| Meeting Report: Summary of IARC Monographs on Formaldehyde, 2-Butoxyethanol, and 1-tert-Butoxy-2-Propanol Vincent James Cogliano, Yann Grosse, Robert A. Baan, Kurt Straif, Marie Béatrice Secretan, Fatiha El Ghissassi, and the Working Group for Volume 88* International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France Abstract
An international, interdisciplinary working group of expert scientists met in June 2004 to develop IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of the Carcinogenic Risk of Chemicals to Humans (IARC Monographs) on formaldehyde, 2-butoxyethanol, and 1-tert-butoxy-2-propanol. Each IARC Monograph includes a critical review of the pertinent scientific literature and an evaluation of an agent's potential to cause cancer in humans. After a thorough discussion of the epidemiologic, experimental, and other relevant data, the working group concluded that formaldehyde is carcinogenic to humans, based on sufficient evidence in humans and in experimental animals. In the epidemiologic studies, there was sufficient evidence that formaldehyde causes nasopharyngeal cancer, "strong but not sufficient" evidence of leukemia, and limited evidence of sinonasal cancer. The working group also concluded that 2-butoxyethanol and 1-tert-butoxy-2-propanol are not classifiable as to their carcinogenicity to humans, each having limited evidence in experimental animals and inadequate evidence in humans. These three evaluations and the supporting data will bepublished as Volume 88 of the IARC Monographs. Key words: 1-tert-butoxy-2-propanol, 2-butoxyethanol, carcinogen, formaldehyde, glycol ethers, hazard identification, IARC Monographs, leukemia, nasopharyngeal cancer, sinonasal cancer. Environ Health Perspect 113: 1205-1208 (2005) . doi:10.1289/ehp.7542 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 12 May 2005]
Address correspondence to V.J. Cogliano, Carcinogen Identification and Evaluation, International Agency for Research on Cancer, 150 cours Albert Thomas, 69372 Lyon cedex 08, France. Telephone: 33-4-72-73-84-76. Fax: 33-4-72-73-83-19. E-mail: cogliano@iarc.fr *The Working Group for Volume 88 of the IARC Monographs includes Ulrich Andrae (Germany) , Sherwood Burge (UK) , Rajendra Chhabra (USA) , John Cocker (UK) , David Coggon (UK) , Rory Conolly (USA) , Paul Demers (Canada) , David Eastmond (USA) , Elaine Faustman (USA) , Victor Feron (the Netherlands) , Michel Gérin (Canada, Chair) , Marcel Goldberg (France) , Bernard Goldstein (USA) , Roland Grafström (Sweden) , Johnni Hansen (Denmark) , Michael Hauptmann (USA) , Kathy Hughes (Canada) , Ted Junghans (USA) , Dan Krewski (Canada) , Steve Olin (USA) , Martine Reynier (France) , Judith Shaham (Israel) , Morando Soffritti (Italy) , Leslie Stayner (USA) , Patricia Stewart (USA) , and Douglas Wolf (USA) . We gratefully acknowledge the important contributions of the administrative staff of the IARC Monographs: S. Egraz, M. Lézère, J. Mitchell, and E. Perez. The IARC Monographs are supported, in part, by grants from the U.S. National Cancer Institute, the European Commission, the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The authors declare they have no competing financial interests. Received 31 August 2004 ; accepted 12 May 2005.
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