The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), led by Bush appointees, is planning to use poor children as guinea pigs in new study on pesticides. It is seeking input on a new proposed study in which infants in participating low income families will be monitored for health impacts as they undergo exposure to known toxic chemicals over the course of two years. It aims to see how chemicals can be ingested, inhaled or absorbed by children ranging from babies to 3 years old. While this may sound a bit grim, the happy chappies at the EPA have entitled their new study CHEERS (Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study).
Of course, no one is forced at gun point to take part. No, economic coercion is the means. The poor will be paid for by the state using their property in the form of $970, a free video camera, a T-shirt, and a framed certificate of appreciation. A bargain!
Needless to say, in the land of the free (market) there are some parents desperate enough to take them up on this. Participants of the study were chosen from 6 health clinics and three hospitals in Jacksonville, Florida where just over half of births are from non-white mothers and 62% have only received an elementary or secondary education. While the study does not require that participants increase their chemical use, the applicants have to regularly use toxic chemicals around the house. This will likely lead the low income applicants to increase their toxic chemical use in order to be eligible for the funding so putting their children at increased risk.
And who is funding this research? The EPA received $2.1 million from the American Chemistry Council (ACC), a chemical industry front group that includes members such as Dow, Exxon, and Monsanto. Critics of the study point out that the source of the funding will guarantee the results will be biased in favour of the chemical industry. Not forgetting, of course, the ethical issues of using the impoverished children of the poorest, least educated and most desperate people as test subjects.
It gets worse. ACC and EPA have known for decades about the high level of toxicity of the specific chemicals being studied in this project and their negative effect on humans. This is fully documented in study after study. The key is that the products have a long term impact on health while the new study is for two years meaning that the ACC can advertise the positive results of the EPA study as there will be no obvious short term impact. As well as improving advertising, it will be used to lobby for weaker regulations on these products. A technique has been used by the ACC for decades.
On November 11th, the EPA announced suspension of the study's launch until early 2005 for the sake of "final review." The Organic Consumers Association is using this delay to petition for the permanent ending for this abuse of low income children by the chemical industry. Good luck to them.