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Winston-Salem
Journal - Editorial
November
8, 2004
EPA
Madness
In a project
that sounds like something hatched by mad scientists, the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency is using Florida children to measure
the effects of pesticides on infants and toddlers.
The EPA began
the two-year study last month in Duval County, Fla. Sixty children
are being watched to monitor their absorption of pesticides and
other household chemicals. The American Chemical Council is helping
to pay for the study.
EPA policy
recommends that children be kept away from all pesticides because
all pose some health risks. But the agency will not be warning
parents in this study group. Doing so would interfere with the
study. Infants and toddlers up to 3 years in age are involved,
and the agency will warn their parents of the pesticide danger
only if their children begin to show risky levels of pesticides
in their urine, EPA's lead administrator on the project told The
Washington Post.
This is unwise
and immoral. The government should not be using children as guinea
pigs. It is risking their health and it makes no difference if
the end - a better understanding of how pesticides affect children
- is good.
It's hard
to believe that any parents would allow their children to be used
in such a way, and that's where the EPA project begins to sound
even more sinister. The parents who have signed up for the research
are low-income, and they may have been influenced to join the
study by a financial subsidy. The government will pay the families
$970 to participate, plus provide the children with free clothing
and a video camera that the family can keep at the end of the
project.
To their credit,
a number of EPA employees are outraged and are questioning both
the nature of the study and the exploitation of poor families.
One told the Post that the research violates three tenets of EPA
policy: that the agency behave ethically, consistently and in
ways that engender the public trust. The employee is absolutely
right. It is not ethical to experiment with children, nor is it
consistent to do so only with cash-strapped families. Finally,
this kind of research does not engender public trust.
As testimony
to how out of touch the EPA's lead administrators are on this,
the agency has rebutted the criticism by claiming that the $970
is so little money that no one would participate for it, the camera
and the clothes. The administrators who dreamed up that response
clearly don't know how desperate some poor families are.
This study
is an outrage. EPA should discontinue it immediately and send
workers to every family involved to provide them with plenty of
information on the dangers pesticides pose to children - and with
an apology.
