Environmental Health Center

EnvironMinute Health Scripts

The American Midwest is often called the corn belt. Some people might call it the pesticide belt, too. One pesticide is flowing out of the cornfields and into the mouths of babes. Toxic tap water on today's EnvironMinute. [:12]

Each spring, 50 million acres of Midwestern cornfields are treated with the weed killer atrazine. Local water treatment plants try to keep atrazine out, but some of it ends up in the tap water of millions of Midwesterners. It ends up in baby bottles, too. In 40 towns, babies reach their legal lifetime limit for atrazine exposure by their first birthday. Some groups are pushing for stricter limits or even a ban on the chemical, like the laws in Italy, Germany, and other countries. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is scheduled to re-evaluate atrazine, but new limits on the pesticide will not even be proposed until the year 2001. [:37]

The EnvironMinute is produced in cooperation with the National Safety Council and made possible by the Teresa and H. John Heinz III Foundation. [:10]

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