Pesticides, buffer zones and disclosure requirements are all issues that have engendered an active and often passionate debate at the county and state level for the last several years. At least six bills were submitted this legislative term on these issues alone.
One pesticide that has received a lot of attention in this debate is atrazine and whether it is safe.
I say yes, atrazine is safe for our islands — and here’s why.
Atrazine is an herbicide used in Hawaii and elsewhere to control weeds in pineapple, sugar cane and seed corn, as well as around highways and buildings. First registered in 1958, it is one of the most commonly used herbicides in the world.
From a public health perspective, we have a responsibility to ensure the health and safety of the most vulnerable people in our society: our children, the elderly, the infirm. This is what the federal Environmental Protection Agency has done as part of its pesticide registration process.
After conducting numerous safety reviews evaluating a wide range of human health, environmental and ecological scientific data and research results, the EPA can assure the public that atrazine poses "no harm to the general U.S. population, infants, children, or other major identifiable subgroups of consumers."
The EPA also found it safe for our lakes, oceans and streams when properly applied.
The EPA is confident in this assessment because atrazine is exceptionally well-researched, with more than 7,000 studies to date — a robust data set by any measure.
And it’s not only the EPA that has determined that atrazine is safe. An international group of scientists at the World Health Organization — the U.N.’s public health authority established to protect people’s health — concluded that atrazine did not cause cancer, was not genotoxic and was not a danger to fetal development.
As for our aina: A number of studies in Hawaii over the last several years show that our islands’ people are exposed to little, if any, atrazine. In fact, atrazine use in Hawaii has trended significantly lower over the last several decades.
In 2013, the Legislature commissioned a report to evaluate environmental data for groundwater (including drinking water), surface water and air.
The report found that between 2010 and October 2013, there were no confirmed cases of atrazine exposure on the islands. The report also found that since 1993, when detected, atrazine concentrations in drinking water never exceeded EPA’s very conservative drinking water limits — a limit set to protect the health of our society’s most vulnerable given a lifetime’s exposure.
A survey of groundwater, surface water and air environmental data showed similar results.
Sampling by the University of Hawaii on Kauai found no atrazine in our air.
Surface water monitoring on Oahu, Maui and Hawaii island showed trace levels of atrazine, significantly below the drinking water limit.
"Based on this review of all available environmental data," the report stated, "there were no exceedances of health-based or ecological regulatory standards for atrazine."
In 2013-14, the Hawaii departments of Health and Agriculture designed and implemented a study to sample surface waters and sediments statewide. They found that, when detected, no samples exceeded the drinking water limits. In fact, the majority of atrazine detections were at trace levels, lower than the most stringent aquatic or human health guideline values.
So let’s look at all the evidence: The EPA and WHO determined atrazine to be safe after evaluating the extensive body of atrazine research. Atrazine in the Hawaii environment, when detected, is below various regulatory standards and often at trace levels.
Therefore, atrazine is safe for our islands.
