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center for food safety
A Month After Trump Doubles Down on Atrazine, WHO Dubs It 'Probably Carcinogenic to Humans'
"It is outrageously irresponsible that we still allow use of this dangerous poison in the United States," said the Center for Biological Diversity's environmental health science director.
Nov 21, 2025
Just a month after the Trump administration doubled down on the alleged safety of atrazine, a United Nations agency said on Friday that the pesticide—which is banned by dozens of countries but commonly used on corn, sugarcane, and sorghum in the United States—probably causes cancer.
"It is outrageously irresponsible that we still allow use of this dangerous poison in the United States," said Nathan Donley, the Center for Biological Diversity's environmental health science director, in a Friday statement. "This finding is just the latest indictment of the industry-controlled US pesticide oversight process that is failing to protect people and wildlife from chemicals linked to numerous health harms."
Research into and alarm over atrazine have mounted since the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer initially concluded in 1999 that it was not classifiable as carcinogenic to humans. IACR has now announced new findings for atrazine and alachlor, another herbicide widely used on crops, as well as the agricultural fungicide vinclozolin.
Of the three, only atrazine was previously examined by IARC. From October 28 to November 4, a working group of 22 international experts from a dozen countries met in France to evaluate the carcinogenicity of pesticides. They classified vinclozolin as "possibly carcinogenic to humans, and both alachlor and atrazine as "probably carcinogenic to humans."
The latter two decisions were based on a combination of limited evidence for cancer in humans, sufficient evidence for cancer in animals, and strong mechanistic evidence in experimental systems. IARC said that "for atrazine, positive associations have been observed for non-Hodgkin lymphoma that is positive for the chromosomal translocation t(14;18)."
A couple of weeks before that IARC meeting, the Trump administration sparked outrage with a US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) draft opinion claiming that atrazine does not pose an extinction risk to a single protected animal or plant.
That draft opinion came as President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were already under fire for the second Make America Healthy Again report. After the first MAHA publication noted concerns regarding pesticides, even naming atrazine, agribusiness lobbyists confronted the administration, and the following document ultimately featured pesticide industry talking points.
The second report's "only mention of pesticides is an Orwellian promise to ensure 'confidence in EPA's robust pesticide review procedures'—procedures courts have repeatedly found unlawful and that frontline communities know cannot be trusted," the Center for Food Safety said after its September release. "Instead, it says that it will speed up pesticide approval and it will 'partner' with the pesticide industry to 'educate' the public about the 'robust review' of EPA's regulation of pesticides to provide the public with 'confidence.'"
Then came the USFWS draft, which Center for Food Safety senior attorney Sylvia Wu said "makes clear that despite the rhetoric of MAHA, there will be no robust review of the dangers of pesticides by the Trump administration... Instead, a toxic poison like atrazine will continue to contaminate our lands and waters, making our children sick for decades to come."
Wu's group has long been critical of atrazine. During the first Trump administration, it was part of a coalition that sued over the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) 2020 reapproval of the herbicide. So was the Center for Biological Diversity—which was also angered by the USFWS document, with Donley calling it "an absolute joke."
Donley took aim at the Trump administration again on Friday, after IACR announced its new classification for atrazine.
"Despite its rhetoric to the contrary, there is no better friend of atrazine than the Trump administration," he said. "Hiding behind the rhetoric of MAHA, EPA reapproval of a poison that's likely to keep Americans sick for generations is moving ahead full steam."
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Trump EPA 'Hitting New Heights of Absurdity' With Plan to Reapprove Pesticide Dicamba
"This is what happens when pesticide oversight is controlled by industry lobbyists," said one campaigner.
Jul 23, 2025
Despite U.S. President Donald Trump's supposed goal to "Make America Healthy Again," his administration is moving to reregister dicamba, a pesticide twice banned by federal courts, for use on genetically engineered cotton and soybeans.
In response to legal challenges from the Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, National Family Farm Coalition, and the Pesticide Action Network, courts ruled against the herbicide's registration in 2020 and again last year.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced its latest push to allow the use of dicamba on Wednesday, detailing proposed mitigation efforts—including temperature restrictions and the use of drift reduction agents—that EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou told The Washington Post would "minimize impact to certain species and the environment."
The EPA's proposed registration is now open for public comment until August 22, but supporters and critics are already weighing in. While the pesticide companies welcomed the agency's attempt to allow dicamba products from BASF, Bayer, and Syngenta, the advocacy groups behind the court battles sharply called out the Trump administration.
"EPA has had seven long years of massive drift damage to learn that dicamba cannot be used safely with GE dicamba-resistant crops," said Bill Freese, science director at the Center for Food Safety, in a statement.
"If we allow these proposed decisions to go through, farmers and residents throughout rural America will again see their crops, trees, and home gardens decimated by dicamba drift, and natural areas like wildlife refuges will also suffer," he warned. "EPA must reverse course and withdraw its plans to reapprove this hazardous herbicide."
Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, declared that "Trump's EPA is hitting new heights of absurdity by planning to greenlight a pesticide that's caused the most extensive drift damage in U.S. agricultural history and twice been thrown out by federal courts."
"This is what happens when pesticide oversight is controlled by industry lobbyists," he charged. "Corporate fat cats get their payday and everyone else suffers the consequences."
The centers pointed out that "the decision to seek reapproval comes less than a month after Kyle Kunkler, a former lobbyist for the American Soybean Association, was installed as the deputy assistant administrator for pesticides in the EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. The ASA has been a vocal cheerleader for dicamba since its initial approval for use on soybeans in 2016, despite the fact that soybeans have been the most widely damaged crop."
The Post asked the EPA whether Kunkler's recent appointment influenced the dicamba decision. In response, Vaseliou said that the "EPA follows the federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act when registering pesticides" and any insinuation otherwise was "further 'journalism' malpractice by The Washington Post."
After Kunkler's new job was made public last month, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) also flagged his "years of advocating against restrictions on farm chemicals such as glyphosate and atrazine," and stressed that "these are the very pesticides singled out in Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s 'Make America Healthy Again' report for their potential links to chronic illness in children."
"The appointment of Kyle Kunkler sends a loud, clear message: Industry influence is back in charge at the EPA," said EWG president Ken Cook at the time. "It's a stunning reversal of the campaign promises Trump and RFK Jr. made to their MAHA followers—that they'd stand up to chemical giants and protect children from dangerous pesticides."
"To those who genuinely believed the MAHA movement would lead to meaningful change on toxic exposures: We understand the hope," he said. "But hope doesn't regulate pesticides. People with power do. And this pick all but guarantees the status quo will remain untouched."
Cook—whose group has also sounded the alarm about dicamba—concluded that Kunkler's EPA post "is but the latest example of the Trump administration's sweeping betrayal of environmental protection and public health."
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'Win for Public Health' as FDA Bans Carcinogenic Red Dye No. 3 in Food and Drinks
"At long last, the FDA is ending the regulatory paradox of Red 3 being illegal for use in lipstick, but perfectly legal to feed to children in the form of candy," said one advocate.
Jan 15, 2025
It's been used to color everything from candy to soft drinks to even watermelon—but after decades of knowing that it causes cancer, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is finally banning erythrosine, popularly known as Red Dye No. 3, in foods and beverages.
Red Dye No. 3—commonly used to color maraschino cherries, fruit cocktails, toaster pastries, sodas, seasonal candies, cough syrups, and many other orally consumed products—has been known to cause cancer in animals since the 1980s. It has been banned in cosmetics since 1990. Manufacturers have until January 2027 to remove the toxic additive from products subject to the ban.
"This is exactly the action we need to see from the FDA."
"Because the FDA failed to uphold its legal obligation to fully ban cancer-causing additives, Red 3 remained permitted in foods, supplements, and oral drugs more than 34 years later," the Center for Science in the Public Interest said in a statement Wednesday. "That changed on January 16, 2025, thanks to a color additive petition filed by CSPI in 2022."
CSPI called the ban "a win for public health."
"At long last, the FDA is ending the regulatory paradox of Red 3 being illegal for use in lipstick, but perfectly legal to feed to children in the form of candy," Dr. Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said in a statement. "The primary purpose of food dyes is to make candy, drinks, and other processed foods more attractive. When the function is purely aesthetic, why accept any cancer risk?"
In addition to CSPI, numerous other groups and activists including the Center for Food Safety, Environmental Working Group (EWG), and Food & Water Watch (FWW) had petitioned the FDA for the ban.
"We wouldn't be celebrating this historic decision today without the relentless leadership of public health champions like Michael Jacobson and others who took up this fight decades ago on behalf of consumers," EWG president and co-founder Ken Cook said in a statement hailing the ban. "We all owe a debt of gratitude to Michael and the other early leaders who pushed the FDA to remove toxic chemical ingredients from the nation's food supply."
FWW senior food policy analyst Rebecca Wolf said that "this move by the FDA is long overdue, but represents a step in the right direction for consumer safety from harmful, cancer-causing chemicals."
"This is exactly the action we need to see from the FDA," Wolf added. "If the incoming FDA is serious about food safety and system reform, they should build on this win by endorsing scientifically sound policies and regulatory changes that Food & Water Watch has supported for years. These include ending the GRAS loophole that companies use to pollute our food system, removing antibiotics from animal feed, and supporting a ban on harmful chemicals in food."
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