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.