Citizens Campaign for the Environment
Empowering Communities, Advocating Solutions.
- Water Protection
- Aquatic Invasive Species
- Broadwater: Liguefied Natural Gas Facility
- Carmans River
- Great Lakes
- Long Island Sound Dredged Materials
- Long Island Sound Protection
- Millstone Nuclear Power Station
- MTBE Pollution in Drinking Water
- Ocean Protection
- Onondaga Lake
- Owasco Lake
- Sewage Pollution
- Wetlands Protection
- SPECIAL FEATURE: Great Lakes Conference
- SPECIAL FEATURE: Long Island Groundwater
- SPECIAL FEATURE: Long Island South Shore Estuary Reserve
- SPECIAL FEATURE: New York State Sewer Scorecard Report
- Public Health, Toxics, and Recycling
- Acid Rain
- Artificial Turf
- Brookhaven National Laboratory
- Human Pesticide Testing
- Lawn Pesticides: An Unacceptable Risk
- Manufactured Gas Plants on Long Island
- Mercury Pollution
- New York State's Bottle Bill
- Pesticide Free Schools
- Pesticide Neighbor Notification
- Pesticides: Mosquito Control / West Nile Virus
- Plastic Bag Reduction
- SPECIAL FEATURE: Current Local Air Quality
- SPECIAL FEATURE: Long Island Recycling
- Open Space and Working Landscapes
- Climate Change and Energy Policy
- Legislative Campaigns
CAMPAIGNS
Human Pesticide Testing
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a draft guidance document that allows for companies to test toxic pesticides on humans, including prisoners, pregnant mothers, children, and infants!
Background:
| In 2004, the EPA was determined to conduct a study entitled CHEERS- Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study. This study, funded by the American Chemistry Council, was set up to observe infants and toddlers to see how harmful pesticides in the home effected their development. The study offered free camcorders and money to the participants. The announcement of the study was followed by a huge public outcry, and the EPA eventually withdrew the study in the Spring of 2005. |  |
Click here to read CCE's comments to the EPA calling for the immediate halt of CHEERS
Click here to read CCE's press release calling for the immediate Halt to CHEERS
Click here to read CCE's Victory Press Release on CHEERS
After CHEERS was withdrawn, the EPA began to draft a guidance document that would set standards for human pesticide testing. The draft document was released in the fall of 2005. The draft document is laden with loopholes and encourages unethical treatment of human subjects, including prisoners, pregnant woman, children, and infants.
CCE is calling for an immediate ban on all human pesticide testing.
EPA’s guidance document would allow:
 |
- Dosing experiments involving infants and pregnant women using non-pesticide chemicals. Thus, companies would be free to test agents such as perchlorate on nursing mothers;
- A repeat of the infamous (now canceled) CHEERS study in which parents were to be paid to spray pesticides in their infants’ rooms at home. EPA pointedly omits any check against undue economic inducement (as in CHEERS), i.e., paying poor people enough to lure them into signing informed consent papers; and
- Reliance
upon unethical studies by EPA, thanks to an array
of loopholes. For example, the proposal says EPA can
use any human dosing study conducted before the new
rule’s effective date on a case-by-case basis,
applying the ethical norms prevalent at the time.
Since, prior to the rule, EPA recognized no ethical
standards at all, this means that all previous human
studies can come in through EPA’s wide open
door.
Click here to read CCE's 2002-2006 Pesticide Report (PDF format)
Click here to read CCE's letter to the EPA, 12/12/05 (PDF format)