Atrazine Controversy Swirls
From Delta FARM PRESS:
As U.S. growers wrap up planting an estimated 90 million acres of corn this spring, there’s a good chance many of those acres have something in common besides seed corn – an application of atrazine.
Discovered more than 50 years ago, 2-chloro-4-(ethylamine)-6-isopropylamine)-s-triazine or atrazine has become one of the most commonly used herbicides in the world. According to some counts, U.S. farmers apply around 76 million pounds a year.
But those applications could be in jeopardy if such as the Natural Resources Defense Council succeed in their efforts to persuade EPA to phase out all uses of the product in the United States, including gardens and golf courses.
In a recent report entitled, “Still Poisoning the Well,” the NRDC repeated its claims that atrazine is responsible for pervasive contamination of watersheds and drinking water systems across the Midwest and Southern United States. The NRDC claims “thousands of drinking water systems may be unknowingly contaminated with atrazine.”
Representatives of Syngenta, the basic manufacturer of atrazine, have heard it all before. Some of them seem resigned to the fact they will have spent much of their careers defending the safety of atrazine…
Please click here to read this article in full at deltafarmpress.com.
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