Atrazine

Atrazine is the second most widely used herbicide in the United States, with more than 70 million pounds applied annually on corn, sorghum, and sugarcane — despite being banned across the European Union since 2004 over endocrine-disruption concerns. It is one of the most commonly detected contaminants in U.S. groundwater and drinking water: EPA monitoring has found it in all sampled watersheds and roughly 90% of drinking water samples. Atrazine has been linked in research to hormone disruption, reproductive and birth defects, poor sperm quality in humans, and hermaphroditism in amphibians. In 2012, water utilities settled a class-action lawsuit against manufacturer Syngenta for $105 million to help cover the cost of filtering atrazine out of contaminated drinking water supplies.