The FDA today began re-re-reevaluating AAtrex, Syngenta Crop Protection s brand name for the 50-year-old herbicide atrazine, which opponents allege is a potential carcinogen and endocrine disrupter. The EPA estimates that banning atrazine would cost more than $2 billion annually, while University of Chicago economist Don Coursey believes that a ban would lead to 21,000 to 48,000 jobs lost from corn production losses alone. Addressing fears over the presence of harmful chemicals in pesticide-treated foods, a minyanville.com blog-post references P.J. O Rourke s book All The Trouble In The World and ACSH s Holiday Dinner Menu, illustrating that many common food plants naturally contain carcinogens and toxins but at doses that do not cause us any harm.
The only reason they are doing this hundredth-plus re-evaluation is because of a political campaign generated by the NRDC, propelled by The New York Times, and at its genesis a bunch of research reports from the lab of one person, University of California at Berkley biologist Tyrone Hayes, who clearly has a vendetta against atrazine, says ACSH s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. His work has been condemned by various objective authorities and has never been replicated in any other lab.
This is clearly an alarmist campaign by the EPA to curry favor with their friends in the enviro-activist camp, adds ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross.