ACC Calls for Inclusion of Industry Analysis in Formaldehyde Assessment

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) has called on the US EPA to include recent industry analysis in its ongoing IRIS assessment of formaldehyde.

The new analysis concludes that there is "no association between individual formaldehyde exposure estimates and frequency of aneuploidy among those exposed". Aneuploidy is the presence of an abnormal number of chromosomes in a cell and is indicative of leukemia.

This contradicts the EPA’s 2010 draft assessment, generated under the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), which concluded that formaldehyde was carcinogenic when inhaled.

The analysis submitted by the ACC was conducted by a group led by Kenneth Mundt at consultancy Ramboll Environ and including researchers at Houston Methodist Hospital and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. It was funded by the Foundation for Chemistry Research and Initiatives (FCRI) – formerly the Research Foundation for Health and Environmental Effects (RFHEE) – a non-profit organisation established by the ACC.

The group re-analysed data from a 2010 government-funded study, which served as a basis for the draft assessment’s conclusion. It involved scientists at universities, hospitals and government research centres in the US, the Netherlands and China.

The original study examined data from 94 workers in China, 43 of whom were exposed to formaldehyde through their work. The resulting analysis supported a mechanism by which the substance could cause leukemia.

But the 2017 analysis of the same data, published in Critical Reviews in Toxicology, calls into question these findings.

And in a letter to the EPA, Kimberly Wise White from the ACC says it is imperative that they be fully evaluated and included in the weight-of-evidence framework and the causality assessment.

The 2010 IRIS draft assessment attracted strong criticism from the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), as well as industry. In response, the EPA announced plans to improve the clarity and transparency of the IRIS programme.

In 2014, the agency held a public workshop to discuss the scientific issues related to the draft assessment.

According to the EPA website, formaldehyde is still under evaluation and the release date for the final assessment has yet to be determined.

Formaldehyde uses
Formaldehyde is used in adhesives for a wide range of wood products including furniture, flooring, cabinets, bookcases and building materials, such as plywood and wood panels.

Last year, the EPA issued a final rule to limit emissions from composite wood products, although its enforcement has been delayed under the Trump administration.

The US National Toxicology Program (NTP) lists the substance as a known human carcinogen. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (Iarc) says it is "carcinogenic to humans".