The Environmental Protection Agency has defended its decision to fund university experiments that tested deadly air pollutants on children, saying the studies were approved by review boards and were stopped after the agency banned the practice in 2006.

“When these regulatory restrictions went into effect in 2006, the studies in question stopped enrolling children,” an EPA spokeswoman told The Daily Caller News Foundation when asked about tests occurring after the 2006 ban.

But the Washington Examiner looked into the issue and found that universities funded by EPA grants continued to expose children to diesel exhaust particles after the agency banned such experiments.

“In the next year, we intend to continue recruitment of adults and children,” researchers with two southern California universities told the EPA in a progress report covering 2006 and 2007 activities.

The EPA did not respond to either the Examiner or TheDCNF when asked further about the progress report contradicting their claims.

Last week, TheDCNF broke the news that the EPA had funded research that exposed children aged 10 to 15 to diesel exhaust particles without disclosing the full range of risks to the subjects. Records of the studies were released by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.

The EPA gave researchers with the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Southern California a grant to test the effects of air pollution on children. The EPA and the National Institutes of Health both fund a center at UCLA that studies the affects of pollution on health. The study lasted from 2003 to 2010 and involved at least 20 kids.

But the EPA and the California Air Resources Board both say that diesel exhaust is a deadly air pollutant with no safe level of exposure. CARB found in 1998 that based “on available scientific information” a “level of diesel exhaust exposure below which no carcinogenic effects are anticipated has not been identified.”

Diesel is mostly made up of fine particulate matter, a substance called PM2.5. The EPA says that there is no safe level of exposure to PM2.5, despite testing it on children and the elderly.

“Particulate matter causes premature death. It doesn’t make you sick. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should,” former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson told Congress on Sept. 22, 2011.

“If we could reduce particulate matter to healthy levels, it would have the same impact as finding a cure for cancer in our country,” Jackson added.

A 2003 EPA document warns that short-term exposure to PM can cause heart attacks and arrhythmias for people with heart disease. The document says long-term exposure can cause reduced lung function and even death. A EPA 2006 review warns that short-term PM exposure can cause “mortality and morbidity.”

“When buses idle in the schoolyard, the exhaust also can pollute the air inside the school building and pose a health risk to children throughout the day. Numerous scientific studies indicate that exposure to diesel exhaust can cause lung damage, respiratory problems, premature death, and lung cancer,” according to the EPA.

But certainly there’s a better way to make these conclusions without experimentally exposing kids to chemicals.