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If you want to understand all that is wrong with our government’s environmental safety priorities, you need only look at the sad story of the weed killer atrazine. Despite the fact that study after study has demonstrated its dangers, it remains one of the most commonly used herbicides in the U.S. — to the tune of 76 million pounds a year.

Atrazine is highly volatile — which means not only can it leach into groundwater through the fields, but it can become airborne and drift into waterways. Much of the Midwest’s water supply contains detectable levels of the stuff. I know a Midwesterner who will proudly declare — tongue firmly in cheek — “we Iowans drink atrazine for breakfast!”

Laughing aside, Atrazine is an endocrine disruptor that also appears to cause cancer. The European Union, concerned about its toxicity, banned the chemical in 2004. But here in the U.S. you’ll continue to find reports like this one in Brownfield, an industry trade magazine, that declares that atrazine “is still a viable option for producers to manage weed problems.”

Atrazine is manufactured by one of the most powerful agribiz companies in the world, Syngenta, which profits mightily from herbicide sales. In fact, as the Huffington Investigative Fund discovered, the EPA relied heavily on Syngenta-funded research to establish the safety of the herbicide. So it should come as no surprise that atrazine remains on the market and is embraced by large-scale corn growers across the country (estimates are that it’s applied to 75 percent of corn fields in the U.S.).