Pesticide Found at Unsafe Levels in Drinking Water

In 26 of 28 towns, the Environmental Protection Agency found atrazine levels in drinking water in excess of the agency's strictest safety threshold. Atrazine, used to kill weeds from cornfields in the Midwest and lawns in the Southeast, has been linked in studies to cancer in humans and to deformities in frogs that caused them to grow both testes and ovaries. As EPA attempts to write new rules for Atrazine, Natural Resources Defense Council is petitioning the Agency to ban the chemical, and factory workers have sued the manufacturer, Syngenta AG of Switzerland, claiming they got prostate cancer from workplace exposures to it.

Source: John Cushman, Jr., The New York Times, Sunday, June 2, 2002, p.28.

To support a ban on Atrazine, go to www.nrdcaction.org.