A class action lawsuit representing water districts throughout Illinois cites recent research contending atrazine in drinking water is unsafe at any level, even measurements well below U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines.

Attorney Stephen Tillery said Peoria is one of the higher population areas with atrazine contamination in water supplies.

Tillery said the U.S. EPA conducted more than 40 private meetings with the leading manufacturer of atrazine to devise a testing protocol that manipulatively distorts atrazine levels in water.

Illinois American Water Co. reports atrazine levels of 0.5 parts per billion in Peoria tap water, a level recent research has linked with low-birth weights but a level well below the 3 parts per billion considered safe by the EPA.

Atrazine, an herbicide often used on corn fields, is linked with breast and prostate cancers and reproductive and neurological problems.

Tillery filed the class action suit earlier this month in the Third Judicial Circuit Court in Madison County on behalf of a rural sanitary district near Edwardsville and other water districts throughout the state. The suit was filed against atrazine manufacturer Syngenta Crop Protection Inc. with headquarters in Switzerland and Growmark Inc. with principal offices in Bloomington doing business under the “FS” name.

Syngenta attorney Alan Nadel said Syngenta will discredit health and environmental concerns linked with atrazine by using research from the World Health Organization and National Cancer Institute.

Nadel said Tillery’s lawsuit “has been pending for five years. We moved to dismiss the lawsuit as without merit. It took three years for the judge to rule on that motion which was denied.”

Tillery cited a report issued last month by the National Institutes of Health that links low-birth weight and atrazine levels as low as 0.1 parts per billion.

Atrazine is banned in a number of European countries, including Switzerland, because of the potential for groundwater contamination, but it is widely used in the United States on corn. It is also used by the landscaping industry.

Tillery said atrazine runoff is a major source of drinking water contamination, especially for districts that rely on lakes and rivers.

Illinois American Water Co. gets 40 percent of its water from the Illinois River. The company provides water to Peoria, Pekin and other central Illinois communities.

Lori Horstman, water quality supervisor with Illinois American, said some atrazine is filtered out of river water and some is treated with powdered carbon to remove the chemical to levels considered safe by the EPA. The highest levels of atrazine are detected in water from April through July when it is applied on corn fields and carried to rivers and streams by runoff.

Tillery said atrazine does not readily break down in water. When it does, it forms 16 separate chemicals, some of which are more toxic than the mother chemical atrazine.

“This is something that has to be known at Syngenta,” Tillery said.