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Washington, DC, Oct. 14— The Environmental Protection Agency is failing to protect the public from the cancer threat posed by the most widely used weed-killer in the nation, says NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). In a legal motion filed today, the group charged that the agency violated the law by refusing to fully evaluate the links between cancer and the weed-killer, called atrazine. NRDC asked the court to force the EPA to solicit an independent scientific review of the possible links between all cancers and the chemical, which the agency was required to do under a court order issued two years ago.

“Atrazine poses a cancer risk for millions of Americans,” said NRDC Senior Attorney Erik Olson. “Instead of protecting the public, the EPA is ignoring a court order mandating an independent scientific review of its unfounded conclusion that atrazine does not cause cancer. This is yet another example of the Bush administration’s cozy relationship with the chemical industry at the expense of public health.”

Studies of people exposed to atrazine indicate that the chemical may be linked to a number of cancers, including prostate cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Animal lab studies also have linked it to certain cancers and hormonal problems that could disrupt reproductive and developmental processes.

At least six European nations already have either banned the chemical or severely restricted its use, and last week it was reported that the European Union will withdraw its approval of atrazine because of health and environmental concerns. According to press accounts, the 15-nation EU will ban atrazine within the next 18 months (see the Financial Times of London’s October 13 story). In response, the principle manufacturer of atrazine, Syngenta, issued a press release stating it already was selling an alternative to atrazine in Italy and Germany and would make it available in other European markets.

“The 15 nations of the European Union reviewed the science and banned atrazine — and there are alternatives — but our own government is sitting idly by, exposing Americans unnecessarily to this dangerous chemical,” said Olson.

In the United States, 60 million to 70 million pounds of atrazine are applied annually to fields, golf courses and lawns, and the EPA has found widespread atrazine contamination in US waterways. The most recent data indicate that more than one million Americans drink from water supplies contaminated with atrazine at potentially harmful levels. (For information about atrazine in drinking water, see NRDC’s June 2003 backgrounder.)

NRDC called on the EPA to ban atrazine in June 2002 after studies showed it poses a significant threat to public health. In today’s motion, the group asked the federal district court in San Francisco to compel EPA to comply with a consent decree — which the court had approved — requiring it to solicit an independent review by the agency’s Scientific Advisory Panel of the links between all cancers and atrazine. A court hearing on the motion is scheduled for December 4.

This case goes back to 1999, when NRDC and a coalition of farm-worker and other groups sued the EPA, alleging that the agency had missed its deadlines to review the safety of pesticides for children mandated by the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996. In 2001, theEPA and NRDC filed a consent decree requiring the agency to review the safety of atrazine and several other high-risk pesticides by specific deadlines. That decree was incorporated into a court order late that year. In early 2003, the EPA asked for a deadline extension for reviewing atrazine, and NRDC agreed. The modified decree was incorporated into a new court order, which required EPA to ask the agency’s independent Scientific Advisory Panel for a full review of all cancer data for atrazine. This summer, however, the EPA told NRDC it had decided to forego the review. NRDC objected, pointing out that this would violate the court order. The EPA responded by asking the advisory panel to review only prostate cancer data, ignoring other cancers, which violated the court order.

On Aug. 29, the Scientific Advisory Panel issued a report criticizing the EPA for ignoring atrazine’s links to other cancers, stating that it might be “misleading” to review only prostate cancer data. The advisory panel further demanded that the EPA review data on atrazine’s links to all cancers, and chastised the agency for flatly asserting there is no link between prostate cancer and atrazine.

“Even EPA’s own science advisors are blasting it for refusing to do a careful review of the connection between atrazine and all types of cancer,” said NRDC Senior Scientist Jennifer Sass. “There is mounting evidence that atrazine may cause a wide variety of health problems, including several types of cancer, but the EPA apparently doesn’t want to know. It won’t stand up to pressure from the pesticide industry and agribusiness to do nothing.”

In a related case, NRDC sued the EPA in August, charging that the agency has unlawfully ignored atrazine’s effects on endangered species. The EPA has concluded that atrazine may harm endangered fish, reptiles, amphibians, mussels, and the aquatic plant life that provides habitat for them, but it has failed to address the problem.

Source: Natural Resources Defense Council

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Oct. 17— British Scientists delivered a massive blow to the case for genetically modified crops yesterday when they showed in a trail-blazing study that growing them could harm the environment.

Their findings, which will spark controversy around the world, are likely to present a serious obstacle to Tony Blair in his desire to bring GM technology to Britain, and will be viewed with concern and anger in the United States, home of GM technology. They could ultimately lead to a ban on growing the crops concerned throughout the European Union.

Certainly the chances of GM crops being planted commercially in Britain itself look much less likely after the discovery, in the three-year study, that farmland wildlife is harmed much more by the extra-powerful weedkillers used with GM crops than by herbicides used in conventional agriculture.

The results of the study came after a succession of reports to the government this summer, all questioning the economics, the science, and the public acceptability of GM, and will be seen in some quarters as the clinching argument against GM commercialization in Britain.

Michael Meacher, who as environment minister set up the study in 1998 and presided over it for most of its duration before being sacked in the last government reshuffle, writes in today’s Independent that the government’s strategy over GM “is unraveling fast.”

The biotech industry, by contrast, put a brave face on yesterday’s findings. “None of the studies published this year supports the banning of any GM crops,” said Paul Rylott, of the industry’s umbrella body, the Agricultural Biotechnology Council.

The government itself kept its cards close to its chest yesterday, with Margaret Beckett, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, saying she would “carefully reflect” on the results.

It will be months, perhaps more than a year, before a final decision is taken, which will almost certainly be at a European level. But whatever happens there is little doubt that there will be continued American pressure on Blair to push GM technology forward, despite widespread public opposition, which has now — for the first time — been backed up with serious science.

The three-year study, set up by the government itself and known as the Farm-Scale Evaluations (FSE), compared what happened to biodiversity in the fields during the growth of three GM crops — sugar beet, oilseed rape and maize — with what happened during the growth of their conventional, non-GM equivalents in adjoining fields.

The GM crops had all been genetically engineered to be herbicide-tolerant — to be unaffected by so-called “broad-spectrum” weedkillers, very deadly chemicals such as Monsanto’s Roundup or Bayer’s Liberty, which are too strong to be used in conventional crop fields as they would kill everything, including the crop plants themselves.

With two out of three crops tested — beet and oilseed rape — far fewer plants, seeds and insects such as bees and butterflies were left in the GM fields after the application of weedkiller than in the non-GM fields, the study found. In the beet fields, there were 1.3 times as many weeds and three times as many seeds left for birds and insects to feed on in the conventional fields compared with the GM fields, with 1.4 times as many butterflies. In the oilseed rape fields there were 1.7 times as many weeds, five times more seeds and 1.3 times as many butterflies.

With a third crop, maize, the reverse trend was true, with more biodiversity left in the GM fields — but the researchers themselves put a question mark over this result yesterday, saying it might have to be revised. This is because the herbicide that was used with the conventional maize, atrazine, is itself so deadly and long-lasting that it is being banned in Europe — and so the comparison is potentially flawed.

The researchers say the study is the first large-scale field trial of a novel agricultural system before it has been put into practice. It involved more 200 sites, from south-west England to northern Scotland, and more than 4,000 site visits; in the course of it more than half a million seeds and more than 1.5 million insects and other invertebrates were counted.

Peer-reviewed and published by the Royal Society, the results confirm, over eight scientific papers, conservationists’ concerns that the GM crops scheduled for growth in Britain would mean yet another blow for the insects, flowers and birds that have already been decimated by more than 30 years of intensive farming.

English Nature, the government’s wildlife and conservation adviser, had pressed for the trials to be set up in 1998. Brian Johnson, English Nature’s biotechnology adviser and the man who headed the call, said the results confirmed the agency’s fears.

“The results confirm our long-held concerns that some GM herbicide-tolerant crops could further intensify arable farming and harm wildlife,” he said. “If these crops were grown commercially in the UK, we now know that there would be further declines in farmland wildlife.”

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said many farmland birds relied on weed seeds for their survival, and the trials had shown that GM beet and GM spring oilseed rape reduced seed numbers by up to 80 per cent, compared with conventional beet and oilseed rape.

The results will now go to another government GM advisory body, which will examine them and offer ministers its own advice.

The first large-scale trials of GM crops anywhere in the world involved tests on three crops, lasted three years, and cost over $9 million. The findings showed a significant impact on wildlife.

GM Oilseed Rape

The tests showed a fivefold decrease in flora and a 25 percent reduction in butterflies. There were also fewer seeds for wildlife to eat.

GM Sugar Beet

Reduction in wild plants growing in fields and 40 percent fewer flowers at field margins.

GM Maize

There was an 82 percent increase in seeds and more insects were present. But there are doubts about the weedkiller used.