findings on how plastic harms our health come from Danish researchers Terje Svingen and Hanna Johansson.

A recent study conducted in Denmark has revealed how endocrine disrupting chemicals affect the female reproductive system. It shows that female rats exposed to endocrine disruptors during early development end up with fewer eggs in their ovaries and are at risk of losing their ability to reproduce at an earlier age. For some time researchers have known that plastic has a negative impact on men’s sperm count. Are we involuntary participants in an enormous experiment, threatening the health of millions of people – maybe even mankind as such?

As the use of plastic has gained ground in our lives over the years, there has been an inexplicable increase in a number of diseases and disorders amongst the population. In this film as part of the Why Plastic? series, the BBC meets leading researchers looking into the reasons for these disorders and follow case studies of people suffering from various health conditions thought to be caused by exposure to certain every day materials including plastic. Are these people the victims of unfortunate coincidences – or is there an explanation?

View the episode here.

A pragmatic way forward in chemical safety assessment

by admin, posted in outreach, release, Uncategorized

In a recent paper, FREIA partners Terje Svingen (DTU) and Pauliina Damdimopoulou (KI) propose an approach to speed up the development and acceptance of mechanistic descriptions that are used by chemical safety assessors and regulators.

Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOPs) are a way to organise scientific knowledge and describe how a stressor – such as exposure to an endocrine disrupting chemical – can lead to a harmful health effect through a chain of linked events. The use of AOPs is gaining wide acceptance and will help to support chemical safety assessors and regulators.

Yet, only a few AOPs are thoroughly evaluated and endorsed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which clearly hampers their regulatory use. A major hurdle is the immense amount of work that has to be put into the development of an AOP. “Putting together the information for one key event relationship (the link between two sequential events in an AOP – red.) took me about three months altogether”, explains Eleftheria Panagiotou, PhD student involved in this work.

“We propose to focus more on smaller building blocks and rely more on existing common knowledge”, says lead author Terje Svingen. The approach will make it more attractive for scientists to contribute to AOPs, because in this way, they can focus on their own expertise and don’t have to be an expert on all facets of an AOP from molecular interactions to health effects.

Moreover, a description of a smaller AOP building block makes an excellent paper to be submitted for peer-review. Besides the scientific merit, publishing the building blocks has the added advantage that external peer-reviewers have already critically evaluated the information. This may stimulate faster endorsement of AOPs by the OECD. “It is our hope that our proposed approach will increase the pace at which the AOP knowledge base is populated with endorsed AOPs, which will certainly improve chemical safety assessment processes.”, according to the authors of this paper.

Reference

Terje Svingen, Daniel L. Villeneuve, Dries Knapen, Eleftheria Maria Panagiotou, Monica Kam Draskau, Pauliina Damdimopoulou, Jason M O’Brien. A pragmatic approach to Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) development and evaluation. Toxicological Sciences, kfab113, https://doi.org/10.1093/toxsci/kfab113 Published: 17 September 2021