This story was written by Danielle Ivory.

There is some evidence that Congress — and the Environmental Protection Agency — are rethinking their policies on a commonly used weed-killer after disclosures that the EPA failed to notify the public about high levels of the herbicide in drinking water.

As the Investigative Fund revealed last week, the herbicide atrazine has been found at levels above the federal safety limit in drinking water in at least four states. The chemical has been studied for its potential link to breast cancer, prostate cancer, and birth defects, and the EPA considers it to be a potential endocrine disruptor. It is banned in the European Union.

The Natural Resources Defense Council published a report on atrazine levels last week, and the New York Times weighed in with an article on growing questions about the herbicide’s health effects.

The Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee has asked the EPA for a comprehensive briefing next week on the agency’s failure to publicize results of tests that showed high levels of atrazine. The committee also is asking the EPA to develop a specific plan for reporting this data to the public in the future.

A senior committee staffer confirmed Friday that Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and her staff plan to meet with “key players” at the EPA next week to discuss their data on atrazine.

“This is a top priority for us,” the staff member said. “We’re not going to shy away from this. People have a right to know what is in their drinking water, particularly when the EPA’s data suggests that there could be a health concern.”

For five years, the EPA has been collecting weekly tests of drinking water in about 150 watersheds, primarily in the Midwest, where farmers spray the herbicide on cornfields and other crops. The agency, however, never acted on the results. Nor had it ever published the data — until tonight. EPA officials say they have now decided to make the test results available on their Web site.

The Investigative Fund obtained the data this summer through a public records request and published it last week.

In a statement to the I-Fund on Friday night, the EPA said the change in policy is important “because now people can get the data much easier” without going through the “burdensome” process of requesting public records.

The statement from the EPA said: “EPA is taking a hard look at atrazine, including many of the issues you raise. Atrazine is very controversial … Administrator Jackson has made a commitment to strengthen the Agency’s chemical management programs, which she identified as one of her top priorities upon her arrival at the Agency. This includes atrazine. We really want to emphasize that this new team is actively rethinking how to address atrazine.”

It’s not only the Senate and EPA that plan to take a look at policy on atrazine. In the House, one congressman is planning to reintroduce legislation to ban the herbicide atrazine in the fall.

Last August, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) introduced a bill (H.R.3399), prohibiting the use, production, sale, importation, or exportation of any pesticide containing atrazine. It died in the health subcommittee last September.

Minh Ta, legislative director for Ellison, said the congressman is concentrating on the financial crisis and health care, but would reintroduce the bill in the fall. “It’s an issue that the Congressman has been concerned about,” Ta said. “These articles in the Huffington Post reinforce the need to act quickly.”

But Richard Wiles, executive director at the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy group, said that it will be difficult to garner broad congressional support for tighter atrazine regulation, let alone a ban. “This is the big kahuna,” Wiles said. “Atrazine is one of those pollutants with a fortress of defenders — more so than most other chemicals.”

Wiles said that any attempt to restrict atrazine use would likely be blocked by the House Agriculture Committee, who tend to favor the “pro-pesticide farm lobby and pesticide makers.” The committee is chaired by Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.)

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Peterson was the top congressional recipient of campaign contributions from the agricultural services industry (which includes Syngenta Corp) in the 2008 and 2006 election cycles. Peterson’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Lawyers representing the maker of the herbicide atrazine are asking that documents related to the company’s lobbying and trade association activities be excluded from a class action lawsuit being filed by some Illinois water utilities.

As the Investigative Fund reported last week, many utilities say they cannot afford expensive carbon filters that would remove atrazine from public drinking water. They are going to court to try to force the Swiss chemical company Syngenta to pay for installing such filtering systems.

In an interview today, the lawyer for Syngenta Crop Protection Inc., Kurt Reeg, said the water districts had requested documents outside of the scope of the lawsuit.

“They’re asking what efforts have been made to lobby congress and the EPA with respect to herbicide legislation,” Reeg said. “They want to know about all of Syngenta’s trade association activities. It’s totally out of the realm of this case.”

The lawyer for the water utilities, Stephen Tillery, disagreed. “Their main argument is that the EPA has established that atrazine is safe. What the lobbying records will show is that Syngenta and its trade associations were inside the room when the EPA made that decision. They had special access. Environmental groups didn’t have that kind of access. The public didn’t even have that kind of access.”

During yesterday’s proceeding in Illinois Circuit Court, Judge Barbara Crowder postponed until Sept. 18 a ruling on a motion from six new Illinois communities to add themselves to the lawsuit. The cities are Carlinville, Fairfield, Flora, Greenville, Hillsboro, and Mattoon.

According to EPA records obtained by the Investigative Fund, weekly tests of the city of Flora’s drinking water in 2008 found levels of atrazine above federal safety limits, but the public was never notified.

Atrazine has been studied for its potential link to breast cancer, prostate cancer, and birth defects, and the EPA considers it to be a potential endocrine disruptor. It is banned in the European Union.

This story was written by Danielle Ivory.

Results from a federal drinking water monitoring program show that many public water companies are ineffective at removing a widely used weed-killer from their water supplies.

As the Huffington Post Investigative Fund reported earlier this week, the Environmental Protection Agency has failed to notify the public about data showing that the herbicide atrazine has been found at levels above the federal safety limit in drinking water in at least four states.

But that data also reveals that many public water filtration systems are not removing the herbicide. In many places, atrazine levels in untreated water sources such as rivers directly match the levels that come out of the tap.

A carbon filter with granular activated carbon — in other words, a giant Brita-like filter — should absorb all or most of the atrazine. But the EPA’s atrazine monitoring data shows that many water utilities in the Corn Belt do not use carbon filtration. Many use rapid sand filters instead. They are cheaper and last longer, but are unable to remove organic compounds such as PCBs, phthalates, pharmaceuticals, and pesticides such as atrazine.

“Carbon filters might have to be replaced every couple of years whereas sand filters could last 20 to 30 years,” said Alan Roberson, director of security and regulatory affairs at the American Water Works Association, a non-profit organization representing water utilities.

To recover the cost of filtering atrazine, water companies in six states are preparing a lawsuit against the makers of atrazine, the Swiss company Syngenta.

When you compare the raw and finished water of an effective carbon filtration system, you see something like the chart below, which shows weekly levels of atrazine in river water and drinking water as measured last year in Bowling Green, Ohio.

Bowling Green added carbon filters to the water system in 2000. “We installed the filters to take care of taste and odor problems, but it [also] gets the atrazine out of there,” said Chad Johnson, assistant superintendent at the water utility. “These filters are expensive, though. Our new building cost about five million dollars.”

Every year, the utility replaces six of the 12 filter vessels at a cost of $126,000, Johnson said. He said the water plant had received $5 million in stimulus funds, which will be used to partially fund an $11 million project to install new membranes, which will remove nitrates and other chemicals from the water.

Atchison, Kan., is among water systems that do not have adequate filters in place. The chart shows weekly levels of atrazine in river water and drinking water as measured last year.

“I’ll be darned,” said Michael Matthews, the utilities director in Atchison, Kan., upon hearing that atrazine was barely being filtered from his drinking water. “That’s bad.”

Water plant managers said the economic downturn has made it even harder to convert to more effective filters. “Right now, we can’t afford anything,” said Lloyd Littrell of the Beloit, Kansas water plant, where rapid sand filters are used.

“It’s impossible to get atrazine out of the water with these filters. There’s no way to remove it,” he said. “But people need this water. We can’t just shut our doors and tell people to drink from the river.”

Stan Schafer of the Baxter Springs plant, where sand filters are used, said it was difficult to get funding for water cleanup even prior to the recession. “Shoot, I’d like another filter,” he said. “But they’re expensive. We did a $2.5 million update about three years ago and that system is falling apart.”

A civil engineering professor at Virginia Tech University, Marc Edwards, said that the cost of granular activated carbon treatment could double the total cost of drinking water treatment in some rural and poor communities.

“We are used to paying very little for tap water,” Edwards said. “It is hard for some rural communities to justify the higher costs of advanced treatment.”

“Most water systems don’t have the resources to buy a new filter,” said Kirk Leifheit, Assistant Chief of the Drinking Water Program at the Ohio EPA. “They are reporting to us needs in the billions.”

The EPA only monitors the river water and drinking water in about 150 water systems, so it is unknown whether other communities might be experiencing problems filtering atrazine. Washington, D.C., and Maryland, for example, are not part of that program.

However, atrazine is heavily used in the Maryland area, according to data from the U.S. Geological Survey. The Washington Aqueduct, which treats water from the Potomac River for about 1 million in the D.C. area, does not filter for atrazine.

Water systems in 57 cities are preparing a lawsuit against the atrazine manufacturer, the Swiss company Syngenta, to recover the cost of filtering the chemical out of drinking water. Utilities in Illinois, Ohio, Kansas, Indiana, Missouri, and Iowa are preparing to file suits in state courts. A hearing in Illinois is scheduled for Monday.

“Many of those water providers have incurred an enormous amount of expenses at a time when their tax base is shrinking,”said Stephen Tillery of the Korein Tillery law firm in St. Louis, who represents the water systems. “They’re cash strapped.”

Jere White, executive director of the Kansas City Corn Growers Association and the Kansas Grain Sorghum Producers Association, has been fighting atrazine regulation at both a local and national level since 1995. He has been vocal about opposing the class action lawsuit against Syngenta.

“The difference between them [the lawyers] and an ambulance chaser is the fact that with an ambulance chaser, you at least assume that there’s an ambulance and an injury,” White said in a phone interview.

White is also chairman of the Triazine Network which has been fighting atrazine regulation since 1995. The Network and the Corn Growers, according to White, receive regular funding from Syngenta — for travel, speaking engagements (including EPA hearings), and education, though he pointed out that it has never been earmarked specifically for “advocacy.” The Network, according to its website, “strives to keep the beneficial triazine herbicides available in the United States.”

This story was written by Danielle Ivory.

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.

For more background on the story of atrazine, watch our video: How Safe Is Atrazine?

“This is an issue of the EPA not being forthright about what they know,” said Robert Denver, a neuroendocrinologist at the University of Michigan who has served on two of the EPA’s scientific advisory panels on atrazine.

“It is the responsibility of the EPA and Syngenta to inform the public of accurate levels of atrazine in their drinking water,” said Jason Rohr, a specialist in ecotoxicology at the University of South Florida who studies the effects of atrazine in animals, and who served on the EPA’s atrazine panel this past spring.

Atrazine is sprayed on cornfields and other major crops during the summer months and can run off into rivers and streams that supply drinking water. It is also commonly used on golf courses.

Studies of atrazine’s potential links to prostate and breast cancer have been inconclusive. Based on the recommendations of its scientific advisory panels in 2000 and 2003, the EPA has listed atrazine as “not likely” to be a carcinogen but does officially consider it to be a potential hormone disruptor – a risk factor explored by researchers testing animals.

In recent years atrazine has been the subject of intensive debate among scientists about its effects on the reproductive systems of frogs and other vertebrate animals. In some studies, male frogs that were exposed to high levels of atrazine have been documented to grow eggs.

In 2004, the European Union banned atrazine because it was consistently showing up in drinking water and health officials, aware of ongoing studies, said they could not find sufficient evidence the chemical was safe.

State regulators in the U.S. test their local water systems for atrazine a maximum of four times a year, under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. In 2003, the EPA again approved atrazine for use in the United States but it made some demands of Syngenta for the re-registration.

The EPA and Syngenta negotiated a deal for more extensive monitoring of about 150 vulnerable watersheds. Under that arrangement, the company pays for weekly monitoring and sends the results to the EPA, as well as to the local water companies and most state regulators.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy organization, is expected to release a report on Monday that fully analyzes a smaller set of Syngenta’s weekly testing results — from 2003 through 2006 — and reaches conclusions similar to the Investigative Fund’s analysis of all five years of data. The group supplied an advance copy of its report to The New York Times, which today published an article about the tests and other safety questions about atrazine.

Misleading Water Bills

The EPA plans to revisit its rules for atrazine in 2011. Presently the agency requires water systems to notify their customers if the quarterly state tests average higher than 3 parts per billion (ppb) annually. According to the EPA data obtained by the Investigative Fund, cities in four states — Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Kansas — had yearly averages of atrazine violating that standard from 2003 to 2008.

In addition, more than 40 water systems in those states showed spikes of atrazine over 12 ppb – which if found in the state quarterly tests would have required the water system to notify the public within 30 days.

In none of those cases were residents notified of the high levels. In fact, the brochures in their water bills – reviewed for this report — contained misleading numbers based on the state testing.

For example, based on the quarterly tests, residents of Mt. Olive, Ill., were told that the highest level of atrazine in their drinking water last year was 2 ppb. However, the EPA data shows a spike in June of 16.47 ppb. The same year, residents of McClure, Ohio, were told that the highest level of atrazine in their drinking water was 3.4 ppb. The EPA data shows a spike in June 2008 of more than ten times that amount — 33.83 ppb.

Both of these cities’ water utilities received the weekly EPA data directly from Syngenta, but did not report it. Legally, they didn’t have to. The drinking water act only requires cities to report data collected by the state. State tests are performed infrequently, so they are vulnerable to missing the chemical spikes that consistently occur around the time the weed-killer is being applied. With weekly tests, such as those ordered by the EPA, it is all but impossible to miss these spikes.

Asked why the results of the weekly tests had not been published, the EPA’s Bradbury said “no data is withheld from the public.” Bradbury said the information has been posted on the agency’s electronic public docket. In fact, the weekly test results are one of the only items on the docket that are not posted on the site.

Instead they are listed as available only through the Freedom of Information Act.

In an on-camera interview with the Investigative Fund in June, Bradbury also said that the weekly monitoring had found no spikes in any watershed over 3 ppb. “It’s these spikes that we’re focusing on,” he said. “There have been no exceedances.” In fact, the EPA’s data recorded more than 130 spikes over 3 ppb during 2008 alone — not only in Illinois, Ohio, Indiana and Kansas, but also in Missouri, Louisiana, and Texas. Bradbury declined to elaborate on the apparent contradiction.

The EPA does not consider one-time spikes of atrazine to be dangerous, but several peer-reviewed scientific studies suggest that the chemical may be harmful, particularly to developing fetuses, in doses as low as 0.1 ppb. One study, published this year in the medical journal Acta Paediatrica, found that birth defect rates in the United States were highest for women who conceived during months when atrazine levels were spiking.

“If you happen to become pregnant in June, you care about the levels [of atrazine] in June, not in January,” said Shanna Swan, an epidemiologist at the University of Rochester who has studied atrazine’s effect on semen quality and development.

“For pregnant women, you have a critical period of a couple of weeks to a couple of months,” Swan said. “If you have a peak exposure in that period, that’s what’s relevant to the pregnancy.”

“The annual average might be relevant for [measuring the risk of] cancer, but it’s obviously not okay if they [the EPA] care about regulating for reproductive toxicity,” she said.

Had the EPA, the state or the local water companies made the weekly testing results public, residents could have made different choices about their water consumption, such as using inexpensive household carbon water filters or bottled water.

Asked about the discrepancies between the state and weekly EPA data, an EPA spokeswoman, Deb Berlin, said in an e-mail, “Consumers need accurate information to make health decisions for themselves and their families. EPA and state authorities would be interested in knowing about any situation where a public water system is not reporting accurate information to their customers as required by the Safe Drinking Water Act.”

‘I’d Do More Testing’

Under the terms of its 2003 agreement with the EPA, Syngenta for the past five years has been monitoring water weekly in 10 states, with special emphasis on Illinois, Ohio, and Kansas.

This is how the EPA’s testing program generally works: Syngenta sends boxes containing two tubes to about 150 water utilities. During the summer growing season when atrazine levels are likely to spike, water operators at these utilities take samples on a weekly basis. Every week, they fill one test tube with river water and one test tube with drinking water. They ship these samples to Syngenta labs, where the company analyzes them. Syngenta then reports the data to the EPA, as well as to the water utilities themselves and the state regulators.

Testing at the state level is much more modest. Up to four times a year, but as infrequently as once a year, water utilities ship one test tube filled with drinking water to their state regulator. The state analyzes the water and reports the data back to the water utility. This limited data is reported to the public, as required by federal right-to-know laws.

There are vast discrepancies between the two data sets. The Huffington Post Investigative Fund contacted water plant operators to see if they had noticed.

Some local water officials said they provided weekly samples to Syngenta but did not realize the company was acting under a requirement from the EPA intended to supply more data as a safeguard for their drinking water. They indicated they paid little attention to the results of the tests.

Robert Leonhardt, the water plant manager in Mt. Olive, Ill., received the weekly EPA data but said he was not aware of any of the spikes during the last five years, including a high reading of 16.47 ppb. He said the weekly testing was not a central part of his work. “This is a side thing,” he said.

Steve Kubler, the water plant manager in Chanute, Kan., initially said of the state and weekly tests: “The numbers match up pretty well. I’ve never noticed a discrepancy.” He added, “If I did, I’d do more testing.”

According to that data, his town of Chanute recorded one reading of 6.51 ppb last year. The city reported a high of 1.4 ppb to the public. Asked about the numbers, Kubler said, “Look, what I do with Syngenta — it’s in excess of what I have to do. I don’t know even know why they’re testing.”

In Illinois, Roger Selburg of the state’s Environmental Protection Agency said that he looks at the weekly data. But he said he does not use it to determine violations, nor does he report any of it to the public, because he does not know if the data are reliable or accurate. “We are only required to report the state data,” he said.

Other water officials expressed some surprise and dismay about the levels of atrazine that showed up in the weekly tests. Osawatomie, Kan., showed a spike of 8.70 ppb in May 2008, although the city reported to the public a high of 0.89 ppb for the year. “That’s a pretty good spike,” said Marty Springer, water plant manager at Osawatomie’s plant. “And no one knows about it.”

McClure, Ohio, showed a spike of 33.83 ppb in June 2008, but the town told its residents the highest level that year was 3.4 ppb. “If we had been using Syngenta’s data, obviously we would have hit the maximum contaminant level,” said Christopher Diem, superintendent at McClure’s water utility.

In Baxter Springs, Kan., atrazine spiked above 11 ppb in May 2008 while the town told its residents the highest level during the year was 1.3 pbb.

“We may have passed the quarterly tests for the state, but we’re not passing them weekly or daily,” said Stan Schafer, a water plant operator in Baxter Springs. “Somebody’s got to do something,” he said. “I live here. I drink the water. My parents drink the water. My kids drink the water. I just try to keep it clean.”

Schafer said he regularly receives atrazine testing data from Syngenta, along with the results from the state, but he doesn’t think he is allowed to report it to the public.

That fits with the impression that Kansas state health officials gave Lloyd Littrell, director of utilities in Beloit, about the weekly test results from Syngenta.

“I kept track of those numbers for a couple of years, but I stopped,” Littrell said. “The state of Kansas would not let us report the results. We had several conversations about it. They said it wasn’t certified by the state or something. I stopped trying. If we can’t use it, what’s the point of me looking at it?”

According to the EPA data, atrazine spiked above 20 ppb in May 2008, but Beloit reported a high of 2 ppb to the public.

“It concerns me,” Littrell said. “If it’s an actual health hazard and they know and the EPA knows it’s getting in water — I can’t believe they’re not doing anything about it.”

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See also: Huffington Post Investigative Fund also obtained access to the EPA’s data on atrazine levels for about 150 community watersheds in ten states from 2003 to 2008.

Reprinted courtesy the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. The article was first posted here.