Trump Administration Dismisses Risks of Atrazine, a Farm Herbicide
October 28, 2025 | Source: Civil Eats | by Lisa Held
Over the past decade, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s multiple assessments of the common herbicide atrazine have been filling in the details on its potential environmental risks. Its 2016 assessment concluded the chemical could seriously harm fish, frogs, birds, and mammals. In 2020, the EPA added new use restrictions but reapproved the chemical. Then, in 2021, the agency’s scientists found atrazine use across U.S. farm fields was likely to harm more than 1,000 endangered species.
But in a new follow-up evaluation released earlier this month, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS)—which collaborates with the EPA on assessing how pesticides affect at-risk plants and animals—dismissed those risks. Atrazine use poses little to no risk to at-risk species if farmers follow additional rules the EPA has introduced, the agency said in the evaluation, paving the way for the chemical to be reapproved.
Watchdog groups responded to the findings with anger and disbelief.
“This is the Fish and Wildlife Service under the current administration caving to industry pressure instead of the agency doing its job, which is to carry out an independent duty to protect endangered species,” said Sylvia Wu, a senior attorney at the Center for Food Safety, which sued the EPA in 2020 over its reapproval of atrazine. “It’s entirely failed to do that.”
Atrazine is the second most widely used herbicide in the United States after glyphosate. Farmers sprayed more than 70 million pounds of the chemical in 2019, mainly on corn fields. Studies show that compared to glyphosate, atrazine is much more dangerous. It is a hormone-disrupting chemical linked to birth defects and some cancers in humans and to serious reproductive and other impacts on frogs and fish. In 2016, California added atrazine to the Proposition 65 warning list for reproductive toxicity.