Let’s see. If a potentially toxic weedkiller were polluting your drinking water, would you want the EPA to ignore independent studies about this or prefer that the agency just follow reports carried out with funding from companies that have a financial stake in this product. I’m guessing that you’d pick the independent scientific data for your icecubes and the water in your kid’s sippy cup. But alas, that’s not how the Environmental Protection Agency is making that call, according to a frightening new report from the Huffington Post Investigative Fund about atrazine, a common herbicide. “An estimated 76 million pounds of the chemical are sprayed on corn and other fields in the U.S. each year, sometimes ending up in rivers, streams, and drinking water supplies,” the Huffington Post reported.
The EPA isn’t the only part of our government dragging its feet. As Sierra Club Michael Brune explained in a recent OtherWords op-ed, “Congress must move quickly to protect streams and lakes from more destruction and pollution” because of the Supreme Court—which in turn has issued rulings that made it unclear how the EPA should handle this issue.
