By TIM ALEXANDER
Illinois Correspondent

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As activists and trial attorneys ramp up efforts to eliminate atrazine as an herbicide option for farmers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced it is about to launch a comprehensive new evaluation of the chemical to determine its cancerous and non-cancerous effects on humans.

The EPA will hold a “kickoff meeting” Nov. 3 to pave the way for a possible reevaluation of atrazine by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) Scientific Advisory Panel, the agency announced earlier this month. An EPA spokesperson said the new evaluation will examine atrazine’s potential association with birth defects, low birth weight and premature birth and its purported link to cancer in humans.

“One of (EPA) Administrator Jackson’s top priorities is to improve the way EPA manages and assesses the risk of chemicals, including pesticides, and as part of that effort, we are taking a hard look at the decision made by the previous administration on atrazine,” said Steve Owens of the EPA’s Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances.

“Our examination of atrazine will be based on transparency and sound science, including independent scientific peer review, and will help determine whether a change in EPA’s regulatory position on this pesticide (sic) is appropriate.”

The EPA’s announcement comes on the heels of a coordinated media push against atrazine coinciding with both a negative report from the Natural Resources Defense Council and a class-action lawsuit filed in Madison County, Ill., seeking to disallow any measurable traces of the chemical from municipal drinking water supplies.

The lawsuit further asks manufacturers of atrazine, such as Syngenta, to reimburse water districts for the cost of removing the chemical from water supplies.

Results of the anticipated year-long EPA study – which will utilize animal toxicology and epidemiology studies – will be presented in September 2010 and will include the most recent results from the National Cancer Institute’s Agricultural Health Study, also scheduled for release next year.

At the conclusion of the study of atrazine consumption by humans, the EPA will ask the independent Scientific Advisory Panel, established under FIFRA, to review atrazine’s potential effects on amphibians and aquatic ecosystems.

Farmers brace for battle

Farmers from five states traveled to Missouri on Sept. 29 to meet with executives from Syngenta Crop Protection to discuss the importance of atrazine to their operations and how to repel the attack on atrazine use by press, trial attorneys, activists and now, apparently, the EPA.

A roundtable meeting was held at the office of the National Corn Growers Assoc. (NCGA) in Chesterfield, followed by an informal meeting at a farm in nearby Warrenton.

During their meeting at NCGA headquarters, Syngenta executives reaffirmed their commitment to defending the use of atrazine. Among the farmers making the trip to Missouri was Ken McCauley, past president of NCGA and a current member of the Kansas Corn Checkoff Board. McCauley sat on an EPA-led scientific panel studying atrazine earlier this year.

“We feel that science will prevail, again. We’ve answered these questions, and we’re not scared of what EPA will find,” McCauley said last week.

He was referring to a host of studies conducted on the safety of atrazine in the past 15 years, which have shown the chemical’s effect on humans – when used properly – to be negligible to nonexistent.

“We just hope that the EPA’s questions are sincere, and not (biased) to just totally get rid of a good product. There still isn’t any (municipal) water supply over the threshold of the law, and atrazine is still a safe product,” McCauley said.

Like many farmers and agricultural commodity organization officials, he senses the recent storm of attacks on atrazine, and agricultural production in general, could be part of a coordinated movement against the industry.

“I think it’s an organized effort, and I probably won’t go any further than that,” he said. “It sure looks like the attack is coming from all sides, and I think that’s really unfortunate. For a product that has as much data on it – everything is known about atrazine – why we’re doing this again is really unfortunate.”

Economical and environmental benefits

Atrazine is used by many farmers to enhance other herbicides used on the farm, including McCauley’s.

“It’s the most economical herbicide we have at our disposal for weed control. The other thing about it is that all of the new herbicides out there are much more effective when used in combination with atrazine; it’s part of the total herbicide program used on almost every farm today,” he explained.

Jean Payne, president of the Illinois Chemical and Fertilizer Assoc., said atrazine’s effectiveness in controlling grasses makes it possible for farmers to practice no-till, further reducing the chances for chemical runoff from fields that could enter the water supply.
In a July 2009 update regarding a recent atrazine study the EPA entered into with Syngenta, the agency acknowledged that because of no-till planting, which many growers say is possible only thanks to atrazine, land use is down 37 percent and soil loss has been reduced by 69 percent for every acre of corn planted, compared to corn produced in 1987.

The update also acknowledged that none of the more than 100 municipal drinking water sites in the United States that were tested by the EPA showed traces of atrazine that were above federal guidelines for safe consumption.

In April 2010, the EPA will present and seek peer review of its evaluation of atrazine cancerous and non-cancerous effects based on animal laboratory toxicology studies, selection of safety factors in the risk assessment and the sampling design currently used to monitor drinking water in community water systems.