Atrazine Research Paper

People drinking water for many years that contains higher MCL for atrazine can suffer from cardiovascular or reproductive diseases. Also, it has ecological effects on birds and aquatic organisms, although it is only slightly toxic to birds and fishes found in those niches. Atrazine also inhibits photosynthesis in plants. In 1974, Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act. This law requires EPA to determine the level of contaminants in drinking water at which no adverse health effects are likely to occur. EPA has announced that people are safe to drink water that has the maximum contaminant level (MCL) of 3 ppb or less. MCLs are set as close to the health goals as possible, considering cost, benefits and the ability of public water systems to detect and remove …show more content…
The adult zebrafish was exposed to graded concentration of atrazine or atrazine degradates such as deisopropylatrazine (DIA), deethylatrazine (DEA) and diamino-s-chlorotriazine (DACT) for up to 10 days. They measured the stress induced cortisol levels of some of the fishes for up to 20 minutes and other fishes were measured for whole body cortisol levels under basal conditions. The results showed that controls not exposed to atrazine and zebrafish exposed to atrazine or the atrazine degradates at nominal concentrations of up to 100 μg/L consistently exhibited increased whole body cortisol content in response to the swimming challenge. Separate analyses revealed few changes in basal or stress induced cortisol levels following atrazine exposure. Overall, these data suggest that atrazine and some of its degradates at the concentrations tested have minimal effects on the cortisol mediated stress response in the zebrafish.This article suggests that, Estrogen-like endocrine disrupting chemicals (EEDC) does not go about as an estrogen mimicker, but instead instigates aromatase