Senate
Votes to Ban EPA Pesticide Tests on Humans. By Maura
Reynolds. Los Angeles Times.
...
Lynn Goldman, a former EPA regulator now teaching at
the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health,
said the new regulations potentially reduced the market
for some pesticides by 90% — and had the unintended
effect of increasing the incentives for pesticide companies
to test on humans, including children, in an effort
to demonstrate pesticide safety.
"I
was at EPA at the time," Goldman said. "We
didn't anticipate that [increased pressure for human
testing] would be a consequence."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-pesticide30jun30,1,1592783.story?coll=la-news-politics-national
|
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/30/politics/30enviro.html
June 30, 2005
New York Times
Limits Sought on Testing for Pesticides
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
WASHINGTON, June 29 - The Senate on Wednesday passed two amendments
to an appropriations bill that would limit the Environmental
Protection Agency's use of pesticide tests that involve humans.
By a 60-to-37 vote, a bipartisan measure introduced by Senator
Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, and a dozen others would
place a one-year moratorium on any government-sponsored testing
programs on humans.
By a 57-to-40 vote, a measure sponsored by three Republicans,
Senators Conrad Burns of Montana, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia
and James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, would require a review by third-party
groups of all human testing programs conducted for the government,
to identify and quantify their toxic effects. It also gives
the E.P.A. six months to develop new regulations on pesticide
testing.
Both measures were added to the appropriations bill for the
Interior Department, which passed 94 to 0 on Wednesday. The
House bill, passed earlier, has a section similar to the Boxer
amendment but nothing comparable to the Burns measure. The differences
in the bills will have to be resolved in conference.
The flurry of activity on pesticide testing comes as the E.P.A.
is preparing to issue new rules that would establish standards
and protocols for programs that, in some cases, would allow
for testing of pregnant women, newborns and other children.
The Bush administration allowed tests to proceed after the Clinton
administration ended them in 1998.
The amendments also followed controversy directed at Stephen
L. Johnson, who was serving as acting director of the agency
when he was nominated this year to be its permanent director.
His Senate confirmation was delayed until he ordered an end
to a pesticide testing program in Florida that would have paid
parents for allowing tests on their children.
Only one amendment won backing from CropLife America, a trade
group that represents pesticide manufacturers.
"We're supportive of Senator Burns's approach but very
disappointed with Senator Boxer's," said the group's executive
vice president, Patrick J. Donnelly. "If Senator Boxer's
amendment is adopted, it would cripple E.P.A. programs and jeopardize
public health."
But Ms. Boxer argued that no level of risk to human health
was worth allowing tests to continue.
"The moral and ethical issues surrounding these pesticide
experiments are overwhelming," she said. "E.P.A. should
never have been considering them to begin with."
In a related initiative, House and Senate members concerned
about potential adverse health consequences of the agency's
new rules on mercury emissions from power plants introduced
resolutions that would scrap the rules and replace them with
stronger ones.
Both resolutions focus on the agency's cap-and-trade system
of emission control which allows polluting sources to sell and
trade credits. Critics of the system say it still leaves many
parts of the country with excessive amounts of pollution.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/29/AR2005062902682.html
June 30, 2005
The Washington Post
Senate Opposes Pesticide Tests on Humans
By Juliet Eilperin
By a wide margin, the Senate voted yesterday to bar the Environmental
Protection Agency from using tests exposing human subjects to
toxic chemicals when deciding whether to approve the marketing
of pesticides.
The Senate voted 60 to 37 in favor of an amendment sponsored
by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) -- which came as lawmakers
considered the EPA's annual spending bill -- that would impose
a one-year moratorium, starting Oct. 1, on using such tests.
Sixteen Republicans joined 44 Democrats in backing the measure;
the House adopted identical language in May by voice vote.
Erik Olson, senior attorney of the Natural Resources Defense
Council, an advocacy group that sued to force the EPA to regulate
high-risk pesticides, said the fact that Catholic, Lutheran
and Jewish groups all lobbied in favor of the ban cemented GOP
opposition to human testing.
"There really is an emerging new coalition that opposes
the Bush administration policy," Olson said. "This
sends a very clear, strong signal to the administration that
to continue to toe the line with the chemical industry is going
to hurt them."
It remained unclear whether Boxer's language will make it into
law as part of the EPA's final budget. By a vote of 57 to 40,
the Senate passed a measure by Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.),
who supports some human pesticide studies, that would allow
the agency to use such tests, provided they meet certain ethical
standards and their benefits outweigh the risks they pose to
volunteers.
The federal officials allowed industry to conduct such studies
for years, but recently the government has sought to limit human
pesticide testing. President Bill Clinton imposed a moratorium
in 1998 that Bush lifted during his first term, and EPA officials
now judge human pesticide studies on a case-by-case basis.
The agency has drafted regulations that would establish standards
for using tests on children, pregnant women, newborns and other
volunteers, but these rules do not include all the safeguards
recommended in a 2004 study by the National Academies of Science
that was commissioned by the administration. The EPA has yet
to finalize the regulations, which will not take effect for
several months.
Asked to comment on yesterday's vote, EPA spokeswoman Eryn
Witcher said: "We continue work on drafting the first-ever
rule to address the ethical and scientific issues surrounding
human studies."
CropLife America, which represents the country's biggest pesticide
manufacturers, issued a statement saying manufacturers are confident
that lawmakers will ultimately allow some human testing to gauge
the impact of pesticides on the environment.
"CropLife America believes that sound science and public
health protections have affirmed the safety and ethics of human
data studies," the statement read. "We look forward
to a continued dialogue with the Congress, federal regulators
and the scientific community on this important issue."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
