By TIM ALEXANDER
Illinois Correspondent

GREENSBORO, N.C. — As anti-atrazine activist-scientist Tyrone Hayes continues his lecture tour of universities and other forums across the United States, Syngenta representatives maintain that thousands of previous and current studies on the popular herbicide stand as testimony to the product’s safety.

With the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reexamining the safety and health effects of atrazine, Hayes has released the results of a new study he conducted on its effects on frogs, online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
His study purports that male frogs exposed to atrazine mate with other males and lay viable eggs due to the estrogen contained in atrazine. As an endocrine disruptor, atrazine can be linked to low birth weight, birth defects, breast cancer and prostrate cancer in humans, according to Hayes.

During Hayes’ March 18 lecture at Illinois State University in Normal, he claimed that current safe levels set by the EPA regarding the amount of atrazine that can be present in drinking water are too high.

The Harvard-educated Hayes, who graduated with a major in evolutionary biology and earned a Ph.D. at the age of 24, said earlier research he conducted that was unfavorable to atrazine – also using frogs as subjects – was shoved aside by Syngenta and an EPA that was “hijacked” by the Bush administration.

“Levels established by the EPA as safe are not safe,” Hayes told the Peoria Journal Star prior to his lecture in Normal. “We also know more about how many water systems are contaminated with atrazine above EPA safe levels.

“The EPA was hijacked by the last administration. I hope we have a different ruling with this EPA. If not now, it will never happen.”
Hayes’ original study on atrazine effects on frog sexual reproduction was funded by Syngenta, and when he presented his findings, he said the company attempted to change or suppress the study. “I found negative effects of atrazine, and they tried to manipulate my data and offered me more money. I quit,” he was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

“This is not only a disingenuous statement but it is inaccurate and misleading,” fired back Syngenta principal scientist Dr. Tim Pastoor. “None of (Hayes’) research has ever been suppressed by anyone. What he has published and presented to EPA is research that has never been validated – in fact, EPA discarded his work.”

Though the EPA rejected Hayes’ study as flawed, his findings regarding atrazine’s effect on frogs were noted and another Syngenta-funded, EPA-audited study was done in order to explore the issue.

“EPA was part of constructing the protocol as to how the (subsequent) study would be conducted, they audited the study and they had access to all of the raw data; that way, EPA could build the study back up and draw their own conclusions,” said Pastoor, who has worked as a toxicologist for nearly 30 years and has published several research papers of his own.

“That study was clearly the biggest frog study done anywhere. The protocol was done by two laboratories – one in Berlin and one in the U.S. – that had no communication with each other.

“Frogs were studied from tadpole to full development, and were exposed to four varying levels of atrazine concentration up to 100 parts per billion in their water. At the end of the study the two laboratories came up with exactly the same results. They found that atrazine had absolutely no effect on frog sexual development, and the EPA published its conclusion in 2007 that no further study is warranted – they closed the book on it,” he said.

That information is not routinely included in Hayes’ lectures, according to Pastoor. “Hayes never refers to this particular study because it contradicts everything he’s talking about. Or, he’ll counter with the fact that it was Syngenta-funded,” he said. “Well, this study was so heavily audited by the EPA that if you were to do your taxes the same way, it would be like having five IRS agents standing in the room watching you fill out your tax forms.

“It’s an airtight study, and he knows that. He’s very threatened by (the study) because it undermines the spectacular and unverifiable sorts of statements he’s been making.”

A just-released, independent study taken on by the state of Minnesota has verified the results of the EPA’s twin studies on atrazine and frog sexual reproduction, Pastoor added (see related article).

Hayes’ recently-released PNAS study on frogs and atrazine has raised the collective eyebrow of Syngenta’s scientific team. Their skepticism is explained in a recent company position paper on the topic forwarded to Farm World by Steven Goldsmith, a spokesman for Syngenta. Questions remain about the integrity of the study’s experimental design, the paper explains:

“The (PNAS) study has many shortcomings that undercut its usefulness, including the inconsistency with prior findings by the author. Two other in particular are: 1) the use of only one dose level of atrazine, when almost all studies used to assess the effects of substances for regulatory purposes are conducted at more than one concentration to validate when and if a predicted response happens consistently and 2) the failure to use a positive control – a basic requirement of this kind of study. Positive controls confirm that the procedure is competent in observing the effect.”

With some 6,000 studies of atrazine on the books, the substance is “the best-studied herbicide ever created, and maybe one of the best-studied molecules on the planet,” Pastoor said. “Farmers are emphatic in their desire to have such a versatile, inexpensive product available and are concerned that with all of the publicity atrazine is getting, that Syngenta might step away from (continued atrazine production). We’re not going to do that.”

The cost to farmers if atrazine was pulled from shelves would amount to around $28 per acre in lost yields and substitutes, the EPA estimates, with a total negative impact on U.S. agriculture of more than $2 billion per year.