WASHINGTON, D.C. — Last week the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it is taking comments on a petition brought by an advocacy group to have the insecticide atrazine banned.

The announcement was made in the Federal Register Sept. 14. It’s just the latest chapter in the story of this insecticide, which has been a mainstay for corn growers for decades. The advocacy group Save the Frogs made the petition several months ago.

Petitions are another way stakeholders have of making their voices heard as chemicals go through the EPA’s evaluation process. Kerry Kriger, executive director of Save the Frogs, said the purpose was not to raise awareness of the atrazine issue, but he said raising awareness is key to getting atrazine banned.

“The large agro-chemical companies like Syngenta have billions of dollars at stake and the companies they employ to do their lobbying have been very effective at ensuring that atrazine stays legal, even though an abundance of scientific (evidence) demonstrates its harmful effects on humans and wildlife,” Kriger said.

He said the petition requests atrazine be banned in the United States, as it has been by the European Union. He also said the people who should be most worried about atrazine are those who live in rural areas and farm workers, who are the ones exposed to it on a regular basis.

Kriger also questions the effectiveness of atrazine, stating both Italy and Germany produce more corn now than they did before they banned atrazine in 1991. “There is no reason for farmers or the U.S. EPA to put economics ahead of human and wildlife health,” he said.

Kriger went on to say people shouldn’t buy Syngenta’s product, in part because it’s a foreign company; he opined Americans should buy more American-made products and ought to “go organic” whenever possible

Anyone wishing to comment on the petition must do so by Nov. 14. For details on how to do so, visit www.epa.gov/oppfead1/cb/csb_page/updates/2011/atrazine.html

In another matter involving Syngenta and atrazine, the company is still in the middle of fighting several lawsuits from municipal water providers seeking money to reimburse them for expenses they say they incurred while filtering atrazine out of their water supplies. The lawsuits involve communities in Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.

One of the cases, Holiday Shores v. Syngenta, was filed in 2004 in Illinois. That is a state case, according to Chris Robling, a spokesman for Syngenta.

A number of other communities are involved in that suit, which is “styled as a class action, but no class action has ever been certified,” Robling said. “We’re in the middle of a lot of wrangling about a lot of issues going back and forth.”

Questions in the case include: Did the cities have to buy additional filtration devices in order to get the amount of atrazine in the water to be no higher than the maximum allowed by the EPA, or did they make up their own more stringent standards?

The federal lawsuit was filed about 18 months ago; that one is called Greenville, Ill. v. Syngenta. Although nothing of substance has been ruled upon in that case in months, there is a tentative court date of September 2012.