Atrazine: Syngenta's Herbicide Doesn't Just Poison Frogs - It Could Give You Cancer

F William Engdahl | Ecologist | June 2, 2014

Tyrone Hayes has fought a 15-year battle with Syngenta following his discovery that its herbicide Atrazine scrambles sex in frogs, writes F William Engdahl. Now he wants to know - is Atrazine the cause of the US's 2-fold reproductive cancer excess among Blacks and Hispanics?

We have already reported on Gottfried Glöckner and the damage that Syngenta GMO maize did to his cows and land, and the shocking details of the tactics the company used to silence him.  This story of a Berkeley University biology professor who conducted independent research on the Syngenta herbicide Atrazine, applied mainly to corn, gives more cause for alarm about the real dangers of patented GMO seeds, and the patented herbicides paired to the seeds.

Atrazine is one of the most widely used herbicides in the USA and Australia. It was banned in the European Union in 2004 because of persistent groundwater contamination.  Even though the US Government continues to allow Atrazine to be used on crops, especially corn and sugarbeets in the United States, the government's own Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) admitted that as of 2001, Atrazine was the most commonly detected pesticide contaminating drinking water in the United States.

Already in 2007 in a report the government agency wrote that "Drinking water from a contaminated groundwater or surface water source can be a significant medium of exposure for children."  The EPA report also stated: "The primary target of atrazine in humans and animals is the endocrine (hormonal) system. Studies thus far suggest that atrazine is an endocrine disruptor; an agent that has been shown to alter the natural hormonal system in animals...