I Am Not a Guinea Pig (and Neither Are My Kids)

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I Am Not a Guinea Pig (and Neither Are My Kids)

Janelle Sorensen

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

When I was a kid, my brother had guinea pigs. Fat little guys with stubby little legs that he desperately tried to train to do entertaining things like play soccer with a super ball and sniff out money (he was a little Alex P. Keaton-ish). In my innocent upbringing I would never have imagined conducting tests on our little friends.

But, alas, most toxicological testing relies on our mammalian relatives like my brother’s guinea pigs. Using the little guys gives us some assurance about the safety of chemicals we surround ourselves with every day.

Yet, as we’ve watched with Bisphenol-A in bottles and formaldehyde in baby cribs and a host of other examples, studies are not providing an assurance of safety. And, if safety is not being demonstrated in the lab, but the chemicals are still allowed to be used in everyday products, that means WE have become the guinea pigs.

“Chemicals are everywhere around us, and many are simply not safe,” said Richard Denison, Ph.D., Senior Scientist at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). “Children’s toys, kitchen products, cosmetics, fast food containers – countless items that we use on a daily basis are made with chemicals that science is linking to the rising rates of childhood cancers, infertility, learning disabilities and more. It’s time Congress acts to stop these unregulated exposures to protect the health of Americans for generations to come.”

For the first time in over 30 years, revisions to TSCA are being debated by Congress. Widely regarded as one of the weakest of all major U.S. environmental laws, TSCA was supposed to give the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the authority to identify and regulate dangerous chemicals. However, the law is so weak that the EPA was unable to use it even to ban asbestos, a known and deadly human carcinogen that is barred in more than 50 countries.

“Chemicals should meet a standard of safety for all people, and especially vulnerable populations like children and pregnant women, said Andy Igrejas, National Campaign Director for Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. “That can only happen when Congress hears from fed-up Americans tired of being treated like Guinea pigs.”

Tired of being a Guinea Pig? Join the campaign! The “Not a Guinea Pig” campaign initial launch site provides information and resources tailored to:

Teens and Toxic Chemicals in Products
Kids & Chemicals: Developing Brains At Risk
Health Professionals and Chemical Exposures

To help spread the word on the campaign, follow them on Facebook, join the conversation on Twitter around the #NAGP hashtag and sign up for the blog. The campaign website also includes videos highlighting the prevalence of toxic chemical exposures and what we can do to prevent them.

I am not a guinea pig – and I definitely don’t want my daughters to be. How about you? Ever feel like the unwilling test subject in an out of control experiment?

Find Out More:

Posted by Joysain on 07/04/2010 at 09:09 AM

I agree with Rihana, we need test procedures that are modeled on human tissue rather than animal for safer chemical use. The TSCA don’t need to be involved at all. Companies will change when people complain they do it every day. Unhappy customers make for poor profit margins and that is the basis for any free market society.

Posted by Sarah on 07/04/2010 at 05:01 AM

I completely agree, Rihana. Thank you for raising people’s awareness of this—I think most people don’t realize there are viable alternatives to animal testing, but in this day and age there are plenty.

Posted by Rihana on 06/23/2010 at 02:07 PM

I am particularly disappointed with this campaign. I think the larger problem we are facing is precisely that we have been using guinea pigs for decades and they haven’t served as reliable models for human safety as you mention. We have “tested” and deemed “safe” tens of thousands of chemicals on animals only to find that the some results are not accurate. It’s time to use human-relevant non-animal testing practices as outlined by the National Academy of Sciences report, “Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy in 2007.”

The potential for TSCA reform is quite exciting, but it should be done in a way that doesn’t sacrifice millions of animals (for toxicity testing) in the name of better protection for human health and the environment. The revised bill needs to mandate and create market incentives to use nonanimal methods and tests.

I agree that we should use the latest science to assess chemicals. Instead of poisoning animals and attempting to apply that data to humans — which hasn’t worked out so far — we need to make sure a reformed TSCA relies on modern human cell and computer-based methods that provide more accurate data on how a chemical acts on cells and what the impact on human health may be.

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