Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Consumer Law Blogs -> ThePopTort

Consumer Law

: ThePopTort

Atrazine - Weeding out Water?s Killer Weed Killer

By Joe Consumer

How?s that for a tongue-twister? Granted, it?s not rubber baby buggy bumper (which kinda makes sense only after the 5th read).  Ours has a bit more meaning, though. 

This week, the Natural Resources Defense Council released an update of its 2009 study, Poisoning the Well, about atrazine, ?the most commonly detected pesticide in U.S. waters? and ?a known endocrine disruptor, which means that it affects human and animal hormones.?  In 2009, a New York Times investigation also found, ?atrazine often washes into water supplies and has become among the most common contaminants in American reservoirs and other sources of drinking water ... [and that] new research suggests that atrazine may be dangerous at lower concentrations than previously thought.?

The Environmental Protection Agency, long ineffective under the prior Administration, apparently took notice of the first NRDC study, investigations by the New York Times and others, and began looking into the health effects of atrazine, finding it ?more hazardous than previously believed.?  In April, the EPA had a serious of public meetings about this, with agri-business complaining that everything was fine until the New York Times and the Huffington Post got involved.

Clearly, according to the NRDC?s new study, Still Poisoning the Well, the health risks remain severe ?throughout the Midwest and southern United States.?

Meanwhile, class action lawsuits have been stalled for several years in one of the worst hit states, Illinois.  In March 2010,

[F]ive American Water state subsidiaries in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Iowa joined 19 other Midwest drinking water suppliers in a federal lawsuit against Syngenta [the leading manufacturer of atrazine,] and its Delaware counterpart Syngenta Crop Protection, Inc.  The plaintiffs? allege that Syngenta has made billions of dollars selling atrazine while local taxpayers were left "the ever-growing bill for filtering the toxic product from the public's drinking water."  The plaintiff's attorney Stephen Tillery called the EPA's decision to reevaluate atrazine "long overdue."

The cases are now proceeding. But it seems like the power combination of the NRDC, the new EPA and trial attorneys has really upset the Wall Street Journal?s editorial board.  (Here?s their editorial, if you can access it without paying.)  We know a good way to calm down, WSJ.  Just repeat after us: Purple Paper People, Purple Paper People, Purple Paper People ...

Full post as published by ThePopTort on May 05, 2010 (boomark / email).