April 13, 2005

Thirty-five years ago, environmentalists launched the first Earth Day on April 22 to raise consciousness about the links between the health of our planet and humankind's survival.

This year's theme, "Protect Our Children and Our Future," is particularly appropriate given the way President Bush has been running the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). That agency recently wanted to encourage poor people to spray dangerous pesticides around their babies so the EPA could study the results.

The now-cancelled study, ghoulishly named CHEERS (Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study), was going to lure low-income parents in the Jacksonville, Fla., area with $970 and a free camcorder if they allowed their infants to take part in the two-year study. For good measure, the study also planned on throwing in a free bib, T-shirt and a certificate.

The agency set the following requirements for participants: You had to live in Duval County, chosen in part because of year-round pesticide use in that buggy and muggy climate. You had to have a baby under 3 months or between 9 months to 12 months. And you had to be "spraying pesticides inside your home routinely."

Pesticides to be studied ranged from carpet cleaners to bug sprays.

The original study was interested in families with high pesticide use whose children would have enough exposure to ensure "a high proportion of both environmental and biological samples of measurable levels of pesticides," according to a letter of concern to the EPA from House members of the Committee on Science.

Given the well-known medical fact that infants are susceptible to neurological damage, it's unconscionable to encourage poor people to use pesticides around their babies.

What's worse, pesticide manufacturers were helping to bankroll the study. The American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group, was putting up $2 million of the study's budgeted $9 million.

Democrats raised a holy fit about using little babies as chemical guinea pigs. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., called the program "appalling, unethical and immoral." She said that until it was cancelled, she would do whatever she could to hold up President Bush's nomination of Stephen Johnson to head the EPA.

Rep. Corrine Brown, a Democrat from the Jacksonville area, called the study "Tuskegee-like" -- a reference to the infamous study of black men who went untreated for syphilis in the 1930s so the disease could be studied.

The Bush administration may not be too ethically or scientifically astute, but it knows politics. Within days, the study was history. Today, the EPA Web site on CHEERS notes, "This study was cancelled April 8, 2005."

There's a reason that pesticides carry warning labels that they be stored in separate containers, kept away from children and used with extreme caution. One would think the EPA would be better off spending $9 million warning parents of the extreme toxicity of many household pesticides instead of paying parents to expose their children to them.

The CHEERS study is only one example of an administration that unabashedly places profits ahead of people.

This Earth Day, do yourself and our planet a favor: Educate yourself about one of the many environmental issues crying out for attention. Then, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential the action, do something. Write a letter. Make a donation. Volunteer.

Our government is asleep at the switch when it comes to protecting us, and so we had best learn to protect ourselves.

Barbara Miner is a Milwaukee-based writer. She can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.