EPA to accept Pesticide Experiments on Humans

I don't know how I missed this one, but thank you lil bit for sending me this even if I didn't get to read it until today.

This is a DISGRACE, and even tho it's older I have to share it with my readers...


Wednesday, 25 January 2006

"The fact that EPA allows pesticide testing of any kind on the most vulnerable, including abused and neglected children, is simply astonishing." The EPA has issued a rule allowing human pesticide experiments in defiance of Congress and the American people.

Senator Barbara Boxer stated: "The fact that EPA allows pesticide testing of any kind on the most vulnerable, including abused and neglected children, is simply astonishing."

A government that gives its seal of approval to human pesticide experiments loses its moral authority in ALL matters pertaining to human values.

Pesticides are poisons--such compounds have absolutely no potential benefit for those who would be the subjects of experiments.

Pesticidee experiments violate every moral standard of human decency--they have not place in a civilized society.
Those who conduct and those who condone pesticide experiments are the immoral torchbearers of human experiments under the Nazis.

The administration's zeal to do away with regulatory safeguards has run amock.
As the Natural Resources Defense Council press release states: In addition to a profound moral and ethical breach, the final rule also violates a law passed by Congress last August requiring EPA to issue strict rules for such tests, and ban all pesticide tests on pregnant women, infants and children. That law passed overwhelmingly in the House and Senate with strong bipartisan support, which included conservative Republicans, who questioned the ethics of testing toxic chemicals on humans.

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Elliott Negin, 202/289-2405

New EPA Rule Turns People into Lab Rats, Violating Ethical Standards and the Law
Statement by NRDC Attorney Erik D. Olson on Leaked Copy of Final Rule
WASHINGTON (January 23, 2006) – More humans are about to become lab rats for the pesticide industry, according to a leaked copy of a rule due to be finalized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency later this week. The document was released by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) earlier today.

In addition to a profound moral and ethical breach, the final rule also violates a law passed by Congress last August requiring EPA to issue strict rules for such tests, and ban all pesticide tests on pregnant women, infants and children, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. That law passed overwhelmingly in the House and Senate with strong bipartisan support, which included conservative Republicans, who questioned the ethics of testing toxic chemicals on humans.

EPA expects there to be more than 30 of these tests per year—far more than ever before.
Below is a statement by Erik D. Olson, an NRDC senior attorney:
“EPA is giving its official blessing for pesticide companies to use pregnant women, infants and children as lab rats in flagrant violation of a new federal law cracking down on this repugnant practice. There is simply no legal or moral justification for the agency to allow human testing of dangerous chemicals. None.”


EPA to accept pesticide tests on humans
By John Heilprin, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency for the first time is establishing criteria for tests by pesticide makers on human subjects.

Image: A plane sprays almond groves in California's Central Valley, the nation's most productive farmland.
By Jack Gruber, USA TODAY staff

Susan Hazen, the EPA's principal deputy assistant administrator for the Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances, said Monday the new rule for accepting tests won't allow "intentional pesticide dosing studies of children and pregnant women."

Last year, President Bush signed a ban on the use of human pesticide test data until the EPA created regulations for accepting them. The agency also was required to ban the use of pregnant women and children as subjects, and to incorporate ethical guidelines from the National Academy of Sciences and the post-World War II Nuremberg Code.

"We have met and exceeded Congress' direction," Hazen said Monday.

A copy of the EPA's final draft, prepared within the past two weeks, was reviewed by The Associated Press.

Three California Democrats, Sen. Barbara Boxer and Reps. Henry Waxman and Hilda Solis, denounced the new rule after obtaining a copy of the final draft. They had led the effort in Congress to require that the EPA outlaw the use of pregnant women and children as subjects and that it meet high ethical standards.

"The fact that EPA allows pesticide testing of any kind on the most vulnerable, including abused and neglected children, is simply astonishing," Boxer said.

She said the EPA rule is inconsistent with what Congress ordered. She said manufacturers could still conduct testing on pregnant women and children as long as they could convince the EPA that the researchers didn't intend to submit the results to the agency at the outset of the study.

Hazen said, however, that the only exception to the ban on accepting data, including that from pregnant women and children, involves cases in which the EPA becomes aware that it might need to take additional measures to protect public health.

However, she noted, "No pesticide company in the U.S. or in most countries would invest money in developing data to try and prove that EPA should regulate them more stringently."

The EPA expects a substantial increase in the number of tests it receives involving intentional exposure of humans to pesticides. The draft final rule said the agency anticipates receiving 33 such reports a year.

In the last 10 years, only about 20 such studies have been submitted to the EPA, the agency says. Hazen, however, said those studies include ones from the 1940s to recent years.

The new criteria for accepting the tests come after a long fight.

Toward the end of the Clinton administration, the EPA briefly stopped accepting industry data from pesticide experiments on humans. But the agency resumed considering that data after Bush took office in January 2001.

Then, in a lawsuit brought by the pesticide industry, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in 2003 that the EPA cannot refuse to consider data from manufacturer-sponsored human exposure tests until it develops regulations on them.

Agency officials said last November that in the meantime it would consider each study on a case-by-case basis. But Congress stepped in last year to impose a moratorium after Boxer and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., demanded that the EPA cancel an industry-backed pesticide study in which the families of 60 children in Duval County, Fla., would receive children's clothes, a camcorder and $970 for participating.


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Original Article -
Alliance for Human Research Protection - EPA to accept Pesticide Experiments on Humans