One of the nation’s largest environmental groups is suing the Environmental Protection Agency in an attempt to get the agency to ban a pesticide widely used by farmers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
One of the nation’s largest environmental groups is suing the Environmental Protection Agency
in an attempt to get the agency to ban a pesticide widely used by farmers. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
The Natural Resources Defense Council is suing the EPA because it says the agency has not done
enough to determine whether the herbicide Atrazine is linked to some forms of cancer. The
environmental group has been on a campaign for some time now, trying to get the herbicide
banned in the U.S.
Atrazine is found in many water sources and has even been found in rain water at rates above the
EPA standards. But, Atrazine is a very popular herbicide, often used by corn farmers.
Erik Olson is an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. He says farmers can use
something else.
“There are alternative practices, methods that you can use to grow corn where you don’t have to
use as many herbicides or in some cases, really, any herbicides simply by changing your
practices.”
But other herbicides are more expensive and other practices might mean not as much corn
harvested on each acre.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.