We don't know the impact of some chemicals on our health

What would you do for $970, some free clothes and a camcorder? Better yet, how willing would you be to expose your infant to pesticides and other household chemicals in exchange for the cash and freebies?

This wasn't the premise for a new reality show. Rather, it was one of the unsettling flaws in a proposed $9 million study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to assess how pesticide and chemical exposure affect children's health.

The EPA's study design could have left children of low-income families in Duval County, Fla., vulnerable to chemical exposure for two years while government scientists looked on. Making matters worse, the EPA agreed to accept $2 million for the study from the American Chemistry Council, a chemical industry lobbying group.

Last week, the EPA wisely changed course and shelved the project pending further review. Sadly, what has gone largely without comment amid the controversy surrounding the EPA's children-and-pesticide study is the lingering fact that, as a society, we routinely ignore the impacts of environmental hazards on young children and developing fetuses.

The extent of this neglect hit home this past week when I walked into my own apartment. My wife and I rent an enclosed wing of a larger house owned and occupied by our landlord.

When I walked in the door Wednesday evening, I had the odd feeling that I had just returned from swim practice - which was strange, because I haven't actually been on a swim team for about 20 years. As I was sniffing my way into the apartment, trying to figure out why I was flashing back to laps of freestyle and flip turns, my wife - all five pregnant months of her - came charging down the stairs blustering, "Chlorine! They sprayed the entire house with chlorine!"

It was true. A guy with a pressure hose attached to a tank of bleach solution had doused the place for two hours earlier in the day, leaving the ugly siding shiny and bright and drenching the air inside and out with chlorine vapor.

Did that make our place toxic to the two of us? To junior in utero? I don't know, but that points to the problem at hand. It's not just that I don't know, but that it's essentially impossible for me to find out. Even the EPA doesn't seem to know - its Air Toxics Web site notes, "No information is available on the carcinogenic effects of chlorine in humans from inhalation exposure."

According to "Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood," by Sandra Steingraber, even where regulations do exist to set limits on exposure to pesticides, solvents and chlorination by-products, none of these thresholds has been tested to ensure fetal safety.

In other words, some of the information that the EPA hoped to gather with its suspended study is vitally important. The agency just needs to figure out how to approach the project more responsibly and ethically.

We already know that many chemicals impact mothers very differently than they do fetuses, and that inconsequential doses for adults can be disastrous to infants or embryos.

Unfortunately, time and again we have failed to act on this knowledge in a precautionary manner, instead waiting to regulate only after being confronted with widespread birth defects or deaths.

In the late 1950s, most notoriously, thalidomide worked wonderfully to calm morning sickness in pregnant women. But it also deformed embryonic arms and legs - sometimes causing them to resemble small flippers - and caused miscarriages and stillbirths.

Thalidomide-related birth defects were so dramatic that the drug was pulled from international markets by 1961, even though it would take 30 years for scientists to figure out just what the mechanism was behind the defects.

Unfortunately, we continue to be less cautious with a host of other chemicals, from the herbicides we routinely spray on our perfect lawns to the pesticides we ingest with every bunch of lettuce. We need to do better, and it's worth highlighting a few points here to suggest that we can.

First, we should salute the EPA scientists who had the courage to come forward and challenge their own agency's faulty plans. Next, we have shown the ability to respond to scientific data to protect fetal health - witness the efforts to warn pregnant women against smoking or drinking. Finally, we should be resourceful enough not only to design a better EPA study, but also to develop safe, effective alternatives to pesticides and household chemicals.

With or without the camcorder, we ought to understand the lasting impacts of these chemicals that saturate our lives.

Contact David Havlick at havlick@email.unc.edu.