Organic Consumers Association - Educating for Health, Justice, and Sustainability: "Despite receiving over 50,000 letters from citizens, Congress, and EPA's own scientists opposing the proposed rule, the EPA has published a new federal regulation that will continue to allow observational studies of chemical and pesticide exposure on human subjects. On August 2, 2005, Congress had mandated the EPA create a rule that permanently bans chemical testing on pregnant women and children, without exception. But the EPA's newly proposed rule, is ridden with exceptions where observational chemical studies may be performed on children in certain situations like the following:
1. Children who 'cannot be reasonably consulted,' such as those that are mentally handicapped or orphaned newborns, may be studied. With permission from the institution or guardian in charge of the individual, the child may be studied.
2. Parental consent forms are not necessary for studies with children who have been neglected or abused.
3. Chemical studies on any children outside of the U.S. are acceptable."
According to the San Francisco Chronicle
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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