In fact, Johnson is expanding the use of human pesticide dosing studies by EPA. While CHEERS (which stands for Childrens Environmental Exposure Research Study) will not proceed with EPA funding, the same study can take place with private sponsors. In fact, the American Chemistry Council, representing 135 companies including pesticide makers, already pledged $2 million toward the studys $9 million overall cost.
The reason Stephen Johnson clung so stubbornly to CHEERS is that it serves as a model for industry on how to conduct similar experiments for submissions to EPA. The pesticide industry has been pressing the Bush Administration to liberalize rules on human testing of pesticides and other chemicals since the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act. That Act set ten-fold stricter exposure standards for children absent reliable data showing no harm. Industry needs actual human experimental data to trump animal studies in order to justify relaxed exposure limits.
This policy is open for public comment until May 9. Please take a few moments to email a comment to EPA officials and go on record against human testing without safeguards at EPA.
The basic problem is this: human studies to see whether a drug can help its experimental subjects have far more ethical and safety protections than EPA studies to determine whether a chemical harms its subjects. Unless EPA adopts basic safeguards before it accepts human dosing experiments for regulatory purposes, the CHEERS fiasco will replay itself in other studies under other acronyms.