One of the nation’s most widely used herbicides has been found to
exceed federal safety limits in drinking water in four states, but
water customers have not been told and the Environmental Protection
Agency has not published the results.

Records that tracked the amount of the weed-killer atrazine in about
150 watersheds from 2003 through 2008 were obtained by the Huffington
Post Investigative Fund under the Freedom of Information Act.  An
analysis found that yearly average levels of atrazine in drinking water
violated the federal standard at least ten times in communities in
Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Kansas, all states where farmers rely
heavily on the herbicide.

In addition, more than 40 water systems in those states showed
spikes in atrazine levels that normally would have triggered automatic
notification of customers. In none of those cases were residents
alerted.

In interviews, EPA officials did not dispute the data but said they
do not consider atrazine a health hazard and said they did not believe
the agency or state authorities had failed to properly inform the
public. “We have concluded that atrazine does not cause adverse effects
to humans or the environment,” said Steve Bradbury, deputy office
director of the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs.

Officials at Syngenta, the Swiss company that manufactures atrazine,
declined requests for interviews about the testing results. In a statement
on its Web site, the company says that atrazine “poses no threat to the
safety of our drinking water supplies. In 2008, none of the 122
Community Water Systems monitored in 10 states exceeded the federal
standards set for atrazine in drinking water or raw water.”

Atrazine has become an issue of concern for environmentalists and
consumer groups as the use of the herbicide has soared in the United
States over the past few decades. Some scientists who have studied
atrazine said the information about its higher levels in drinking water
should be made public.