Glyphosate-based herbicides

Glyphosate-based herbicides

Subject: Science and Technology

Context: In the past two years, three US juries have awarded multimillion-dollar verdicts to plaintiffs who asserted that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, gave them non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system.

Concept:

Generic glyphosate is ubiquitous around the globe. Farmers use it on a majority of the world’s agricultural fields. Generic glyphosate is ubiquitous around the globe.

China still dominates the pesticide industry it exported 46% of all herbicides worldwide in 2018 .

EFFECTS

• Monsanto scientists claimed that it would not harm people or other non-target organisms and did not persist in soil and water. Scientific reviews determined that it did not build up in animal tissue.
• Glyphosate killed more target weed species than any other herbicide before
• Researchers have detected it in the urine of children in remote villages in Laos and babies
• World Health Organization, classified it as a probable human carcinogen based on “limited” evidence of cancer in humans from actual real-world exposures and “sufficient” evidence of cancer in experimental animal
• Children whose mothers experienced prenatal exposure to glyphosate had a significantly higher risk of autism spectrum disorder than a control population.
• Studies have found that glyphosate causes liver and kidney damage in rats and alters honey bees’ gut microbiomes.
• Mice exposed to it have shown increased disease, obesity and birth abnormalities three generations after the exposure.
• Although glyphosate breaks down in the environment relatively quickly, it is present in aquatic systems at a volume large enough to be detected in blood samples from Florida manatees.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the European Food Safety Authority maintain that glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer in humans and does not threaten human health when used according to the manufacturer’s directions. Countries, including Luxembourg and Mexico, have banned or restricted the use of glyphosate, citing health concerns.