Celebrating 50 years of effective weed control, atrazine has become one of the world’s most relied-upon herbicides. In the US, more than half of corn acres, two-thirds of sorghum acres and up to 90% of sugarcane acres use atrazine, according to Syngenta, which developed the triazine herbicide in the 1950s. In US studies during a 20-year period, the average corn yield was 5.1% higher with atrazine than without, while atrazine treated fields averaged 5.7 bushels more per acre than alternative herbicide treatments.
Atrazine has not been without its controversies, though; it was banned by the EU in 2003, and more recently has been the focus of environmental groups citations about the herbicide’s presence in drinking water and accusations that the the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has ignored high levels of the chemical in watersheds.
然而，自从 EPA 于 2006 年重新注册阿特拉津用于作物保护后，该除草剂并未超过联邦限制。根据先正达的说法，美国环保署和世界卫生组织都得出结论，当按照标签使用时，阿特拉津可以安全使用。具体而言，它被认为是用于保护性耕作和免耕系统的重要工具，如今在 60 多个国家/地区广受欢迎。
— Compiled by Andrea K. Harris, Assistant Editor