A few days before Thanksgiving (convenient timing, that) the Minnesota Department of Agriculture announced that it would make no changes to State rules governing the use of atrazine, an endocrine disrupting pesticide we’ve written a lot about here at Switchboard.
The special review of atrazine initiated by Minnesota was welcome, but it’s been pretty clear for some time that the State wasn’t prepared to seriously engage in the reality of either the science or economics that further restricting atrazine use would require. Minnesota’s brief announcement, timed for minimum public visibility, and its anemic response to the comments of NRDC and other environmental groups, was simply the coup de grâce.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, however, is still undertaking its own review of atrazine. Hopefully that one will fare better.