Workshop on the qualitative and quantitative comparability of human and animal developmental neurotoxicity: summary and implications.

The Workshop on the Qualitative and Quantitative Comparability of Human and Animal Developmental Neurotoxicity was convened by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse to address issues related to when testing should be required, what test methodologies should be required, and how the data should be interpreted and applied to the risk assessment process. The background material for Work Group discussions included presentations made at the Workshop by invited experts summarizing qualitative and quantitative human and experimental animal data on specific chemicals or classes of chemicals and EPA's proposed developmental neurotoxicity testing protocol. This overview: 1) summarizes the qualitative comparisons presented at the Workshop and attempts to make some quantitative comparisons of findings across mammalian species following exposure to developmental neurotoxicants, 2) brings the common themes that were discussed among the Work Groups together into a regulatory perspective, 3) provides a status report on EPA's developmental neurotoxicity protocol, and 4) identifies research needs in the development of test methodologies and improvement of risk assessments for developmental neurotoxicants.