EPA Sued For Reapproval of Atrazine, Dangerous Herbicide Banned In Europe A Decade Ago

[appalachiablue]

EPA Sued for 'Once Again Putting Corporate Interests Over Public Health or the Environment' by Reapproving Herbicide Atrazine. "We're not going to just stand by & watch another generation get poisoned by one of the most dangerous pesticides still in use." Common Dreams, Oct. 30, 2020.

While taking aim at the Trump administration's broader pesticide agenda, a coalition of advocacy groups sued Friday over the Environmental Protection Agency's recent reauthorization of atrazine, which is one of the most widely used herbicides in the U. S. but off limits in dozens of countries due to health and safety concerns.

"If EPA were actually doing its job, this chemical would have been off the market years ago," declared Kristin Schafer, executive director of Pesticide Action Network (PAN). "The science on atrazine's harms is so clear that it's been banned in Europe for more than a decade, yet here in this country EPA is now loosening use restrictions—once again putting corporate interests over public health or the environment."



- Herbicide intensity, US, 2007.

The agency's atrazine decision last month "is part of a sweeping effort by the EPA in recent months to quickly approve numerous extremely controversial and harmful pesticides," the groups behind the lawsuit—Beyond Pesticides, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, PAN North America, and Rural Coalition—said in a joint statement.

..While EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler—a Trump appointee named in the new suit—called the final interim decision on atrazine "another example of the Trump administration taking action in support of America's farmers," advocacy groups accused the administration prioritizing corporate chemical interests over public health, wildlife, and the environment...In siding with the pesticide industry over young children, the pesticide office at the EPA has sunk to a new low," said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.

"There are few pesticides that cause this much harm at such low doses. We're not going to just stand by and watch another generation get poisoned by one of the most dangerous pesticides still in use."...

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/30/epa-sued-once-again-putting-corporate-interests-over-public-health-or-environment

- NCBI, Atrazine Exposure in Public Drinking Water and Preterm Birth, 2012
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3234399/



- A red-legged frog in a backyard pond, Washington state. The herbicide atrazine, common in the U.S. but banned many other places, is linked to hermaphroditic amphibians as well as various harmful health effects in humans.

[PSPS]

1. It is things like this that make agriculture/food trade with the EU impossible.

Compare food safety standards between the US and the EU and you will be shocked at what's in our food supply. Much of it can't be imported into the EU because it doesn't meet their safety standards. That's one reason why Boris's idea of a big trade deal with the US to compensate for the kremlin-engineered brexit is doomed.