EPA sued over lack of standards for pesticide pollution

Atrazine is commonly used on corn, sugarcane and sorghum, and has been linked to birth defects, cancer and fertility problems.(CN) — A coalition of conservation and public health groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday in an effort to force the federal agency to develop water quality standards for a pesticide linked to cancer.Atrazine is the second most widely used pesticide in the United States and most commonly used on corn, sugarcane and sorghum. The herbicide controls annual grasses and broadleaf weeds before they emerge. It has been banned in over 60 countries.“We’re taking the Trump administration to court because it’s refusing to protect Americans from the well-documented dangers of the cancer-linked, hormone-disrupting pesticide atrazine,” Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.The Center for Biological Diversity, along with the Center for Environmental Health and Pesticide Action & Agroecology Network, accuses the EPA of violating the Clean Water Act by failing to issue water quality criteria for the pesticide.The Center for Biological Diversity recently published a report finding that atrazine is estimated to contaminate almost 860,000 miles of rivers in the country — around 25% of all river and stream miles in the continental United States — at levels recognized by the EPA to harm aquatic ecosystems.“The rest of the world is banning this incredibly dangerous pesticide. Why is Trump’s EPA continuing to push this poison on people?” Donley said.Research by the Environmental Working Group’s Tap Water Database has found atrazine commonly detected in drinking water, particularly in areas where the water source has cornfield or other agricultural runoff. The plaintiffs say the pesticide has been detected in at least 36 states, at over 2,000 utilities, serving approximately 40 million people. Twelve of those states have more than one million people exposed, the groups claim.The EPA had initiated a process to set water quality criteria for pollutants back in 1999 but never completed it, an unreasonable delay the plaintiffs say violates the Administrative Procedure Act.The Center for Biological Diversity submitted a records request to the agency earlier this year, seeking documents from the period of time between the EPA’s 2001 release of proposed atrazine aquatic life criteria and its release of proposed revised criteria two years later, but the center said it was informed the agency had no responsive documents.In recent years, the EPA proposed a runoff mitigation plan that would reduce the maximum annual application rate by 20% and implement a mitigation system. However, a peer-reviewed study published earlier this month found the EPA’s mitigation plan would only drop one percent of the country’s 11,248 contaminated watersheds to safe levels.Known as a hormone-disrupting pesticide, atrazine has been linked to birth defects, cancer and fertility problems. It has also been found to chemically castrate male frogs at low concentrations and genetically alter fish.“Pesticides like atrazine that are clearly linked to reproductive harms and cancer don’t belong in our water supplies,” Tom Fox, senior legislative counsel at the Center for Environmental Health, said in a statement. “EPA needs to take action now as required by the Clean Water Act.”The groups are asking a federal judge to find that the EPA violated its duty to develop and publish water quality criteria for atrazine to protect human health and aquatic life, and to order the EPA to do so in consultation with expert fish and wildlife agencies.“Protecting the environment from pesticides benefits farmworkers and farming communities suffering from these poisons polluting their water,” Margaret Reeves, a senior scientist focused on agroecology and workers’ rights at the Pesticide Action and Agroecology Network, said in a statement. “Building healthy soils and sustainable food systems will help us break our reliance on toxic pesticides like atrazine.”The EPA declined to comment on pending litigation.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads