News article on community park spring cleaning event, 2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

. - and its traces are found in the water The agency’s deliberations are es­ comings in the company’s studies, . Supplies of many communities. But pecially complex because they are especially the lack of data provided in preliminary reviews published based on experiments with laborato­ on the exposure of workers to atra­ . this year, E.PA. scientists suggest ry animals that imperfectly model zine. This is among the data that the that in most parts of the country the way chemicals like atrazine af­ environmental group is demanding people are not exposed to dangerous fect humans. Syngenta has been to have released. levels. That finding makes an out­ highly critical of the agency’s use of While it collected and analyzed the right ban unlikely. the animal studies. evidence of prostate cancers in its SUU, the agency’s top pesticide of­ In the latest research to cause a work force, the company argued for ficial, Stephen L. JohnsGn,-said the stir, Tyrone B. Hayes, a scientist who the E.PA. to remove atrazine from research on frogs raised new issues, had previously conducted research its list of chemicals that probably and added, “Given these conflicting for the company that makes atrazine cause cancer. The E.PA. took that results, we have to work through it.” but who now works independently, step in December 2000, and now lists The agency’s critics say its scien­ has found that male frogs developed atrazine as not likely to be a carcino­ tific methods are fundamentaUy serious abnormalities after being ex­ gen. If it were found to cause cancer, flawed and violate two federal laws posed in his laboratory to levels of that would lead to much tougher con­ — the Food Quality Protection Act trols on its use, possibly even its and the Safe Drinking Water Act — removal from the market that set strict standards and dead­ Contrasting views on In making its decision, the E.P.A. found that while one strain of female lines for reviewing the safety of hun­ laboratory rats got ovarian and dreds of pesticides and other widely research linking a mammalian cancer after exposure used chemicals. to atrazine, the biological mecha­ Peter Lehner, chief of the environ­ common pesticide to nism was not applicable to humans. mental bureau in the New York State In the rats, atrazine disrupted the attorney general’s office, said the state would file comments this cancer. hypothalamus, a part of the brain, ] month criticizing the agency’s pre­ and the pituitary gland, a regulatory ; liminary risk assessment and ex­ organ at the base of the brain that the pesticide much lower than the excretes hormones. The hormonal pressing concerns that the agency is E.P.A. considers safe in drinking wa­ not doing enough to protect the pub­ disruption put the rats’ reproductive ter. Significant numbers of the frogs cycles in overdrive, causing their lic from exposure. Public comments developed both male and female re­ on tile preliminary assessment are reproductive organs to age prema­ productive organs, a finding that he turely. due by July 5. suggested might help explain de­ “L^aUy, our concern is a pattern But the E.P.A.’s scientists did not clines in amphibian species around discount the likelihood that any of E.P.A disregarding the science the world. His work was published in and the legal mandates of the federal chemical that disrupts the hypothal­ April in the Proceedings of the Na­ amus, pituitary and gonads in one statutes,” said Mr. Lehner, adding tional Academy of Sciences. that traces of the weedkiUer had anim^ species would also cause Although several field studies problems in other species, whether been found in 40 percent of the have found associations between ex­ state’s water supplies, 50 percent of frogs or people. posure to atrazine and similar pesti­ One study of rats, for example, those in Suffolk County and 75 per­ cides and elevated incidence of sev­ cent of those in farming areas of the demonstrated that atrazine disrupt- ■ eral kinds of cancer, that kind of ed a mother rat’s production of pro­ Hudson River vaUey. study alone does not prove cause and Critics of atrazine cite scientific lactin, a hormone involved in nurs­ effect The claims by workers that ing, and that a suckling newborn evidence that infants and children the chemical gave them cancer are may be especiaUy vulnerable to de­ male rat’s development could, in also hard to prove. Syngenta argues turn, be affected, leading to prostati­ velopmental problems or to cancer if that the evidence of cancer among they or their nursing mothers are tis, a noncancerous inflammation of its workers was detected simply be­ the prostate glad. Another showed exposed even to relatively smaU cause the company provides com­ amounts for a short time, as when that exposing young rats to the plete screening for its work force. chemical could delay the onset of spring rains wash the chemicals Its studies on the workers’ cancers from newly tiUed fields. puberty. Taken together, many such were made public only recently, as a studies raise the possibility that the Syngenta replies that the data on result of the litigation and of pres­ atrazine offer “reasonable certain­ chemical could be harmful to infants sure on the E.P.A. by the Natural and children, even though no single ty,” as the law requires, that infants Resources Defense Council, which and children would suffer “no harm” study has demonstrate that out­ learned of the studies from lawyers right. from exposure to it “The data clear­ for the workers. ly show that developing organisms While Syngenta has submitted evi­ Syngenta found that in the last dence discounting one by one many are less sensitive than adults are to several years 17 employees and con­ atrazine,” Mr. Pastoor said. tract workers, mostly at its plant in of the studies considered by the The agency’s health scientists, St. Gabriel, La., had developed pros­ E.P.A., the agency’s critics say that though, rejected that argument tate cancer. The workers’ lawyers approach misses the point With so Rather, while finding that in general and the environmental group say many studies raising a variety of most drinking water supplies appear that is much higher than should be concerns, they say, the agency safe, they identified dozens of towns, expected, regardless of the screen­ should consider them in their totality mostly in the Midwest, where infant ings of workers. and take the weedkiller off the mar­ exposures appeared likely to have An internal E.P.A. review agreed ket. exceeded their safety threshold. The with the company that screening towns were identified because in one “likely accounts for most, if not all, year or another, seasonal rains had of the observed increase.’’ But the washed high levels of the chemical E.P.A.’s scientists and two outside into streams, lakes and reservoirs experts who examined the issue for used to supply drinking water. the agency all found severe short­

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