On March 5 and 6, 2004, the CEHN held a “Workshop on Ethical Issues in Children’s Environmental Health Research.” Five leaders in the field were asked to submit papers outlining the issues of:
- Research in pediatric environmental health (Bruce Lanphear),
- Ethical Issues Unique to Children in environmental health research (Maura Ryan),
- Community involvement (Peggy Shepard),
- Relationship with industry and other funders (Richard Sharp), and
- Privacy (Celia Fisher).
Workshops were held discussing these 5 areas. During 2005-2006, Six individual manuscripts combining the initial papers with input from the conference have been developed under the guidance of Cynthia Bearer, MD, PhD. These have been accepted for publication as a mini monograph in Environmental Health Perspectives in October 2006. They are now available on the EHP webpage.
- An Exploration of Ethical Issues in Research in Children’s Health and the Environment by Jerome Paulson
- Trials and Tribulations Of Protecting Children From Environmental Hazards by Bruce P. Lanphear, Jerome Paulson, and Sandra Beirne
- The Politics of Risk: A Human Rights Paradigm for Research in Children’s Environmental Health by Maura A. Ryan
- Privacy and Ethics in Pediatric Environmental Health Research -Part I: Genetic and Prenatal Testing by Celia B. Fisher
- Privacy and Ethics in Pediatric Environmental Health Research -Part II: Protecting Families and Communities by Celia B. Fisher
- Supplementing the Traditional IRB with a Environmental Health & Community Review Board by Steven G. Gilbert.
We thank the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the NIEHS Superfund Basic Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, for their support for this effort. We thank Jerry Paulson and Cynthia Bearer for their guidance and support in bringing this project to fruition.
For related publications, see:
- Ambulatory Pediatrics Statement on "Ensuring Integrity for Research With Children"
- National Research Council report "Ethical Considerations for Research on Housing-Related Health Hazards Involving Children", 2005,
- National Research Council report "Intentional Human Dosing Studies for EPA Regulatory Purposes: Scientific and Ethical Issues", 2004
- Christopher Oleskey, Alan Fleischman, Lynn Goldman, Kurt Hirschhorn, Philip J. Landrigan, Marc Lappé, Mary Faith Marshall, Herbert Needleman, Rosamond Rhodes, and Michael McCally. "Pesticide Testing in Humans: Ethics and Public Policy", Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 112, Number 8, June 2004.
