The Trump administration has determined that atrazine, a weedkiller used widely on corn and other crops, does not pose an extinction risk to threatened or endangered wildlife, effectively justifying its continued use, according to a federal review made public this week.
The findings were the latest turn in a yearslong policy battle over a herbicide that has become a pillar of food production in America, but has been linked to hormonal disruptions in frogs and contamination of waterways across the country, along with cancer and other diseases in humans.
The outcome of the review, by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was a victory for agricultural groups, including the Farm Bureau Federation and the National Corn Growers Association. Farmers applied on average 72 million pounds of atrazine a year on 75 million acres of crops, mostly corn, sorghum and sugar cane, according to the most recently available data.
The agricultural lobby has argued that losing access to atrazine could sharply reduce crop yields and raise food costs. Atrazine’s primary manufacturer is Syngenta, owned by the Chinese conglomerate Sinochem.
The findings angered environmental groups as well as supporters of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Make America Healthy Again movement. Both have called for a ban on the weedkiller. And the findings diverged from a 2021 determination by the Environmental Protection Agency, following a court-ordered review, that the herbicide was likely to harm more than 1,000 protected species.
The Fish and Wildlife Service had been instructed to reassess whether atrazine would jeopardize the species’ continued existence. The agency concluded that minor generic changes were sufficient to protect endangered species from the weedkiller’s harms.
“This is the most widespread pesticide water contaminant in the United States,” said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental nonprofit group whose lawsuit over atrazine triggered the review. “It’s an absolute joke to think that these mitigations are going to prevent serious harm to species that are on the brink of extinction.”
Brigit Hirsch, the E.P.A. spokeswoman, said the agency would continue to scientifically evaluate whether additional protections were warranted. “Some Americans have raised concerns about atrazine and simazine,” she said in a statement, referring to another type of herbicide, “E.P.A. takes those concerns seriously.”
The Fish and Wildlife Service did not respond to questions about the findings.
Atrazine has long been contentious. Registered for commercial use decades ago, the weedkiller freed farmers from repetitive tilling to rip weeds out of the soil between rows of crops, work that was labor-intensive, required huge amounts of tractor fuel and caused soil erosion.
Over the decades, exposure to atrazine has been linked by scientists to an increased risk of birth defects and several cancers, as well as fertility problems like low sperm quality and irregular menstrual cycles. In 2025, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer found that atrazine was “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
The European Union phased out atrazine use in the early 2000s due to concerns over groundwater contamination. At least three dozen other nations have also banned or restricted it.
Curbing pesticide use has become a central rallying call for Make America Healthy Again activists, who have embraced President Trump and his campaign promise to address Americans’ concerns about “toxins in our environments and pesticides in our food.” But since then, the Trump administration has made moves to weaken regulations, including dropping some limits this week on so-called forever chemicals in drinking water, which officials have determined can cause cancer and other health problems.
“The public is watching a government that moves faster to protect chemical companies than it does to protect children, farmers, wildlife, or drinking water,” said Vani Hari, a healthy-eating activist who has advised the Trump administration on food policy. “That is exactly why so many Americans believe regulatory agencies have been captured by corporate interests.”
Syngenta has said that, in real-word scenarios, exposure to Atrazine has no effect on human health. It has also argued that atrazine is good for the environment, allowing farmers to grow more crops on less land, and to decrease tilling and reduce soil erosion. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For wild plants, atrazine is a concern because it inhibits photosynthesis, the process by which they convert light from the sun into energy to grow. Atrazine can be carried in the air or in runoff to wetlands and other aquatic habitats.
In its review, the Fish and Wildlife Service identified aquatic and wetland plants as most likely to be harmed by atrazine. The agency concluded that adapting buffers around farmland, controlling runoff and reducing the amount of atrazine used on crops can reduce those risks.
There is limited direct evidence linking atrazine exposure to declines of threatened or endangered animal species. Substantial evidence exists, however, that atrazine can cause endocrine disruption and other harms in amphibians.
“Waiting for definitive population collapse before treating these kinds of signals seriously can underestimate long-term ecological risk,” Jason Rohr, chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, wrote in an email.
Catrin Einhorn contributed reporting.
Hiroko Tabuchi covers pollution and the environment for The Times. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years in Tokyo and New York.
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