In the 1970s, governments worldwide vastly expanded their pre-market review of chemical data, and with it the need for toxicological testing. Previously, such review was only required for products intended to have biological effects, such as drugs and pesticides. Legislators and regulators weighed competing priorities: assessing health and environmental risks; conserving limited testing resources; and harmonizing different national testing requirements so as not to create trade barriers that would fracture international markets. Seeking to balance these priorities, in 1981 the 24 industrialized nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) adopted common chemical testing standards. Under the framework of “Mutual Acceptance of Data,” member governments agreed to accept all data from toxicological tests that adhered to a collectively agreed upon set of standardized test methods and strict requirements for “good laboratory practice.” All data that adhered to these standards, regardless of country of origin, would be accepted as a basis for decisions. Data that did not adhere to this framework would not be accepted; this proved to exclude most academic toxicology studies. This paper will examine how standards helped to create an international infrastructure of chemical regulation: the rules made chemical data legible to and portable among bureaucratic governments, enabling governance by distant authorities while also liberalizing international trade. OECD nations regulated laboratory practice to control market behavior, and this constrained the type of testing done and knowledge produced.
