Rilett Lecture

Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 7:00PM, Brown Ballroom

Dr. Tyrone Hayes-Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley

"From Silent Spring to Silent Night: A Tale of Toads and Men"

Until recently, atrazine was the number one herbicide sold in the world. Atrazine is
used with crops such as corn in more than 80 countries, but it is banned in all of Europe.
A typical farmer applies atrazine at 290 million times the levels Hayes’ group used in
their lab studies. Dr. Hayes’ research has shown that “there's enough atrazine in
rainwater to make frogs hermaphroditic” and Illinois’ public waterways have been
shown to contain atrazine at levels high enough to cause developmental defects.
At such high levels, atrazine has been implicated in inducing various types of cancer
including breast and prostate cancer. “Your son or daughter will develop in water just
like tadpoles do.”
Dr. Hayes is an authority on the effects of the herbicide atrazine on endocrine
disruption. He has pioneered the field by showing that atrazine has many functions,
besides being an herbicide, which can alter normal development in animals resulting in
a multitude of developmental defects, deformities, and cancer.

Contact for more information: Dr. David Rubin adavid@ilstu.edu

Brown Ballroom is located in the Bone Student Center.
Parking is available in the pay lot on the North side of the Bone Student Center; enter
from W. Locust St. Campus map: http://maps.illinoisstate.edu/