Atrazine and the "Bent Science"
Regulatory capture of the EPA
It is not the job of the USDA or the EPA to feed the world or control climate change. It is the job of these Federal agencies to protect the food supply and the environment for the peoples of the United States.
Yet, as I read the the agricultural newsletters regarding the EPA proposed revisions to their rules regarding atrazine, the shrill voices from farm associations everywhere are along the lines of how are farmers “supposed to feed the world” and battle “climate change”, if they can’t use the “proper” herbicides in unrestricted amounts?
The National Corn Growers’ Association (NCGA) expressed disappointment in the EPA’s decisions, although the EPA has agreed to conduct additional scientific review. Growers and the public may comment on the proposal during the 60-day comment period.
NCGA President Chris Edington said, “We can feed and fuel the world and fight climate change, but we can’t do these things without modern farming tools, and atrazine is a tool that is critical to our work.”
(Yes the NCGA actually used the argument that due to “climate change,” farmers need to continue their usage of atrazine unabated). Talk about cringeworthy!
The EPA is a captured agency.
The EPA has a proposal to revise the amount of atrazine allowed to be used for certain crops in 2022 (these revisions were first started in 2020). Those interim requirements required a comments period starting fall, 2022 and then the EPA has more rounds of re-evaluation before a final decision is made. Other revisions on atrazine have been proposed by the EPA over the years, but never passed final approval.
But of note is that the USA is a hold out at this point. Atrazine is now banned or being phased out in 44 countries in Europe (2006), Asia, Africa, and South America.
The opposite has happened in the USA. In 2020, the EPA relaxed the regulations regarding atrazine, with the end result being that 50% more atrazine is allowed to enter waterbodies.
In the United States, farmers just keep on spraying atrazine, with more than 70 million pounds used each year on just three crops: corn, sorghum, and sugarcane. As shown below, in vast areas of the United States, the application of atrazine is equal to or exceeds 45 pounds per square mile.
Image from the USGS
The EPA’s proposed new rules regarding atrazine are as follows:
Prohibit application when soils are saturated or above field capacity (i.e., the soil’s ability to retain water);
Prohibit application during rain or when a storm event, likely to produce runoff from the treated area, is forecasted to occur within 48 hours following application;
Prohibit aerial applications of all formulations; and
Restrict annual application rates to 2 pounds of active ingredient or less per acre per year or less for applications to sorghum, field corn, and sweet corn.
The EPA seems primarily focused on protecting the environment, hence damage done to humans by chronic ingestion of atrazine is less likely to be studied. In fact, the rationale for the new EPA restrictions seems to only address issues of atrazine relating to aquatic life, not human health. This may be due to the fact that a very early review of atrazine by the EPA concluded no risks to human health and industry convinced the EPA to ignore the frog feminization data in 2002. Plus, there is ample evidence of drinking water with high levels atrazine levels across the USA, but this does not seem to be a concern for the EPA.
But other organizations are concerned about EPA regulatory capture from the chemical industry. The National Academy of Science just released a statement on their new report regarding toxicity testing in humans and the need for the EPA to toxicity test chemicals, which has been conducted on only a “small fraction” of chemicals and toxicants.
New Report Recommends EPA Develop Framework for Evaluating New Approach Methods for Toxicity Testing
Media Advisory | June 16, 2023
A new National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report provides an overview of new approach methods in human health risk assessment of chemicals, and calls on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop a framework for evaluating and building trust in new approach methods.
Some pollutants such as lead, benzene, and ozone are well studied, enabling the EPA to characterize their hazards and risks to human health.
However, for many chemicals in commerce and in the environment, such as PFAS, there is little or no data on their potential health effects. As a result, only a small fraction of chemicals and other toxicants to which people are exposed have undergone formal assessment of hazards and risks by the EPA.
If NIH hasn’t funded clinical studies assessing human health risks to atrazine, would the EPA even consider human health risks? A review of the EPA factsheet on endocrine disruptors does not even mention atrazine.
A search at clinicaltrials.gov indicates only ONE human clinical trial, which measured urinary metabolites for various pesticides in corn farmers. That study started in 2004 and ended in 2008. If the studies aren’t conducted, then government agencies have one less thing to worry about!
But there has been research that very much shows the dangers and risks from atrazine. Please consider going to government website pubmed.gov and the simple search term: “atrazine.”
After reading the dozens of studies on atrazine listed on pubmed, one can only conclude that atrazine must be banned in the United States.
To further drive this point home, here is a “must read” article (unfortunately behind a paywall) that uses the atrazine history as an example of how corruption from industry, including regulatory capture, can “bend” science.
Abstract: The herbicide atrazine is one of the most commonly used, well studied, and controversial pesticides on the planet. Much of the controversy involves the effects of atrazine on wildlife, particularly amphibians, and the ethically questionable decision making of members of industry, government, the legal system, and institutions of higher education, in most cases in an effort to “bend science,” defined as manipulating research to advance economic, political, or ideological ends.
In this Critical Perspective I provide a timeline of the most salient events in the history of the atrazine saga, which includes a multimillion‐dollar smear campaign, lawsuits, investigative reporting, accusation of impropriety against the US Environmental Protection Agency, and a multibillion‐dollar transaction. I argue that the atrazine controversy must be more than just a true story of cover‐ups, bias, and vengeance.
It must be used as an example of how manufacturing uncertainty and bending science can be exploited to delay undesired regulatory decisions and how greed and conflicts of interest—situations where personal or organizational considerations have compromised or biased professional judgment and objectivity—can affect environmental and public health and erode trust in the discipline of toxicology, science in general, and the honorable functioning of societies.
The USDA is tasked with protecting the food supply. But in fact, the USDA has not bothered to update their 1994 report on the safety of atrazine, ether via website or the report itself. That report uses data from 1991 to assess that atrazine is not toxic to birds and humans. Furthermore, that report relies on outdated studies from the 1980s and early 1990s to make the determination that atrazine is “safe” for humans. By virtually ignoring newer scientific research, the USDA, which is in the business of promoting agriculture, can ignore the safety signals found in the peer-reviewed literature.
In the meantime, the NIH, which is not tasked with safety oversight of the food supply, can freely admit the dangers. Case in point, this webpage from the NIH (National Institute of Environmental Health Services), lists out the dangers to human health from endocrine disruptors:
What has NIEHS discovered?
NIEHS-supported research has discovered links between endocrine-disrupting chemicals and the ways in which wellbeing may be harmed, as shown by the following examples:
Attention. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common childhood disorders, which can continue through adolescence and into adulthood. ADHD symptoms include difficulty staying focused, paying attention, and controlling behavior.
Researchers reported in JAMA that ordinary exposure to certain phthalates, as found in urine samples, was associated with ADHD-related behaviors in adolescence. The drug DES may be linked to an increased chance of developing ADHD in the grandchildren of women who used it during pregnancy.
Immunity. Children exposed to high levels of PFAS had a diminished immune response to vaccines.
Metabolism. Long-term exposure to arsenic can disrupt metabolism, increasing the risk of diabetes and other metabolic disorders.
Puberty. Chemicals in lavender oil and tea tree oil are potential endocrine disruptors. Researchers found that persistent exposure to lavender oil products is associated with premature breast development in girls, and abnormal breast development in boys.
Reproduction. DES can cause epigenetic changes, altering the way genes are turned on and off, in reproductive organs of mice. The findings provide a possible explanation for how endocrine disruptors affect fertility and reproduction.
And it is not only atrazine that is an issue. Here is a list of other chemicals and toxicants that may disrupt the endocrine system (from NIEHS):
Chemicals That May Disrupt Your Endocrine System
According to the Endocrine Society, there are nearly 85,000 human-made chemicals in the world, and 1,000 or more of those could be endocrine disruptors, based on their unique properties. The following are among the most common and well-studied.
Atrazine is one of the most commonly applied herbicides in the world, often used to control weeds in corn, sorghum, and sugarcane crops.
Bisphenol A (BPA) is used to make polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins. It is used in manufacturing, food packaging, toys, and other applications. BPA resins may be found in the lining of some canned foods and beverages.
Dioxins are a byproduct of certain manufacturing processes, such as herbicide production and paper bleaching. They can be released into the air from waste burning and wildfires.
Perchlorate is a colorless salt manufactured and used as an industrial chemical to make rockets, explosives, and fireworks, which can be found in some groundwater.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a large group of chemicals used widely in industrial applications, such as firefighting foam, nonstick pans, paper, and textile coatings.
Phthalates are a large group of compounds used as liquid plasticizers. They are found in hundreds of products including some food packaging, cosmetics, fragrances, children’s toys, and medical device tubing. Cosmetics that may contain phthalates include nail polish, hair spray, aftershave lotion, cleanser, and shampoo.
Phytoestrogens are naturally occurring substances with hormone-like activity found in some plants; they may have a similar effect to estrogen produced by the body. Soy foods, for example, contain phytoestrogens.
Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) are used to make flame retardants for products such as furniture foam and carpet.
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were used to make electrical equipment, such as transformers, and are in hydraulic fluids, heat transfer fluids, lubricants, and plasticizers. PCBs were mass-produced globally until they were banned in 1979.
Triclosan is an ingredient that was previously added to some antimicrobial and personal care products, like liquid body wash and soaps.
Bending the Science
Finally, what happened with science and the COVIDcrisis was entirely predictable and the tricks used to bend the science are well known.
Below are concrete steps for the “bend-the-science” play book outlined by Janon Rohr in the 2020 article, “The Atrazine Saga and its Importance to the Future of Toxicology, Science, and Environmental and Human Health”
Bending science is the processes by which the culture of science, regulation, and other segments of society can interact to suppress unfavorable or enhance favorable scientific results, in many cases to advance economic, political, or ideological ends (McGarity and Wagner 2008).
McGarity and Wagner (2008) describe 6 major tools for bending science, which I will highlight throughout my documentation of the history of atrazine (see Lane and Landis 2016 for similar example on fracking).
The first tool is shaping science, which is the art of creating research to produce a desired outcome, often referred to as outcome‐oriented research.
When efforts to shape science fail, advocates will often attempt to hide science associated with unwelcome information or
attack this science by launching illegitimate critiques in an effort to turn reliable science into “junk” (Huber 1991; Herrick and Jamieson 2001).
To discourage future damaging research, advocates will also harass or bully scientists who produce dam- aging research.
Packaging science is the art of assembling an expert group to advance a favored outcome,
whereas spinning science is the art of manipulating public perception about credible science.
Hence, the scientific pipeline can be contaminated by outside advocates at the point of devising and conducting research to the use and interpretation of science to affect legal, regulatory, and policy debates and decisions (McGarity and Wagner 2008).
In some cases, academics with no associations to industry can corrupt the scientific process, such as cases when academic scientists fabricate data.
However, many of the most well‐documented cases of bending science involve industry or public officials that rely on industry support, likely because these entities have a larger financial stake and more financial resources to bend science than academics.
Bottom line: Science and medicine have been corrupted and public trust destroyed. The EPA, USDA, FDA and the CDC have been captured by industry. How our public institutions can recover from this, is anyone’s guess.