State Rep. Cynthia Thielen’s recent Community Voice piece (Buffer Zones: Protecting Paradise From Restricted Use Pesticides, March 9) seriously mischaracterized my statements and made a lot of unsupported claims.

I’d like to set the record straight. First, no one should be concerned about the safety of atrazine, as it is used in Hawaii or anywhere else for that matter. Atrazine has been proven safe over 50 years of study and use throughout the United States and, indeed, the world.

Second, the science is clear: No one has, will or possibly could consume enough atrazine via drinking water to adversely affect their health. It is simply not physically possible.

Agricultural use of the herbicide atrazine in Hawaii and elsewhere does not pose a threat to humans, according to scientific studies.

Lux Tonnerre via Wikimedia Commons

But don’t take my word for it. Just look at the nearly 7,000 studies that have demonstrated atrazine is safe to use. Or ask the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has twice approved atrazine after extensive safety reviews. As EPA has stated, the class of herbicides that atrazine comes from poses “no harm” to “the general U.S. population, infants, children … or other major identifiable groups.”

Meanwhile, the use of atrazine has been declining dramatically in Hawaii for many years. Air sampling by the University of Hawaii on Kauai found no detectable levels of atrazine. And according to a 2013 report commissioned by the state Legislature, atrazine levels have not exceeded the extremely conservative, extremely safe levels set for both human health and the environment since 1993.

Time and again, atrazine has been shown to be safe for our aina.