Why the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Should Place an Immediate Ban on the Use and Production of Atrazine
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Save the Frogs

Comments Related to the EPA’s Notice “Docket Identification (ID) Number EPA-HQ-OPP-2011- 0586; FRL–8887–6; Federal Register Vol. 76, No. 178, September 14, 2011 Page 56754]

Submitted by: Kerry Kriger, Ph.D. SAVE THE FROGS! Founder, Executive Director, & Ecologist 303 Potrero Street #51 Santa Cruz, CA 95060 [email protected]

On behalf of: The staff, volunteers and members of SAVE THE FROGS! (www.savethefrogs.com), a 501(c)(3) public charity whose mission is to protect amphibian populations and to promote a society that respects and appreciates nature and wildlife.

Deliver to: Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) Regulatory Public Docket (7502P), Environmental Protection Agency 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW. Washington, DC 20460–0001

Dear Administrator Lisa Jackson and the USEPA Office of Pesticide Programs,

Amphibians are rapidly disappearing in America and worldwide. As the Founder & Executive Director of SAVE THE FROGS! (www.savethefrogs.com), America’s first and only public charity dedicated to amphibian conservation, I represent all of the United States’ amphibian species as well as all Americans who rely on the multitude of ecosystem services amphibians provide. I also write as a citizen who seeks a clean America in which to live: an America where I am not afraid to drink the tap water or to eat the food being served in restaurants or supermarkets; an America where pesticides do not rain down out of the sky on top of me; an America where our wildlife do not get deformed by the chemicals we introduce into their habitats without their consent.

I urge you to place an immediate federal ban on the use and production of Atrazine, a heavily used herbicide and a known endocrine-disruptor that is already banned in the European Union. The EPA’s mission to protect human and environmental health will not be fulfilled so long as Atrazine continues to contaminate our land and water.

Numerous peer-reviewed scientific publications from laboratories around the world have demonstrated that Atrazine is extremely harmful to environmental and public health. Atrazine is particularly harmful to amphibians, many of which spend a portion or all of their lives in water. Gravity inevitably brings the 2 billion pounds of pesticides that get sprayed on American crops each year directly to the water bodies where amphibians live and breed. Amphibians have permeable skin that readily absorbs these pollutants. Atrazine has been shown to cause immunosuppression, hermaphroditism and even complete sex reversal in male frogs at concentrations as low as 2.5 parts per billion. As humans and frogs share half their DNA, it is unfathomable to think that Atrazine is harmless to humans or the other species with whom we inhabit this planet.

The vast majority of Americans are exposed to Atrazine via drinking water, ground water, rainfall and our food supply, so it is not surprising that Atrazine has indeed been linked to increased cancer rates in human communities surrounding heavy Atrazine usage.

In the interest of public and environmental health and to create a healthy planet, I urge you to take advantage of your privileged role in government and do what is best for the environment and the people of the United States of America: place an immediate federal ban on the use and production of Atrazine. Please find an abundance of supporting data in the pages that follow.

Thank you for protecting human and environmental health by banning Atrazine.

Sincerely,
Kerry Kriger, Ph.D.
November 6, 2011

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