EPA Delays Childhood Pesticide Study

Nothing like a little bad press to prompt some action.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this week announced it was suspending plans to move forward with a widely criticized study of childhood pesticide exposure that involved paying families to allow their homes to be sprayed with the toxic chemicals. Instead, the EPA will send the Children’s Health Environmental Exposure Risk Study to an expert panel for an independent review to be completed next spring.

In Nov. 8 memo distributed to EPA employees and obtained by the government watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, William McFarland, the agency’s acting deputy assistant administrator for science, said that while the EPA “may refine the study design” following the review, the study would proceed. PEER is working with agency scientists who are questioning the study’s ethics.

“EPA seems to think that the problem with this study is one of public relations, not morality,” said PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “Regardless of the number of reviews, paying poor parents to dose their babies with commercial poisons to measure their exposure is just plain wrong.”

The study’s critics also objected to the fact that $2 million out of the $9 million in funding for the research would come from the American Chemistry Council, an industry group representing pesticide makers, and they raised concerns about the fact that the study did not require medical intervention should health problems arise or educate subjects about pesticide risks and safe application techniques.

In a press release announcing the decision, the EPA noted that the study design had been reviewed for scientific merit and ethical protections by four Institutional Review Boards for the Protection of Human Subjects – including one at the University of North Carolina.

How disappointing to learn that UNC would OK such morally dubious research.