Poor children to be used as guinea pigs by the EPA

[Democrat 4 Ever]

While enjoying the Lush Limpball video at http://www.ericblumrich.com/ I came across this link. Our fascist government, through the ubiquitous EPA has decided to test certain toxins and are going to use, wait for it...our children as their test subjects. Of course they are going to test long term results using a short time frame which essentially cooks the results long before the study is over. They are targeting children in poor districts and awarding the parents who allow their child's participation with, wait for it....$970.00, a free video camera and a t-shirt.

Here is the link - be sure and sign the petition to stop this madness. http://www.organicconsumers.org/epa-alert.htm

12/1/2004: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), led by Bush appointees, is seeking input on a new proposed study in which infants in participating low income families will be monitored for health impacts as they undergo exposure to known toxic chemicals over the course of two years. The study entitled Children’s Environmental Exposure Research Study (CHEERS) will look at how chemicals can be ingested, inhaled or absorbed by children ranging from babies to 3 years old.

For taking part in these studies, each family will receive $970, a free video camera, a T-shirt, and a framed certificate of appreciation.

In October, the EPA received $2.1 million to do the study from the American Chemistry Council, a chemical industry front group that includes members such as Dow, Exxon, and Monsanto (see full list of members on sidebar of this page). Critics of the research, including some EPA scientists, claim the study's funders guarantee the results will be biased in favor of the chemical industry, at the expense of the health of the impoverished children serving as test subjects.

For 30 years the ACC has known the high level of toxicity of the specific chemicals being "studied" in this project. These are some of the most dangerous known chemicals in household products. The ACC knows full well the intensely negative impacts that these chemicals have on humans, as does the EPA and has lobbied heavily to keep them legal. This is fully documented in study after study and memo after memo and meeting after meeting over three decades (see side bar and footnotes for reference and further research).

The trick here is that these products are known to have negative long term health effects. This is a short two year study. In other words, the results of he study are already known...there will be little to no obvious short term negative effects on these children at the end of the two year period. The seemingly positive results of the study will allow the ACC to announce positive "EPA study results" to the public, which will allow the ACC to more effectively lobby congress to weaken regulations on these products even more (thereby increasing profits dramatically). This technique has been exercised by the ACC for decades.

[NYCGirl]

1. Not quite true. Here's clarification from Snopes:

http://www.snopes.com/toxins/cheers.asp

[bettyellen]

5. but it's still a morally bankrupt proposal......

and none of us would be suprised if it was designed to make the chem exposure look less dangerous than it already is. two years is nothing.

[quaoar]

2. This came out a couple weeks ago

when the new nominee for EPA was announced.

And, of course, the MSM is too busy covering Michael Jackson and Sarah Jessica Parker to bother with such things.

[xchrom]

3. bushco world in action!

it's part of their economic recovery program for the poor.

doesn't get more disgusting than this, now does it?
anybody still resisting the 3rd reich analogy's now?

ah -- wel -- the snopes thing sets things in a different light -- so i have to take some of my evil rhetoric back -- but not all of it.

this country has always practised environmental warfare based both on race and class.
that we should partner with the poor to study{what i'm pretty sure we already know} is only right and should have been done ages ago.

what i fear from bushco -- is that they will use the info to excuse poisons loose in our environment.
after this 8 years is up -- there will be any number of corporate shills working in the government. i.e. more than there were before.

[NYCGirl]

4. Please read the Snopes article:

Through a research project known as the Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study (CHEERS), the United States' Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to gather data about pesticide and household chemical exposure in very young children. The study will begin in the summer of 2005 in Jacksonville, Florida, and will entail monitoring 60 infants (newborn to just shy of 13 months old) for a period of two years.

However, while the e-mail leaves the impression that poverty-stricken families are for the price of a camcorder and $970 heartlessly offering up their tots as lab rats, the little ones to be deliberately sickened by cruel scientists intent upon advancing human knowledge even at the price of 60 babies potentially dealt life-long serious physical ailments by exposure to dreadful chemicals, the truth is quite different. One of the reasons the EPA chose Duval County, Florida, as the site of this research had to do with year-round pesticide use in that area. The children who will be the subjects of the study live there. In other words, if all the clipboard-wielding EPA people stayed home and the project were cancelled before it began, these same children would be exposed to these same pesticides and in the same amounts, due to nothing more sinister than where their parents chose to settle and raise their families.

The EPA will not be administering pesticides to children. Children who are ingesting pesticides thanks to where they live will be studied by the EPA.

Given that these youngsters are coming into contact with noxious chemicals thanks to where they live, the EPA saw a good opportunity to examine the effects of such compounds on small children by studying subjects drawn from this particular group. CHEERS will track 60 of these little ones over the course of two years, measuring not only their exposure to pesticides but also to ordinary household chemicals (cleaning products and the like). The parents of kids taking part in the study will have to keep very careful logs on which products are used and in which amounts in their homes. They will also be required to videotape their tykes being studied and maintain logs of the little ones' activities. For this and for allowing researchers into the family domicile every few months to assess the child being observed and to examine the home, these parents will receive a $970 stipend and will at the end of the two years get to keep the video camera.

[quaoar]

6. I don't have the links to the stuff that was posted here earlier

But I believe it was on the DU home page. It had something to do with the new nominee to head the EPA wanting to use such studies and quoted other EPA officials in memos denouncing them as unethical.

Maybe someone else here remembers all that.

[quaoar]

7. OK. I found it

This is what I was referring to:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/05/03/12_epa.html

[Democrat 4 Ever]

8. Thanks for the clarification. I guess I am so used to all of the

horrible antics by this administration I didn't even begin to think it wasn't true. Still don't like their methods but at least it isn't as bad as I first thought.