Online
at EWG's site:
http://www.ewg.org/news/story.php?id=3154
Washington
Post
October 30, 2004
Study
of Pesticides and Children Stirs Protests
Staffers
Fear EPA Project Endangers Participants
By: Juliet
Eilperin
An Environmental Protection Agency proposal to study young children's
exposure to pesticides has sparked a flurry of internal agency
protests, with several career officials questioning whether the
survey will harm vulnerable infants and toddlers.
The EPA announced
this month that it was launching a two-year investigation, partially
funded by the American Chemical Council, of how 60 children in
Duval County, Fla., absorb pesticides and other household chemicals.
The chemical industry funding initially prompted some environmentalists
to question whether the study would be biased, and some rank-and-file
agency scientists are now questioning whether the plan will exploit
financially strapped families.
In exchange
for participating for two years in the Children's Environmental
Exposure Research Study, which involves infants and children up
to age 3, the EPA will give each family using pesticides in their
home $970, some children's clothing and a camcorder that parents
can keep.
EPA
officials in states such as Georgia and Colorado fired off e-mail
messages to each other this week suggesting the study lacked safeguards
to ensure that low-income families would not be swayed into exposing
their children to hazardous chemicals in exchange for money and
high-tech gadgetry.
Pesticide exposure has been linked to neurological problems, lung
damage and birth defects.
Suzanne Wuerthele,
the EPA's regional toxicologist in Denver, wrote her colleagues
on Wednesday that after reviewing the project's design, she feared
poor families would not understand the dangers associated with
pesticide exposure.
"It is
important that EPA behaves ethically, consistently, and in a way
that engenders public health. Unless these issues are resolved,
it is likely that all three goals will be compromised, and the
agency's reputation will suffer," she wrote in an e-mail
obtained by The Washington Post. "EPA
researchers will not tell participants that using pesticides always
entails some risk, and not using pesticides will reduce that risk
to zero."
Troy Pierce,
a life scientist in the EPA's Atlanta-based pesticides section,
wrote in a separate e-mail: "This does sound like it goes
against everything we recommend at EPA concerning use of [pesticides]
related to children. Paying families in
Florida to have their homes routinely treated with pesticides
is very sad when we at EPA know that [pesticide management] should
always be used to protect children."
Linda S. Sheldon,
acting administrator for the human exposure and atmospheric sciences
division of the EPA's Office of Research and Development, said
the agency would educate families participating in the study and
inform them if their children's urine showed risky levels of pesticides.
She said it was crucial for the agency to study small children
because so little is known about how their bodies absorb harmful
chemicals.
"We are
developing the scientific building blocks that will allow us to
protect children," Sheldon said, adding that the study design
was reviewed by five independent panels of academics, officials
of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and representatives
of the Duval County Health Department.
Families can
remain in the study even if they stop using pesticides, Sheldon
said, as long as they were using them before the experiment started.
It was unlikely that any family would volunteer for the study
out of financial need, she added, because researchers will require
parents to invest time in monitoring their children's activities
and diet.
"Nobody
can go into this study just for that amount of money," Sheldon
said.
R. Alta Charo,
a professor of bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison's
law and medical schools who co-authored a National Academy of
Sciences report last year on the use of pesticides for research,
said EPA officials were struggling with how to balance the need
to protect the individual child's interests against the goal of
pursuing a broader scientific agenda. While she said the agency's
approach was reasonable, Charo said it did raise ethical questions.
"Where
is the line between enticement and a godfather offer" that
impoverished families would find hard to refuse, Charo said. "That
is really troubling. We make these decisions over and over in
public policy. This is one of those moments."
Several EPA
officials, all of whom asked not to be identified for fear of
retaliation, also questioned why the agency removed the study
design and its recruitment flier from the EPA's Web site once
some scientists started to complain about the project. Sheldon
said the agency is rewriting how it portrays the research.
"We removed
it so we could modify it, so it would make more sense," she
said.