[Shadow_Group] EPA Plan to Study Children’s Exposure to Chemicals at Home Sends Up Red Flags

[ItalysBadBoy]

http://www.generationgreen.org/Action_Alert.htm
 
Testing Tots? 
EPA Plan to Study Children’s Exposure 
to Chemicals at Home Sends Up Red Flags 
In early November, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) created quite a stir among many children’s health advocates when it announced a new study, the Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study (CHEERS). CHEERS is intended to study pesticide and other home chemical impacts on children, and it includes plans to offer money and camcorders to families. On the surface, it seemed to be designed to encourage parents to expose their infants and toddlers to pesticides—and seemed to target low-income families. 

After a flood of opposition, the EPA postponed its study until spring 2005 to get more input from advisory bodies on the ethics and safety of CHEERS. Many continue to call for the EPA to cancel the study, though there seem to be no plans to do so.

Since announcing CHEERS, EPA has clarified some issues about the study, and we are inclined to believe that the EPA honestly didn’t intend to lure poor families into a study that would cause their children to be directly exposed to dangerous chemicals. Nonetheless, there is now an atmosphere of taint around CHEERS, and there remain many concerns that are sufficient to warrant pulling the plug on this study.

First, while the money offered to participants—between $770 and $970 over the course of two years—certainly won’t change anyone’s life, it does seem to veer closer to an incentive than a compensation for time spent helping gather information for the study. In addition, families are being offered T-shirts, framed certificates of appreciation and camcorders. The video recorders are to be used in part to create visual diaries for the study, but even the EPA refers to them—and to the other items—as “gifts.” That is an incentive, and it puts a shadow over the study from the start.

Second, the study will involve only 60 participants, all of them in Duval County, Florida. This is a very small sample size and a very specific area. The EPA maintains that it is soliciting participants throughout the county, and not just those in low socioeconomic areas—but even if this is true, how representative can the data be? The value of the data would be questionable enough if the EPA were targeting poor families, but if the 60 participants run the whole socioeconomic range, the data will be even less likely to be applicable to nationwide strategies for chemical exposure risk reduction.

Finally, $2.1 million of the funding for the study is coming from the American Chemistry Council. Given the nature of this study, it looks suspiciously like an effort by the chemical industry to use the EPA to find out how much exposure to pesticides and other chemicals is “acceptable.” Instead of allowing industry interests to direct its research priorities, the EPA should be doing all it can to reduce children's exposure to toxins through education and prevention efforts.

A sample letter to the EPA appears below. Feel free to modify it or use it as it is. For more information on the study and concerns about it, click here. 


SAMPLE LETTER:

Send To:
Administrator Michael Leavitt
USEPA Headquarters
1101A
Ariel Rios Building
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20460

E-mail: Send your message to leavitt.michael at epa.gov 

Dear Administrator Leavitt:

The EPA may think that the Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study (CHEERS) is a good way to find out how children are exposed to pesticides and other chemicals at home. However, I would like the agency to rethink that.

There isn’t much confusion about how children are exposed to chemicals at home: Products that are allowed to have too many toxins in them, chemicals that haven’t been studied enough for safety, and lack of awareness on the part of parents regarding chemical risks.

CHEERS offers gifts and money to participants that look suspiciously like incentives—even if they aren’t intended to be. In addition, the small sample size is unlikely to yield useful results, and the effort is being driven by money from the chemical industry, which obviously has its own agenda. Please cancel CHEERS and return the money, and focus on education, prevention and chemical testing efforts.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]





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