H.R. 1592 amounts to an effective repeal of the landmark children’s health protections of the unanimously passed Food Quality Protection Act of 1996. If enacted, the "Regulatory Fairness and Openness Act" would:

• Prohibit EPA from taking any action to protect children from pesticides without first publishing a detailed report on all the assumptions, models, and information being developed, or that could be obtained, relevant to the pesticide (section 4 (c)). Section 5 (c) (1) of the bill then prohibits all decisions to protect children ("action to restrict a pesticide") based on these assumptions and models.

• Codify a double standard where new pesticides, or decisions to allow more exposure to existing pesticides, regardless of risks, are exempt from the Section 4 and 5 requirements described above.

• Prohibit the EPA from using extra safety factors to protect children. The Food Quality Protection Act requires additional safety margins to protect children unless the EPA has information showing that they are not needed. HR 1592, in contrast, prohibits the use of children’s safety factors if EPA "could have" requested information that might have shown that the safety factor was not needed. In effect, industry could use the absence of data as grounds to avoid restrictions on their products.

• Provide pesticide manufacturers with nearly infinite opportunities to delay EPA action to protect children from pesticides. In the words of the EPA in opposing the bill: "It (HR 1592) potentially provides interested parties with unlimited time to submit additional data before tolerance reassessment decisions could proceed." (Letter to Larry Combest, Chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, from EPA Associate Administrator Diane E. Thompson. August 13, 1999).

• Create a huge loophole through which pesticides could be put on the market for so-called "emergency" uses with no assessment of their health risks to children. Under the current EPA emergency exemption program some pesticides have been used for the same emergency for nearly a decade. HR 1592 would eliminate the cursory health review currently applied to these uses, allowing pesticides on important children’s foods for years at a time with no review of their health risks.