Posted on Thu, Oct. 8, 2009
WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday that it would reevaluate the health effects of a popular weed killer that has been found in drinking-water supplies.
The EPA will take another look at the science on atrazine, an herbicide commonly used on corn and other crops, and decide whether further restrictions are needed to protect human health. Research has shown that runoff after rainstorms can wash the chemical into streams and rivers, where it can enter water supplies.
EPA monitoring of 150 drinking-water systems in the Midwest, where the chemical is most heavily used, has not detected it at concentrations that would trigger health problems, including cancer. But new studies have shown that even at low levels atrazine in drinking water can cause low birth weights, birth defects, and reproductive problems.
In 2003, under the Bush administration, the EPA allowed atrazine to continue to be used with few restrictions.
Environmentalists said they hoped the review would lead to the chemical's being phased out.
"The hope is that they will decide at the end of the day that they should be regulating it more stringently, or they will just take it off the market," said Mae Wu, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which sued the EPA in 2003, accusing it of failing to adequately evaluate atrazine's effects on endangered species.
More recently, operators of drinking-water systems in six Midwestern states sued manufacturers, seeking reimbursement for the cost of removing the chemical from their water supplies.
The Swiss company Syngenta, the largest maker of atrazine, introduced the chemical in 1958 and said yesterday it stood behind the herbicide's safety. It is likely that no other herbicide has been so closely studied, Syngenta spokeswoman Sherry Ford said.
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