COLLEGE KIDS $$$ TO EAT PESTICIDE

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April 22, 2002 from Time Magazine entitled: Poisoning for Dollars.

From The April 22, 2002 Issue Of Time Magazine; Posted Sunday, April 14, 2002

Ever been so strapped for cash that you'd swallow pesticide for $460? That's

what dozens of college-age Nebraskans did in 1998 after reading a

school-newspaper ad urging students to " earn extra money. " They called

402-474-PAYS, signed a seven-page consent form and popped a pill loaded with

the active ingredient in Raid roach spray. Dow AgroSciences commissioned the

trial to vouch for the safety of one of its top-selling bug killers,

chlorpyrifos...

<http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020422/poisons.html>

Poisoning for Dollars

By <mailto:daily@...> Rawe

Ever been so strapped for cash that you'd swallow pesticide for $460? That's

what dozens of college-age Nebraskans did in 1998 after reading a

school-newspaper ad urging students to " earn extra money. " They called

402-474-PAYS, signed a seven-page consent form and popped

a pill loaded with the active ingredient in Raid roach spray. Dow

AgroSciences commissioned the trial to vouch for the safety of one of its

top-selling bug killers, chlorpyrifos.

Clearly, clinical trials are not just for doctors anymore. Chemical companies

like Dow got into the business after Congress passed the 1996 Food Quality

Protection Act, which tightened safety standards on thousands of pesticides.

The manufacturers responded by unleashing a flurry of small, short-term

clinical trials aimed at persuading the Environmental Protection Agency to

relax the rules that govern exposure to toxic chemicals.

At issue is the roundabout way that the EPA assesses human risk. Basically,

it sets acceptable exposure levels for humans by determining the lowest level

that is harmful to lab animals and then

reducing that amount by a series of extrapolating factors. Chemical

manufacturers have complained loudly that these standards are largely

arbitrary. It was in order to establish more realistic levels that

they began launching a slew of clinical trials.

Since 1997 pesticide makers have submitted more than a dozen human studies to

the EPA. What has never been established, however, is whether it is

acceptable-legally or ethically-to conduct clinical

trials that offer no potential benefit to participants (other than monetary

gain) and could end up harming individuals in the name of public health. In

December the EPA declared a moratorium on the use of such data and asked the

National Academy of Sciences to tell the agency whether it should accept

research that deliberately exposes people to toxic substances. " Are there

clear boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable human research? " asked

EPA assistant administrator . The academy is mulling over the

question.

Meanwhile, chemical companies could still be quietly conducting human trials.

" There's no telling because there's no system for tracking studies that

aren't federally funded, " says Ken Cook, president of the Environmental

Working Group, which opposes the pesticide tests. " There's no protocol on how

they should be conducted. We're talking about the wild, wild West here. "

The studies usually surface only when they are submitted to the EPA-or when

they are leaked to the press. A year and a half ago, newspapers in California

reported that researchers there were paying

healthy volunteers $1,000 to complete a six-month regimen of perchlorate, a

rocket- fuel component that disrupts thyroid function and may cause

retardation in babies. Lockheed funded the study after some 800

lawsuits charged that the company leaked perchlorate into the water supply

and made people sick.

And what ever came of Dow's experiments on chlorpyrifos, the killer

ingredient used in Raid and hundreds of other bug sprays and lawn-care

products? The EPA ended up banning household use of the insecticide, a

nerve-gas derivative found to cause brain damage in fetal rats and weakness

and vomiting in children.