Atrazine: How Safe is Atrazine?
Atrazine is one of the most studied molecules in history nearly 7,000 studies attest to its safety.
- That's why the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) once again approved it as safe to use in 2006 after a dozen years of study.
- Here's the critical fact. The latest scientific studies clearly show that no one has, will or can ingest enough atrazine via drinking water to adversely affect their health.
- In fact, it is not physically possible to dissolve enough atrazine in water to have any impact on hormones or human health.
In order to err on the side of caution, EPA sets an extremely conservative limit of atrazine in drinking water of 3 parts per billion (ppb) on an annual average. Three parts per billion is like 3 tablespoons in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
A 150-pound adult could drink more than 11,000 gallons of water a day every day for 70 years at 3 ppb, and you still would not reach a level of exposure shown to have any effect in laboratory studies. What does that look like? An average sized swimming pool is about 11,000 gallons.
Other health authorities allow even higher average limits:
- Australia's standard is 40 parts per billion.
- And in 2010, after reviewing the safety data, the World Health Organization raised its recommended limit from 2 to 100 parts per billion.