EPA Study to Assess the Health Effects of Pesticides on Kids Halted
by SixWise.com
In The
Dangers of Pesticides and the EPA's Harrowing Plan to Test Them on Kids
we reported on some worthwhile facts you should know, including nine of
the serious health effects associated with the 1.5 billion pounds of pesticides
used by American farmers yearly.
In that article we also discussed a pesticide study that the EPA was
going to lead called -- rather crassly - CHEERS, which stands for the
Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study.
The two-year study was to monitor infants in low-income families in a
region of Florida to determine how chemicals can be ingested, inhaled
or absorbed by babies to children up to age 3, as well as the health effects
they would cause.
In our article noted above we noted that many people opposed the CHEERS
study because (beyond the odd name itself):
|
Low-income Florida families can no longer look forward to receiving
$970, a video camcorder, a t-shirt, bib, calendar, framed certificate,
and newsletter for volunteering their infants as subjects in the
EPA's study called CHEERS to test health effects of pesticides.
|
-
The study was in part to be funded by the American Chemistry Council,
who works closely with companies in the pesticide industry, representing
a potential conflict of interest. And this was to be a shorter-term
study, while other research has shown that most of the serious effects
of pesticides tend to be seen over the long-term. There was concern
that those in the pesticide study could claim the EPA, via this short-term
study, found their products safe and they therefore could claim their
products posed no risk.
- Beyond the crassness of the name CHEERS, study participants were
to receive $970, a t-shirt, a bib for their baby, a calendar, a newsletter,
a framed certificate of appreciation and a video camcorder. Understandably
these odd and rather flippant forms of compensation for this study turned
many a person's stomach.
The good news is that on Friday, April 8, 2005, Stephen L. Johnson, acting
administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said he was canceling
this study on the effects of pesticides on infants and babies entirely.
This was due in part to Johnson's confirmation as official head of the
EPA being threatened if he supported the study.
But according to a spokesman for the EPA, Johnson had serious reservations
about "whether or not this study was the appropriate thing to do."
Whatever the case, it is cancelled. We at SixWise.com support unbiased,
solid and conscientious research on the short- and long-term dangers of
pesticides, but CHEERS did not suggest any of those attributes.