Without explaining why, the E.P.A. has sidelined its top children’s health advocate

Last week, the leadership of the Environmental Protection Agency took aim at its own Office of Children’s Health Protection by placing its director, Dr. Ruth Etzel, a distinguished pediatrician and epidemiologist, on “administrative leave.”

At first glance, the action might look like mere bureaucratic shuffling, though the agency, while saying she was not facing disciplinary action, offered no explanation for the move.

But we worry that it signals one of two actions: closing the office, which has argued for tougher regulations on industrial pollutants, or minimizing its role in rule-making. For its part, the E.P.A. says children’s health programs are not in jeopardy. But there is no question that if Dr. Etzel is pushed aside, the chemical industry will benefit and America’s children will be harmed.

In 1993, the National Academy of Sciences reported that children and especially infants in the womb are profoundly different from adults in how they are harmed by exposure to pesticides and other chemicals. The academy’s Committee on Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children, of which one of us (Dr. Landrigan) was chairman, concluded that children are not merely little adults. They are uniquely sensitive and keeping them healthy requires special protections... (continues)