Today the "Triazine Network" launched a website entirely dedicated to lobbying for continued atrazine use in the United States. Among it's banner headlines is this gem:
Atrazine: NOT Banned in the E.U.
We’ve known it all along, and now you know it too: atrazine is not banned in the European Union. The Australian government explains it well in its recent report:
"It is frequently asserted that atrazine has been banned in the EU. This is an incorrect interpretation of the EC decision. Atrazine has not been assessed and de-registered because of a human health or environmental concern. It is not on any EU ‘banned list” and could theoretically be reregistered in the EU should the product registrant provide all the required data. Terbuthylazine, a herbicide very closely related to atrazine is registered in the EU."
Now here's the complete summary from the Austrailian website (emphasis added):
European Union
The European Commission (EC) excluded atrazine from a re-registration process in 2003 because the registrants did not supply sufficient water monitoring data.
Specifically, the commission found that the data was ‘insufficient to demonstrate that in large areas concentrations of the active substance and its breakdown products will not exceed 0.1 μg/l in groundwater. Moreover it cannot be assured that continued use in other areas will permit a satisfactory recovery of groundwater quality where concentrations already exceed 0.1 μg/l in groundwater.’ See the European Commission decision document (external site).
It is frequently asserted that atrazine has been banned in the EU. This is an incorrect interpretation of the EC decision. Atrazine has not been assessed and de-registered because of a human health or environmental concern. It is not on any EU ‘banned list” and could theoretically be reregistered in the EU should the product registrant provide all the required data. Terbuthylazine, a herbicide very closely related to atrazine is registered in the EU.
Got that? It's not that atrazine is "banned" in the EU, it was just "excluded for re-registration"! And why? Because, for almost a decade the manufacturer (a Swiss-based company, by the way) has not been able to provide data to demonstrate that, if used, atrazine can be kept out of groundwater in low enough quantities to meet European environmental standards.
What has the result been of this "ban"?
According to one study, despite a prohibitiion on the use of atrazine in Italy and Germany (both corn-producing nations) since 1991, there has been “no sign of [corn] yields dropping in Germany or Italy after 1991, relative to the U.S. yield—as would be the case if atrazine were essential” and “[f]ar from showing any slowdown after 1991, both Italy and (especially) Germany show faster growth in harvested areas after banning atrazine than before.” In other words, sixteen years of data suggests very little, if any, economic effects.