http://www.peer.org/press/530.html
Public
Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)
PEER
is a national alliance of local, state and federal resource professionals,
working to protect the environment.
Press Release:
November 1, 2004
Contact: Chas
Offutt (202) 265-7337
EPA
PAYS FAMILIES TO EXPOSE THEIR INFANTS TO PESTICIDES
Joint
Study With Chemical Industry to Measure Exposure in the Home
Agency Removes Study Protocol From Its Web Site
Washington,
DC — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is paying
selected Florida families who “spray or have pesticides
sprayed inside your home routinely” to study their infant
children, according to agency documents released today by Public
Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). When agency
scientists started questioning the ethics of the study, EPA removed
the study protocol from its website and distributed a short “Desk
Statement” that the scientists say is misleading.
Conducted
with funding from the American Chemistry Council, which represents
135 companies including pesticide manufacturers, the Children’s
Environmental Exposure Research Study (CHEERS) will monitor developmental
changes in babies, from birth to age 3, who are exposed to pesticides
in their homes. Set in Jacksonville, Florida (Duval County), the
study looks at 60 infants and toddlers.
Agency
scientists not connected with the study are expressing concerns
about –
•
Financial Incentives. The study makes payments to families
totaling $970 for participating throughout the entire two-year
period. Families who complete the study also get to keep the
camcorder they are provided to record their babies’
behavior. In addition, families are given bibs, t-shirts and
other promotional items. Families are recruited from public
clinics and hospitals;
•
Lack of Treatment. The study makes no provision for intervening
if infants or toddlers show signs of developmental problems
or register alarmingly high exposure levels in their urine
samples. Instead, families continue in the study so long as
researchers are notified when each pesticide application occurs;
and
•
Lack of Education. Unlike other EPA programs in this area,
the study does not provide participants information about
the safe or proper ways to apply or store pesticides around
the home. Nor does the study furnish participating families
with information about the risks of prolonged or excessive
exposure to pesticides.
EPA scientists
began raising these concerns and questioning the value of the
study itself. Farm workers or others who have pesticide exposure
outside the home are not excluded, nor are children with pre-existing
health issues. In fact, the study protocol declares “It
will not be possible to draw inferences to a larger population
from the results of the study.”
EPA reacted
to these questions by removing the study protocol from its website.
The agency then began distributing a two page Desk Statement that
claims, “Participants are not required to use pesticides.”
While 10 percent of the participants are the control group with
no or low pesticide exposure in their homes, the remaining 90
percent are eligible to enter and remain in the study only if
they who spray routinely. Indeed, the infants are selected based
upon pesticide residue levels detected in “a surface wipe
sample in the primary room where the child spends time.”
“If
EPA is going to engage in experimentation on human subjects, especially
infants, it should go the extra mile to be aboveboard and protective
of the subjects’ health,” stated PEER executive Director
Jeff Ruch, noting the Bush Administration has been pushing to
liberalize rules on using human testing of pesticides and other
chemicals. “Removing the study design from the EPA website
and then issuing defensive, weasel-worded statements is hardly
confidence inspiring.”
In its Desk
Statement, EPA claims that the “study protocols have been
reviewed and approved by four Independent Institutional Review
Boards for the protection of Human Subjects” but does not
make copies of those reviews available.
The American
Chemistry Council, which contributed $2 million to CHEERS, also
successfully lobbied to include exposure to flame retardants and
other household chemicals in the study. EPA defends the industry
involvement, pointing to 80 similar research agreements it has
with industry.
“The
danger of these arrangements is that, in order to win industry
support, EPA tailors its research to serve the objectives of corporate
R & D first and public health second,” Ruch added.
See
the flyers for parents to participate in CHEERS
Read
the EPA Desk Statement on CHEERS
View
excerpts from the CHEERS protocol removed from the EPA website
A complete
copy of the protocol is available upon request