Congress Voted NO to EPA Human Pesticide Experiments
Tue, 24 May 2005
A Major Victory!
Thank you To the members of Congress who recognized the moral issue and voted their conscience!
Human pestiticide experiments are a moral travesty–and no rationalizations can make them less odious.
Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
212-595-8974
Saturday, May 21, 2005, 01:05 A.M. Pacific
Capital Watch
Human test curbs OK’d
WASHINGTON – The House voted late Thursday to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from conducting or accepting studies that test pesticides on humans, attempting to quell a growing controversy over whether federal scientists were encouraging families to expose their young children to harmful toxins.
The Bush administration, under pressure from congressional Democrats, last month canceled an EPA study that would have paid 60 Florida families nearly $1,000 each over two years to monitor their babies’ and young children’s exposure to pesticides. The language adopted by lawmakers this week would bar agency officials from approving such a project, as well as from using data from a privately run survey conducted along similar lines.
Rep. Hilda Solis, D-Calif., who with Rep. Tim Bishop, D-N.Y., sponsored the amendment that was attached to legislation funding EPA’s 2006 budget, said she was “a little taken off guard” that the House adopted her proposal by voice vote.
“I was expecting a fight,” Solis said yesterday, adding that a coalition of religious and environmental groups had lobbied House members for the ban. “The public is on our side. … It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out morally this is not the right thing to do.”
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