The youngest member of Loma Prieta Chapter's Water Committee, 17-year-old Arjun Krishna has the rare ability to focus on an issue and follow it wherever it may lead. As a result, he has already learned more about the intersection of science and policy than many others twice his age. Arjun’s childhood fascination with the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park led him to discover University of California Berkeley Integrative Biology professor Tyrone Hayes’s work about how the herbicide atrazine can turn male frogs into females.
This in turn inspired him to investigate the presence of atrazine in creeks around the Salinas area, which naturally caused him to question why such a dangerous chemical was allowed to be so freely applied. For the past three years Arjun has investigated how corporate lobbying permits water pollution from agricultural chemicals. His report “Proliferation of Agricultural Water Contamination” can be found here. Arjun is a senior at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, California, and plans to major in environmental policy.
The following interview has been compiled from a conversation held October 5, 2023 and excerpts from his paper.
Eric Rosenblum:
Why—and when—did you join the Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter’s Water Committee?
Arjun Krishna:
Growing up in California, I was always seeing natural areas being developed. The creeks next to my house used to flow with water, but over the years drought has turned them into dry, dusty stone beds. It was for this reason that in my 8th grade science fair project I chose to study water, and after discovering the research of Dr. Tyrone Hayes, I started resting the water in agricultural areas near me. After I found the presence of atrazine, I wanted to develop a grasp of what factors allowed its proliferation. I interviewed council members from the City of Saratoga to learn more about where our drinking water comes from and how it is filtered. I also wanted to know who was making decisions about this. Someone referred me to Water Committee Co-chair Katja Irvin, who encouraged me to join. I was 15 then.
Eric:
As a high school junior, you prepared a report titled "Proliferation of Agricultural Water Contamination" documenting how chemical companies lobby Congress to weaken chemical regulations. What led you to write it?
Arjun:
It wasn’t school related. I just wrote it to put all my environmental work together in one paper, to outline the scientific and regulatory landscape of herbicide contamination.
Eric:
You state in your report that the EPA fails to adequately regulate agricultural pesticides and herbicides—particularly atrazine—due to the influence of money in politics. What led you to this conclusion?
Arjun:
Atrazine is the second most used herbicide in the United States, but it was banned 20 years ago by the European Union. Chemical companies regularly overstate the safety of their products and where regulators are incentivized to permit a chemical—as they are in the U.S. and Australia—that is a known carcinogen and causes birth defects. Through deep examination of environmental liability suits, I discovered Section 355 of the Internal Revenue Code—which sanctions the formation of “shared-liability subsidiary companies”—enables them to evade billions of dollars in liabilities from lawsuits, which notably applies to the ongoing suit of DuPont by the State of North Carolina as outlined in State ex rel. Stein v. E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co.
Eric:
How could this happen?
Arjun:
As I state in my paper, political polarization in our country has allowed chemical contamination to become a subject of political debate. People don’t take the necessary time to understand the science, so this politicization creates leeway for chemical companies to push for deregulation while they continue manufacturing harmful herbicides and pesticides.
Eric:
What is the solution?
Arjun:
The most obvious is to ban atrazine, which is what the European Union did in 2003 since their regulatory process is more science-based than ours. But there are others. Robust new filtration technologies are being developed to harness bacteria as a means to metabolize nitrogen compounds within herbicides and pesticides to reduce them to their natural elements, making them safe for ecosystems and reservoirs alike.
Eric:
Wouldn’t requiring treatment of agricultural runoff significantly raise food costs?
Arjun:
An analysis by the National Institutes of Health predicted that “withdrawal of atrazine would boost farm revenues, while only changing consumer prices by pennies.” And that doesn’t take into account the benefits of reducing atrazine in the environment, and the likely resulting reduction in cancers and birth defects among farm workers and the people which the runoff water resources support.
Eric:
What are the issues that motivate you now?
Arjun:
I’m really interested in politics. I recently interned with State Senator Josh Becker, primarily looking over campaign finance, but I’m also interested in agriculture and environmental policy. I’m fascinated by the politics of people, and how conspiracy theories develop. Specifically, the Alex Jones InfoWars podcast notoriously claimed that atrazine was being used as a tool by the government to feminize the population. People don’t take the time necessary to understand the issues; they just want simple narratives—which is what conspiracies provide.