If Atrazine Feminizes Frogs, What is it Doing to Us?

Our basic needs require us to eat food and drink water in order to survive. We have the choice of what we put into our bodies, but do we have the choice of what gets sprayed, if at all, onto our food before we receive it? No. 

Atrazine is one of the most common herbicides used to kill a wide range of weeds. Created by Syngenta, a global biotechnology company that produces agrochemicals and seeds, it is used on crops such as corn, citrus, soybean, sugarcane and grapes(1).  Its prevalence in the food industry has brought question to its effects on the environment, as well as our bodies. The effects of atrazine have most notably been found in amphibian wildlife, as runoff water has made its way into various environments. As a result of runoff water entering these environments, amphibians such as frogs, have begun to show physiological evidence of endocrine disruption.

Endocrine disrupters are identified as chemicals that are known to mimic and interfere with the bodies natural hormone levels. By interfering with hormones such as estrogens (female sex hormones) and androgens (male sex hormone), it can cause developmental malformations, interference with reproduction, disturbances in the immune and nervous system function, and in the common cases of atrazine,  feminization of male organisms(2). Cases of effects in humans are currently few and far between, though studies are showing an increase in premature delivery by women that are exposed to atrazine in agricultural farming.

Figure 1: Developmental  amphibian malformations caused by atrazine

Alternatives to the use of atrazine include the use of cover crops, flame weeding, and a derivative of atrazine known as mesotrione(2). Cover crops, such as rye shown in figure 2, are a natural way of suffocating the production of weeds by laying it on the soil surface to prevent weed seeds from completing their life cycle and reproducing.

Figure 2: Cover crop in Northwestern South Dakota

With atrazine being inexpensive and effective, the controversies of its use being banned in the US and North America are in the hands of the Environmental Protection Agency and landowners choice of crop management. 

References
(1) Atrazine-History and Uses. (n.d.). Retrieved March 08, 2017, from http://www.toxipedia.org/display/toxipedia/Atrazine - History and Use

(2) Public Health Statement for Atrazine. (2015, January 21). Retrieved March 08, 2017, from https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/phs/phs.asp?id=336&tid=59#bookmark01

(3) Image source figure 2: By USDA NRCS South Dakota - Cover Crops in Northwestern South Dakota 2015, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48210676