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Nathan Donley Profile picture
@Nathan_Donley
Nov 15, 2019 • 8 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
In a memorandum quietly posted to Regulations.gov yesterday, EPA has decided that it will raise the allowable level of #atrazine in water bodies like rivers, streams and lakes by 50%.

Yes, atrazine…

biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-r…
This is in response to Syngenta - the maker of atrazine - and Big Corn, who were furious that the Obama EPA actually proposed to reduce the allowable levels of atrazine in water by 3-fold in 2016 to protect aquatic life like frogs, fish and salamanders.
The current level is 10 ppb on a 60-day average. In a 2016 scientific analysis, the EPA proposed to reduce it to 3.4 ppb, a level that every single atrazine use would exceed. The Trump EPA is going to raise it to 15 ppb.
Atrazine levels above this threshold require mitigations to bring the water body back into compliance. Below, this level, no action is required.
This protection level for the environment also protects humans by reducing the level of atrazine in waters that are used as drinking water sources for people. This move will likely lead to an increase in atrazine in drinking water, particularly in the Midwest.
@ewg has done great work documenting the number of people who currently have atrazine in their drinking water.

30 million people in 28 states!! A number sure to rise, if this proposal is finalized

ewg.org/research/hormo…
The EPA’s about-face on atrazine comes after Jeff Sands, a former Syngenta lobbyist, was appointed as a senior agricultural advisor to then-EPA administrator Scott Pruitt in October 2017.
Sands received a waiver from Trump’s pledge to forbid political appointees from working on issues involving former employers or clients.

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More from @Nathan_Donley

Nathan Donley Profile picture
Jun 21, 2022
The House Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy just released an investigation into seresto that found the flea collar should be taken off the market

A lot of new info in the report that had not been reported on previously

I'll sum it up 🧵

investigatemidwest.org/2022/06/15/con…
Here’s the report. It takes you through the approval of the collar in 2012 to the present. It provides examples of EPA failing to stand up to an industry that feels so entitled, that even the mention of commonsense restrictions was met with derision

oversight.house.gov/sites/democrat…
We have a lot more detail of what EPA was seeing and saying – stuff that was redacted in our FOIA documents

Seresto had 163% more incidents labeled either “Death” or “Major” than the 2nd most dangerous product, and 428% more than the 3rd
Read 17 tweets
Nathan Donley Profile picture
Jul 20, 2021
As someone who is not opposed to genetic engineering but often at odds with how it is currently used in agriculture, I think we need more nuanced looks at GMOs in the media.

Instead we get this

nytimes.com/2021/07/20/mag…
In academia I genetically engineered non-pathogenic bacterial cells and human cells to better understand the genetic basis of chronic diseases like cancer. I understand how genetic engineering works and the promises it can hold, particularly in the biomedical field
It’s easy to find some small company that genuinely wants to better people’s nutrition through genetic engineering and use that as a poster child

But it's a disservice to not adequately explain “what is” instead of “what could be” in some fairytale world that does not exist
Read 10 tweets
Nathan Donley Profile picture
Sep 24, 2020
We’re in the middle of a public health crisis and the pesticide industry and USDA are working to weaken international guidance aimed at making sure lifesaving medicines still work in the future

How and why is the pesticide industry doing this? 👇

nytimes.com/2020/09/24/hea…
For starters, medically important antibiotics are used as pesticides to kill bacteria on crops. Fungicides, similar to antifungals used in humans, are also widely used as pesticides

The more you use them, the more likely it is that fungi or bacteria will become resistant
Increasingly, there is worry that the overuse of these medicines as pesticides can lead to antibiotic and antifungal resistance in human pathogens and cause these medicines to not work when our lives depend on it
Read 18 tweets
Nathan Donley Profile picture
Sep 23, 2020
There's a small bright spot in EPA’s atrazine re-approval

Thanks to a legal settlement by conservation groups, atrazine will be prohibited in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the North Mariana Islands

biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-r…
This is an incredible conservation win as these places are biodiversity hotspots. Use of atrazine will also be prohibited along roadsides, in forests and on X-mas trees in the continental U.S.

The harm from atrazine’s re-approval is immeasurable, but these areas will be spared
This is being billed by the EPA and industry as “voluntary” measures they are taking, but there is nothing voluntary about this.

They had to do this as the absolute minimum step of beginning to come into compliance with the Endangered Species Act.
Read 5 tweets
Nathan Donley Profile picture
Sep 22, 2020
The ecological risk assessment for #chlorpyrifos was released today. The career scientists at EPA found that invertebrates could be exposed to more than 8,600-fold more than the level known to harm them

content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USAEP…
For mammals it's 1,900-fold more than the level known to cause harm. For birds it's 380-fold. For fish it's 160-fold.
The Fish and Wildlife Service found that #chlorpyrifos would put 1,400 endangered species at risk of extinction?

No wonder

nytimes.com/2019/03/26/us/…
Read 5 tweets
Nathan Donley Profile picture
Sep 21, 2020
I need to do something to stop stewing over the supreme court, so I'm just going to tell the story of how the endocrine disrupting pesticide #atrazine went from being on its last leg in the U.S. to being rubberstamped for the foreseeable future

biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-r…
No one is going to tell this story because there are a thousand other scandals happening right now and because it's super wonky.

Unlike a lot of the big environmental rollbacks that will hopefully be reversed after the election, this will likely fall under the radar
In 2016, under the Obama admin., EPA put out a devastating eco risk assessment of atrazine basically saying that its use has to be scaled back dramatically or there will be serious environmental consequences

In 50 years, this was the most hard-lined position EPA had taken
Read 13 tweets

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