CHICAGO, Illinois, August 25, 2009 (ENS) – The common herbicide atrazine, known to impact wildlife reproductive health, has contaminated watersheds and drinking water throughout much of the United States, finds a new report released Monday by the Natural Resources Defense Council that raises concern about the chemical’s effects on human reproduction. The environmental nonprofit organization alleges that the U.S. EPA is ignoring its own data showing broad contamination of U.S. waters by atrazine, a known endocrine disruptor that affects human and animal hormones. “The extent of contamination we found in the data was breathtaking and alarming,” said Andrew Wetzler, director of NRDC’s Wildlife Conservation Program and deputy director of NRDC’s Midwest Program, as well as one of the report’s authors. “The EPA found atrazine almost everywhere they looked.” The contamination data in the report was obtained as the result of a legal settlement and Freedom of Information Act requests, the NRDC said. “I think that the public will find this hard to swallow and I hope it will help force the EPA to address the situation more aggressively,” said Wetzler. The report finds that all of the watersheds monitored by EPA and 90 percent of the drinking water sampled tested positive for atrazine, which is sold under dozens of brand names. It is now found in more than 45 pre-mixes in the U.S. and is the active ingredient most frequently used by manufacturers in combination herbicide products. …
Hormone-Disrupting Herbicide Widespread in U.S. Drinking Water
