Commemorating Toxicology at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences on the Occasion of Its 50th Anniversary

Genesis of the NTP In the history of modern toxicology, few years have been more consequential than 1978—the year the National Toxicology Program (NTP) came into being. On 7 August 1978, following months of reports of serious health problems near a chemical dump site at Love Canal, New York, former President Jimmy Carter declared a federal health emergency to facilitate clean up and the relocation of nearby families. On November 6, the Congress passed an amendment to the Public Health Service Act of 1944 (U.S. DHHS 2011) mandating, among other things, the regular publication of a Report on Carcinogens: Six days later, the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare [now the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)] Secretary Joseph Califano established the NTP under the umbrella of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). At the time, the NTP was the only comprehensive toxicology-testing program in the world. The NIEHS Director, David Rall, was the driving force behind the inception and creation of the NTP. He envisioned an independent program that transcended the regulated community (Huff 2005) as well as individual regulatory agencies to provide a broad, credible approach to toxicology. To that end, he succeeded in bringing into the NTP components from NIEHS, the National Cancer Institute, the Food and Drug Administration’s National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR), and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) at the Centers for Disease Control (now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Together with the first NTP Associate Director, John Moore, Rall oversaw the transfer of the National Cancer Institute Rodent Cancer Bioassay Program to the NTP, which became the cornerstone of a comprehensive chemical toxicology characterization program.