Atrazine Pesticide | EPA and Atrazine | Syngenta Crop Protection

Atrazine

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — the government entity that regulates pesticides — atrazine "is one of the most closely examined pesticides in the marketplace."

But let's back up. Pesticides are among the most heavily regulated and scrutinized products in commerce. Every pesticide product sold or distributed in the United States, including atrazine, must undergo a stringent safety review and legal registration by the EPA. This process ensures the safety of pesticides to humans and the environment when used according to the label. In fact, pesticides are subject to more safety testing than pharmaceuticals prior to human clinical trials.

In 1996, Congress unanimously passed a landmark pesticide food safety law called the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) which takes the protection of children into special consideration. Atrazine is one of the first pesticides to undergo the rigorous, most up-to-date safety evaluation required by EPA under FQPA and, as a result, was recently re-registered for use in agriculture.

Further, in 2006 EPA looked at all of the triazine herbicides together — atrazine, simazine and propazine — and determined they pose "no harm that would result to the general U.S. population, infants, children or other major identifiable subgroups of consumers."

Visit EPA's Atrazine Web Page >