Meghan Purvis, from CALPIRG’s federal lobbying office, is working to stop the Bush administration from using human-subject pesticide tests to weaken public health standards.

CALPIRG To EPA: Stop Human Pesticide Tests
Under heavy pressure from the pesticide industry, the Bush administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants to permanently reverse a Clinton-era ban on the use of human-subject pesticide tests when setting public health standards.

The pesticide manufacturing industry is pushing for the change, hoping to use data from human-subject tests in efforts to weaken public health standards.

“It’s outrageous enough that pesticide companies get away with testing their toxic products on humans,” said CALPIRG’s Emily Clayton. “The idea that EPA would use these unethical and scientifically questionable tests to weaken public health standards is simply unacceptable.”

Testing Ban May Be Reversed
While the Clinton administration banned EPA from using human-subject pesticide tests, the debate resumed in 2003, when the industry won a court battle against a technical aspect of the ban’s implementation.

Over the summer of 2005, Congress ordered a one-year moratorium on human-subject pesticide tests, while demanding that EPA establish rules strictly governing the conduct of any future tests.

Congress mandated that the rules categorically ban all testing on pregnant women and children and insisted that the rules force any future tests to comply with existing ethical guidelines.

In September, EPA issued its first draft of the new rules. The draft rules failed to meet even the minimum demands of the congressional mandate. They not only failed to categorically ban testing on children and pregnant women, but they also left loopholes that could encourage human-subject pesticide testing.

“These rules simply aren’t protective of human health,” said Clayton. “They leave loopholes big enough to fly a crop-duster through while pretending to fix the problems with these dangerous experiments.”

In addition to their failure to protect vulnerable populations including children, pregnant women and those unable to give informed consent, the proposed regulations have three gaping flaws that undercut their force from the outset.

First, they only require that tests “substantially comply” with the regulations, thus encouraging companies to cut corners from the outset. Second, they require tests to meet the regulations only if companies plan to submit the tests to EPA. Companies can do an end-run around ethical requirements by simply claiming that their unethical tests weren’t originally intended for EPA use. Finally, industry is allowed to subvert all the rules by simply shipping their tests outside the United States.

Congresswoman Hilda Solis (CA), author of the year-long moratorium, recently highlighted what’s at stake with the new EPA rules; “The U.S. government is for the first time proposing a rule that authorizes the testing of pesticides on human subjects. This decision should not be one that comes without serious consideration of first and foremost the morality of testing on humans and how to protect the health of all involved, especially our nation’s most vulnerable populations.”

During the public comment period on the proposed EPA rules, CALPIRG worked with a coalition of consumer, environmental and community groups to submit thousands of public comments expressing consumer disapproval of the proposed guidelines. The public comments are being taken under consideration by EPA officials before a final rule is adopted this winter.