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Ref. : Local Newsbriefs
Ref. : Letters to the editor
06.24 Mr. Holder, You Must Hold Torturers Accountable
06.29 Thinking about Climate
06.26 False Health-Scare Ad on CNN
06.25 Louella Learns the Limits of Medicare
06.23 The Simple Answer to America’s Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All
06.23 Tell ABC: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate
06.23 Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex
06.22 Thinking about Recoveries
06.20 Obama's Health Care Waterloo
06.15 Obama, Like Clinton Before Him, is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform
06.11 Two Key Health-Care Numbers
06.10 Big Breakthroughs for Single Payer Health Care
06.10 Readying Americans for Dangerous, Mandatory Vaccinations
06.29 WP's Connolly Back, on Health Reform
06.17 Hypocrisy and Hope: Western Coverage, Iranian Courage
06.15 Excusing Outrages of the Right
06.11 Tying Obama to Bush's Budget Mess
06.30 Obama's Torture Hypocrisy
06.30 Court Circular: Annals of Imperial Continuity
06.29 Obama, They Want You to Fail
06.26 Who to Trust on a Truth Commission?
06.26 Tarnished Shields: The Morally Bankrupt 'Family Values' Republican Leadership
06.25 America's "Bases of Empire"
06.24 Twelve Angry White People: Jury Nullification in a Pennsylvania Coal Town
06.24 Touring Empire's Ruins
06.23 Employers are Undermining the Economic Stimulus Program
06.19 Criminalizing Dissent: Obama Pot Calls Iranian Kettle Black
06.17 Afghanistan's Operation Phoenix
06.16 Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran?
06.13 Where's the Anger as the Wheels Come Off Obama's and the Democrats' Recovery Program?
06.10 Waiving the Rules for Old Glory
06.10 Obama's Era of Openness Is Closed
07.03 Reviewing Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd's "Rules of Disengagement"
07.01 Iraq: A Bitter Strategic Failure
06.25 It's All Good, Again: 'Uptick' in the American-Made Tides of Violence in Iraq
06.22 Obama Opposes Plame-gate Release
06.21 Dexter's Legions: The "Good" Killers of the "Good" War
06.18 Extending the Tradition: Proudly Taking American Torture Into the Future
06.15 New UN Report Denounces America's Human Rights Record
06.14 Fear Rules
07.01 Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism:" The Economic Strategy of Imperial America
06.23 Obama's Financial Reform Proposal - A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control
06.10 Cyberscares About Cyberwars Equal Cybermoney
07.01 Pirates of the Mediterranean
06.29 Color Revolutions, Old and New
06.25 Iran Divided & the 'October Suprise'
06.23 Astringent Corrective: AbuKhalil on Iran's Turmoil
06.20 Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?”
06.20 Through a Glass Darkly: Sifting Myth and Fact on Iran
06.19 Iran's Election and US - Iranian Elections
06.16 The Ir-Af-Pak War: Obama Looses the Manhunters
06.12 Israeli War Crimes Against Children During Operation Cast Lead
ENVIRONMENT:
Groups Challenge EPA’s ‘Industry friendly’ Pesticide Rules
On May 24, a coalition of Environmental Protection Agency employees and scientists issued a public letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson accusing the Agency of coddling pesticide companies. The writers urged greater scrutiny of the potential health impact of two classes of toxic pesticides currently in use.
On Tuesday, the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) raised further suspicions about collusion between the agency and corporate interests by publicizing notes from an August 2005 meeting between EPA officials and pesticide-industry representatives. The meeting records suggest that industry leaders want to use human research subjects to prove the safety of toxic pesticides.
The tension between EPA's internal dissenters and the industry is mounting under a looming deadline for the scientific assessment of two similar classes of pesticides: organophosphates and carbamates. The assessments, mandated by the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 (FQPA), are intended to establish safe levels of human exposures. The EPA has been evaluating pesticides in the two groups for several years, and about 20 chemicals are still awaiting final decisions by an August 3 deadline.
In their letter, the EPA scientists and employees argued that many of the risk assessments of previous years had cut corners.
"In the rush to meet the August 2006 FQPA statutory deadline," the co-signers wrote, "many steps in the risk-assessment and risk-management process are being abbreviated or eliminated in violation of the principles of scientific integrity and objectivity by which we as public servants are bound."
In the 1990s, the authors argued, although some risk assessments had led to limited restrictions on certain uses of organophosphates, the EPA had failed to fully assess residential and occupational exposure hazards. It ignored, for example, the impact on children of farm workers who accompany their parents in the fields.
Citing the need for further research, the authors called on the agency to stop approving the use of the remaining organophosphate and carbamates in the reassessment process "until EPA can state with scientific confidence that these pesticides will not harm the neurological development of our nation's born and unborn children."
Exposing the other side of the pesticide controversy, PEER publicized notes from a closed-door meeting on August 9, 2005, attended by EPA and White House Office of Management and Budget officials as well as pesticide-industry interests, including Bayer CropScience and the trade association CropLife America. The hastily scrawled notes, which were pulled from a public EPA administrative docket, articulate the pesticide industry's demands for certain regulatory policies that would help them obtain data to keep controversial plant and animal poisons on the market.
"Pesticides have benefits. Rule should say so. Testing, too, has benefits," reads one statement.
One type of testing that the industry finds beneficial--despite an outcry from public-interest groups--involves the use of humans.
The notes circulated by PEER tie the prospect of human testing to the FQPA evaluations. A statement attributed to industry lobbyist Jim Aidala urges the EPA to devise a favorable testing protocol so the industry can "proceed ASAP" and cites concerns that the process "won't be able to meet the FQPA deadline."
Several months after that meeting, the EPA exceeded the industry's expectations by finalizing official procedures for human testing of pesticides. Effective as of April 7, 2006, the EPA's testing protocol allows some human testing with oversight from a designated "Human Studies Review Board" and places restrictions on research using pregnant women and children.
But environmental groups have denounced the EPA's protocol as rife with ethical loopholes, suggesting it prioritizes the industry's interests over science in the public interest.
Jeff Ruch, executive director of PEER, said the industry saw human testing as "central to their regulatory strategy" because it might yield data that counters the intense adverse effects observed in animal studies.
"The most valuable subjects, from the industry's point of view, are going to be children," Ruch told The NewStandard, because regulatory oversight is heavily focused on how pesticides influence early development.
The FQPA requires a much higher health standard for pesticides that could affect the health of children and fetuses.
PEER pointed out that in describing possible uses of children as research subjects, the notes display the phrase, "Kids—never say never.... Can't know without testing."
"Closed-door discussions about using children as chemical guinea pigs," commented Ruch. "I'm not sure if it gets too much worse than that."
A backgrounder on the EPA website concedes that organophosphates, about 77 million pounds of which are doused on the country's crops, lawns and other areas each year, are associated with chronic and acute health problems including nerve damage and paralysis.
In a joint response to PEER, leaders of CropLife America and another trade association, Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment, alleged that PEER's criticisms revealed fears that human studies could invalidate arguments against pesticide use. "PEER may be anticipating EPA scientific findings not to their liking and are setting the stage for future disagreement and potential litigation," they said.
In an interview with TNS, Allan Noe, a spokesperson for CropLife America, dismissed the ethical and public-health concerns of PEER and other groups, stating that the company supported testing only on "healthy, non-pregnant adults." CropLife endorses human-based research "under carefully controlled conditions and only when absolutely called for," he said.
But Susan Kegley, a senior scientist with the Pesticide Action Network, suspects that the push for human testing reflects not a genuine interest in protecting health but rather, the industry's eagerness to manipulate science.
"The only reason human testing is quote 'necessary' is to increase industry profits," she said. "You will only find them using human tests that raise the acceptable amount you can be exposed to, and decrease protections for people."
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This story was published on June 2, 2006.
