I understand theres an issue with the herbicide atrazine showing up in dangerous quantities in drinking water, mostly throughout the central U.S. Why is this happening and whats being done about it? – Marcus Gerde, Spokane, WA

Atrazine is an herbicide that is widely used across the U.S. and elsewhere to control both broadleaf and grassy weeds in large-scale agricultural operations growing corn, sorghum, sugar cane and other foods. While its use is credited with increasing agricultural yields by as much as six percent, there is a dark side. The nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) reports that atrazine exposure has been shown to impair the reproductive systems of amphibians and mammals, and has been linked to cancer in both laboratory animals and humans. Male frogs exposed to minute doses of atrazine can develop female sex characteristics, including hermaphroditism and the presence of eggs in the testes. Researchers suspect that these effects are amplified when atrazine and other harmful agricultural chemicals are employed together.

Atrazines wide use makes its impacts that much scarier. NRDC reports that it is the most commonly detected pesticide or herbicide in U.S. waters, with the highest levels found in Indiana, Missouri and Nebraska. The Southeast also faces atrazine overload issues. What irks many public health advocates is that, even though study after study implicates atrazine in a long list of environmental and health problems, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) still allows farms to apply 75 million pounds of it each year. The European Union banned atrazine in 2004 due to persistent groundwater pollution there.

Critics of the EPA accuse the agency of selling out the health of the American people so industrial agricultural companies can make big profits. Indeed, in 2003, the EPA estimated a total annual economic impact, if atrazine were to be banned, of over $2 billion, including a yield loss plus increased herbicide cost averaging $28 per acre. In 2006, the EPA concluded that triazine herbicides (such as atrazine) posed “no harm that would result to the general U.S. population, infants, children or other…consumers.”

In light of the EPAs refusal to consider a ban on atrazine, NRDC and other groups have taken up the cause of educating consumers about the dangers posed by our national addiction to dangerous herbicides and pesticides, and lobbying elected officials to add their voices. President Obama has promised to take a hard look at atrazine, but it remains to be seen how long it will be before any such review takes place.

Of course, organic farmers arent waiting around for Obama to ban atrazine. By planting diverse crops, rotating them regularly and employing other age-old agricultural techniques, a new generation of American farmers is learning that expensive chemicals may not be able to boost their yields enough to warrant the high financial and environmental costs associated with constant chemical spraying.

As for you and I, the best way to prevent ingesting atrazine with our tap water is to buy a water filter that employs activated charcoal. NRDC publishes a free list of water filter recommendations on its Simple Steps website. If youre on a well, NRDC recommends having its water tested annually for atrazine and other contaminants. Even bottled water producers may not filter out atrazine from their source aquifers, so filtering at the tap is the only way consumers can be sure to remove it along with other contaminants.

CONTACTS: NRDC, www.nrdc.org; Simple Steps, www.simplesteps.org; EPA, www.epa.gov.

More than 40 years after the well-known one-liner, “Just One Word: Plastics” from Mike Nichols classic movie The Graduate, the presence of plastics in society has evolved from a manufacturing wonder material to a hazardous consumer concern.

Petroleum is in almost every product that we use in our daily lives. In fact, plastics use as much of the imported petroleum as the jet fuel industry does (approximately 8 percent each). It takes about 100 millions years for the earth to produce just one drop of oil, but it takes most people about 45 minutes to use a disposable cup, only to be sent off to a landfill for 500 years.

Cereplast, Inc., a pioneering renewable plastics company, designs and manufactures proprietary bio-based, sustainable plastics created from their cutting-edge breakthrough technology. This technology produces bio-based resins used to replace a significant portion of the petroleum-based additives in plastics by using natural material from starches such as tapioca, corn, wheat and potatoes.

For example, Safety 1st-Nature Next, is using Cereplast resins in their new line of bio-plastic products including the 3-in1 potty, booster seats, bathtubs and stools.

Mr. Frederic Scheer, founder and CEO of Cereplast and an 18-year veteran of the bio-plastics industry is spoke to The Green Dove about bio-plastics and how his company is busy making the resins for products ranging from plastic cutlery (they provided plastic foodservice items at the Salt Lake City Olympics), to product packaging and household items.

What do most people not know about traditional plastics that wrap much of their supermarket-purchased food?
90% of all wrappers used to wrap the fruits and vegetables in supermarkets are made in Asia, meaning that the life cycle assessment does not show such products as environmental-friendly. The safety might be also questionable, especially from plastics made in certain Asian countries that do not have the same stringent regulations on toxicity and health concerns.

How does the wrapping affect/contaminate our food?
Toxic chemicals, such as BPA, may be found in some plastics. Those chemicals then can leech out into the food and other plastic container and therefore contaminate it. Now so far science is very divided and no-one can confirm that it is dangerous. But in such a doubt Cereplast policy is to say lets abstain. Cereplasts resins contain no BPA.

Do you believe our throw-away culture will ever end?
I do believe that this culture will eventually phase out. I think it is important to remember that we live in a fast-paced world, so disposable products not only appeal to us because they are easy and require little to no effort, but they are also a quick solution. I am confident that the world is moving toward sustainability. It is a very slow process. But, we are using reusable shopping bags now and starting to bring lunch in the same container to work each day. The desire to become more eco-friendly is definitely there, it is just a question as to when this plan of action will actually start taking action, and I believe that it already has. Cereplast is informing consumers of the importance of taking responsibility for their products and methods of disposal. We are moving forward and rewriting the definition of “plastic.”

What is your background in the plastics industry?
Oh, I’ve been in the biodegradable plastics industry for more than two decades. In 1994 I became involved in the industry through Montedison SpA, a large chemical conglomerate operating Novamont SpA, an Italian resin manufacturer and research company. I could see even then, that the demand for biodegradable products would expand rapidly by the end of the decade, so I secured the exclusive distribution rights in North America for Mater-Bi„