"California regulators said Friday they intend to designate the widely used weed killer atrazine as a known carcinogen, a move that contrasts with the opinion of federal regulators."
"California regulators said Friday they intend to designate the widely used weed killer atrazine as a known carcinogen, a move that contrasts with the opinion of federal regulators.
The California Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) said it will list atrazine as “known to the state to cause cancer under a provision of the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986” referred to as Proposition 65.
OEHHA said it was giving people the opportunity to comment on the plan until Nov. 9.
The state action comes after the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified atrazine — the second most widely used herbicide in the US after glyphosate — as “probably carcinogenic to humans,” in November after a lengthy review of years of scientific studies.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) dismissed the IARC classification last year, deriding the team of cancer scientists and echoing atrazine maker Syngenta in its criticism is saying IARC has “a long history of being severely misguided.”"
