The Maryland NAACP questioned last night the methods used in a government-funded study in which fertilizer made from treated human and industrial waste was put on lawns of East Baltimore rowhouses.
"We don't want to do this kind of work at the expense of turning our children into guinea pigs," Marvin L. "Doc" Cheatham Sr., president of the Baltimore chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said at a news conference.
The study, conducted by researchers from the Kennedy Krieger Institute and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, involved spreading compost, made from human and industrial wastes, on nine yards in a predominantly poor black neighborhood in East Baltimore to see whether it reduced the risks of exposure to lead in the soil.
The compost was applied, and participants in the study were given food coupons as an incentive.
At the news conference at an Upton church, other speakers said Hopkins officials have been reluc- tant to come forward with details of the study, including the specific neighborhood where the study was conducted and the names of the residents affected.
"Why did they pick this area? Why are the poor always being picked on for these kinds of tests? We just need more information," said Michael Eugene Johnson, state director of the Black United Fund.
The news conference also included Gerald Stansbury, state president of the NAACP, and Sen. Nathaniel J. McFadden, whose district includes the area where the study was conducted.
Stansbury questioned why researchers used a residential neighborhood. "Why didn't they just perform the test in a sandbox or a laboratory?" he asked.
Stansbury asked that anyone who lived at properties where the study was conducted call his office or e-mail him.
The study has turned into a public relations nightmare for the institutions. The problems began with an Associated Press article published last week in The Sun and elsewhere, and led to criminal investigations and U.S. Senate hearings.
In response, officials at Kennedy Krieger and the Bloomberg school released a five-page description of the study this week, made the schools' top administrators available to the news media, and discussed the launch of advertising and lobbying campaigns to promote their case to the public.
