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NYT Terrifies Over "Weed Killers" in Water
By Elizabeth M. Whelan, Sc.D., M.P.H.
All the news that's fit to scare. That was the thrust of this weekend's New York Times article by Charles Duhigg entitled "Toxic Waters: Debating Just How Much Weed Killer Is Safe in Your Water Glass."
As president of the American Council on Science and Health, I have been following environmental and health media articles for some three decades -- seeing how they measure up in terms of "honors" for exaggerated risk, biased reporting, misrepresented science, and pure sensationalism. The Duhigg article is clearly a contender for the all-time worst.
Duhigg argues that the widespread use of the herbicide atrazine is polluting our supply of drinking water and putting us all -- but particularly pregnant women -- at risk. He consistently refers to "recent studies" (but does not cite them) and concerned "scientists and health advocates " (but does not name any mainstream experts) who think that the Environmental Protection Agency is not protecting us from atrazine -- and that the manufacturers of the herbicide are somehow poisoning us. He cites "new research" showing that atrazine is hazardous even at low levels but does not specify his sources. He seems oblivious to the work of the most famous early toxicologist (Paracelsus, circa 1500) who set in place the time-honored premise: only the dose makes the poison.
Atrazine is a widely used herbicide -- applied on a variety of crops (corn, sugar cane, sorghum, and more). It is a tightly regulated chemical, and levels in water (where there could be spill-off from agricultural or other applications) are closely monitored by environmental agencies. It has been in safe use for over fifty years. There is a huge "safety factor" built in -- so that permitted trace levels are some hundred-fold less than what could have an adverse effect on human health. The Safe Drinking Water Act requires monitoring water for a multitude of chemicals, including atrazine. You would drown from drinking the huge amounts of water needed for you to be affected by trace levels of atrazine in any American water supply.
Duhigg appears to be playing to the fears (phobias) of consumers who (a) do not know where their food comes from -- and are unaware that without the use of agricultural chemicals like atrazine (which allow farmers to fight weeds, insects and disease) our food supply would be diminished by about half -- and (b) think that even a trace amount of any "chemical" in food, water, air, or consumer products is intolerable. The reality, of course, is that everything, including natural foods, is comprised of chemicals -- most of which are toxic and/or carcinogenic in animals at high dose but are perfectly safe when we consume them.
How much "weed killer" in your water is safe? Well, how much arsenic in your natural baked potato is safe? (Arsenic occurs naturally in potatoes.) The mere ability to detect a chemical in a substance -- in food, air, water, consumer products, or even human tissue -- does not signal that there is a public health hazard.
Nowadays, when we have so many serious public health risks to face (cigarette smoking, obesity, swine flu, and more), Duhigg has given top priority to a bogus risk. And this is irresponsible. As a result of his article, he hopes that Americans will be demanding zero tolerance for atrazine in the water supply -- and we will incur huge expenses to accomplish this dubious goal, with absolutely no resulting health benefits, since there were never any health risks in the first place. Even the Environmental Protection Agency (the most stringent regulatory agency in the world and the most powerful, not known for downplaying chemical risks) stated that atrazine posed no known health risks when they approved re-registration of it in 2006. EPA has evaluated hundreds of studies finding "no evidence of a link to birth defects."
So why did the New York Times give such prominent coverage to a bogus risk? It is part of a general wave of "chemophobia." Earlier this month, the Times accepted a paid advertisement (an "op-ad") on their editorial page, paid for (at a price of about $50,000) by New York's prestigious Mount Sinai Hospital and Medical Center. The paid-for editorial copy claimed that industrial "chemicals" (phthalates, BPA, etc.) were imperiling our children, when there was no basis whatsoever for such an assertion.
So it is "in" to scare people about "chemicals" in their air, food, water, and consumer products -- and apparently Mr. Duhigg and the Times elected to exploit this phobia. Unfortunately, scaring people about the quality and safety of their drinking water is not only without scientific basis, it is completely counter-productive, distracting us from the real public health hazards we face today.
Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan is president of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH.org).
Rob (August 23, 2009)
Your critique of this article seems to be the real quackery at play here...Duhigg provides the sources in response to reader comments so maybe you should read them before asserting that the article is fear-mongering. And where do you get-off suggesting that reporting on the safety of (of all thing) our DRINKING WATER is "completely counter-productive, distracting us from the real public health hazards we face today." You can't be serious!
Sudhir (August 24, 2009)
Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan ,
Let's give your kids a daily dose of atrazine mixed lemonade and see if it affects their health. If you really believe that Atrazine is not bad for health, you should not have any problem giving it to your kids. Right?
pete (August 24, 2009)
I'm not a fan of the m. moore "docudrama's"...but in this case the chemical pesticide industry, their lobbying group RISE and the epa are continually backpeddling and pulling products off the market....
- I loved the one last year...after decades of flouride in drinking water, the epa comes out with "made a mistake, we set the drinking water parts per million limits forgetting about all the other sources people get flouride...so now we have to tell authorities to cut back, and tell parents never give flouridated water to infants"...search some links to articles over the years claiming the limits are fine.
- a quick look at the epa website will show you how many of these type lawn chemicals were once defended vehemently, only later to be placed in the "oops, we made mistake category"...2-4-d comes to mind....
- I don't think RISE (responsible industry for a sound environment - lobbying group for the pesticide industry) ever claims that these products do good, the position is always you can't prove its them causing the harm...Once I was at an EPA conference and I asked a RISE rep, what is the doomsday prediction if you erred on the side of caution with these chemicals....he said no lawns, no vegetation, massive run off, kids getting stung by bees...and I could only think of what beautiful lawns I always see on trips to quebec, where they have been banned for some time...oh yea, and no killer bees stinging all the kids...
- I believe last year even the GAO (gov't accountability office) wrote up that the EPA might as well be disbanded because of the influence lobbying groups have on final reports and decisions.
- why do those chemlawn guys have to wear those rubber protective suits...and why all the signs that say keep off the lawn after treatments....hmm...
- sorry, I live on a lake, and see the algae blooms from all the fertilizer run off...and then watch the boats with tanks driving around spraying pesticides and herbicides in the water to kill off the blooms....you can't swim in the lake, or eat fish from it, because of this...and the lawns 3 feet up from the lake after a spraying all go brown and die....
8string (August 28, 2009)
As a victim of quack medicine, and a supporter of your efforts to expose it, I have to take issue with your stance on atrazine. The NYT, in my mind, simply brings to light the question of whether these levels, short burst during peak use months, that even local officials seem unaware of, let alone the public, whether even these levels can be harmful,is a valid question to ask. The public seems to have no way to understand when they are at risk, and when it comes to low levels of pesticides, it is reasonable to allow people to choose whether to drink their tap water then, or not. The E.P.A. has been compromised on numerous levels, especially over the 8 years of the Bush administration,and it is also reasonable to expect the public to not trust it's industry based findings, especially over that period of time. You can't have it both ways, stuffing the EPA with political hacks while an industry friendly regime is in place, and then pretending that it's lack of oversight is worthy of public trust.
I recommend ACSH back wide spread epidemiology on atrazine, finding out how present it is the public in those states it's used in, and also back the notion of local testing and reporting on line by health departments to allow the public to choose when to drink their water and when not.
Christopher Curry (September 2, 2009)
I became aware of Atrazine following my wife's application of weed & Feed fertilizer around Avocado trees in our front yard which, while it didn't kill the tree (quite),set it back for years. Then I remembered that a neighbor had applied herbicide into a trench dug alongside my back fence, with the result that the most robust of my citrus trees died (roots definitely would have been exposed). Finally when another avocado tree near the other neighbor's front yard was sprayed by a lawn service, again setting this oldest seedling back-I started looking. It seems Lawn services are licensed to do whatever their clients want done in this regard. While it is not legal to kill a tree here by reaching over the fence and girdling the tree (you may trim any overhanging branches, it seems it is OK to do it chemically through the roots. Florida does not even monitor or track the use of Atrazine, meaning the State's first priority is lawns. Atrazine was outlawed in Europe in 2004 and Florida doesn't even care or want to know. If we have no statistics it will be hard to indict Atrazine. Way to go, you could probably get elected in Florida
Marcia Bransom (September 8, 2009)
The nature of this article is to be expected. ACSH has been accused of being a corporate front group in the guise of a neutral council on science. According to the Congressional Quarterly's Public Interest Profiles, Whelan's organization received more than 75 percent of their funding from the CHEMICAL and PHARMACEUTICAL industries. Jeff Stier, Associate Director of ACSH, has claimed that this information is outdated and inaccurate, with ACSH receiving less than 50 percent of their funding from industry. Despite Dr. Whelan's oft-repeated denial that ACSH is influenced by its funders, there are instances in which funders are known to have participated directly in the production of council publications. According to the council's former administrative director, The Hershey Company did the in-house printing of an ACSH booklet on the health effects of sugar consumption, and the Stroh Brewery Company participated in the editing of a booklet about the health effects of alcohol. The participation of those companies was not acknowledged by ACSH.[1]
In 1982, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a watchdog and consumer advocacy group, published an extensive report on ACSH's practices that stated, "ACSH appears to be a consumer fraud; as a scientific group, ACSH seems to arrive at conclusions before conducting studies. Through voodoo or alchemy, bodies of scientific knowledge are transmogrified into industry-oriented position statements."[2] CSPI director Michael F. Jacobson said of ASCH, '"This organization promotes confusion among consumers about what is safe and what isn't... ACSH is using a slick scientific veneer to obscure and deny truths that virtually everyone else agrees with."[3]
wcs (October 9, 2009)
Bring on GMO corn....Monsanto is behind atrazine ban..farmers will have to plant their seed
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