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AJPH First Look, published online ahead of print Jul 31, 2007
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September 2007, Vol 97, No. 9 | American Journal of Public Health 1547-1554
© 2007 American Public Health Association
DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2006.094813

HEALTH POLICY AND ETHICS

Improving Disclosure and Consent: "Is It Safe?": New Ethics for Reporting Personal Exposures to Environmental Chemicals

Julia Green Brody, PhD, Rachel Morello-Frosch, PhD, MPH, Phil Brown, PhD, Ruthann A. Rudel, MS, Rebecca Gasior Altman, MA, Margaret Frye, BA, Cheryl A. Osimo, BS, Carla Pérez, BS and Liesel M. Seryak, BS

At the time of the study, Julia Green Brody, Ruthann A. Rudel, Cheryl A. Osimo, and Liesel M. Seryak were with the Silent Spring Institute, Newton, Mass. Rachel Morello-Frosch, Phil Brown, Rebecca Gasior Altman, and Margaret Frye were with Brown University, Providence, RI. Carla Pérez was with Communities for a Better Environment in Oakland, Calif.

Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Julia Green Brody, Silent Spring Institute, 29 Crafts Street, Newton, MA 02458 (e-mail: brody{at}silentspring.org).

The recent flood of research concerning pollutants in personal environmental and biological samples—blood, urine, breastmilk, household dust and air, umbilical cord blood, and other media—raises questions about whether and how to report results to individual study participants.

Clinical medicine provides an expert-driven framework, whereas community-based participatory research emphasizes participants’ right to know and the potential to inform action even when health effects are uncertain. Activist efforts offer other models.

We consider ethical issues involved in the decision to report individual results in exposure studies and what information should be included. Our discussion is informed by our experience with 120 women in a study of 89 pollutants in homes and by interviews with other researchers and institutional review board staff.






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Copyright © 2007 by the American Public Health Association