Last month, Dr. Tyrone Hayes talked about “crossing the line” when he publicly called for people to get involved on the atrazine issue. He has faced immense criticism from colleagues, the government, and private entities for crossing that line.
I’m glad he crossed that line…the talk on atrazine was one of the most moving and infuriating I’ve ever attended. In a conversation with Al Gore, Tyrone learned that if two states bring up atrazine legislation, just TWO, open hearings on atrazine at the US congressional level could happen.
Tyrone maintains a …

If you missed the pesticide science cafe, boy did you miss a good one. Here’s a 2 minutes recap:

The Presentation (Flash is required)
To move to the next slide, click on the right side of the current slide. Click on the left side to go back.

Videos from the Pesticide event are up on the website. As always, you can watch snippets of the video on YouTube as well.

This little guy is atrazine, the most widely used herbicide in the US (about 76 million pounds annually). Generally, it is used in corn and soybean farming; it is incredibly effective in preventing weeds and grass coming up between the plants….requires no tilling (i.e. no work) = no erosion/runoff. Industrials farmers love this stuff.
Atrazine typically has a relatively short half life, about 30 -100 days in soil. It breaks down via chlorination or by microbes to cyanuric acid…which is a carbon and nitrogen source in the soil.
Atrazine is also …