The EPA has established tolerances for atrazine products on all commodities included in the leafy vegetable crop grouping (leaf lettuce, head lettuce, spinach, celery, arugula, endive/ escarole, parsley, Swiss chard, etc.).
The action is in response to atrazine repeatedly being detected in leafy green vegetables by the state’s pesticide residue surveillance and monitoring program.
Even though atrazine had never been applied to leafy green vegetable fields, 62 atrazine detections were recorded during a four-year observation period. During this time, no other single pesticide/crop combination had more violations. The fine, dry soils of the EAA’s muck growing areas where atrazine was being legally applied were blowing onto leafy vegetable crops, sometimes vast distances away, leading to the low-level atrazine residue detections.
The announcement establishes a tolerance to cover the occurrence of inadvertent atrazine residues in or on leafy vegetable crops. No new atrazine uses were a part of this announcement, and the use of atrazine on leafy vegetables will not be added as a labeled application site.
Until now, any leafy vegetable crop found to have atrazine residues from windblown dust were considered to be contaminated, and the entire lot had to be completely destroyed.
