The Toxic Troubles From Glyphosate (Roundup)

Glyphosate-based herbicides, such as Roundup are the most heavily-used agricultural chemicals of all time, with 1.8 million tons applied to American farmland since 1974

The World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations health agency, issued a report on its assessment of glyphosate in March 2015. It ranked glyphosate a Group 2a carcinogen, a substance that probably causes cancer in people.

This prompted many lawsuits against Monsanto, not only in the US, not across the globe. On August 10, 2018, a jury ruled Monsanto must pay $289 million in damages to Dewayne Johnson, who developed a lethal form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma from his exposure to Roundup during his years as a groundskeeper. This was the first ruling, with more than 5,000 additional lawsuits now awaiting trial. That number is growing on a daily basis.

Recent testing has been done on many foods and glyphosate is showing up across the food supply at potentially unsafe levels. One of the worst foods has been oats. Testing revealed 43 out of 45 food products made with conventionally grown oats tested positive for glyphosate. Oats are used to make many breakfast cereals.

Environmental Working Group scientists determined that 31 of those 43 products had glyphosate levels at levels that were potentially hazardous to children's health.

Some examples of foods with detectable levels of glyphosate include Quaker Dinosaur Eggs instant oatmeal, Cheerios cereal, Nature Valley granola bars, Quaker steel cut oats and Back to Nature Classic Granola.

Out of 16 organic oat foods tested, five contained glyphosate, although at levels below EWG's health benchmark. In 2016, tests were conducted by the nonprofit organizations Food Democracy Now! and The Detox Project. They also found glyphosate residues in a variety of foods including Doritos, Oreos and Stacy's Pita Chips.

Glyphosate has even been detected in PediaSure Enteral Formula nutritional drink. This formula is administered to infants and to children through feeding tubes. 30% of the samples tested contained levels of glyphosate over 75 ppb, which is over 750 times the levels than have been determined to destroy gut bacteria of chickens.

In a recent Highwire interview, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is working on some of these cases, said he believes other disease categories may eventually be added to the growing mountain of lawsuits against Monsanto. Evidence suggests glyphosate and/or Roundup may also be linked to liver cancer, brain tumors and health problems associated with endocrine disruption.

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