Study: Monsato's Roundup herbicide probably causes cancer [View all]

[gollygee]

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2015/03/monsanto-herbicide-cause-cancer

Monsanto has assured the public over and over that its flagship Roundup herbicide doesn't cause cancer. But that may soon change. In a stunning assessment (free registration required) published in The Lancet, a working group of scientists convened by the World Health Organization reviewed the recent research on glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup and the globe's most widely used weed-killing chemical, and found it "probably carcinogenic to humans."

The authors cited three studies that suggest occupational glyphosate exposure (e.g., for farm workers) causes "increased risks for non-Hodgkin lymphoma that persisted after adjustment for other pesticides." They also point to both animal and human studies suggesting that the chemical, both in isolation and in the mix used in the fields by farmers, "induced DNA and chromosomal damage in mammals, and in human and animal cells in vitro"; and another one finding "increases in blood markers of chromosomal damage" in residents of several farm communities after spraying of glyphosate formulations.

Monsanto first rolled out glyphosate herbicides in 1974, and by the mid-1990s began rolling out corn, soy, and cotton seeds genetically altered to resist it. Last year, herbicide-tolerant crops accounted for 94 percent of soybeans and 89 percent of corn, two crops that cover more than half of US farmland. The rise of so-called Roundup Ready crops has led to a spike in glyphosate use, a 2012 paper by Washington State University researcher Charles Benbrook showed.

Benbrook told me the WHO's assessment is "the most surprising thing I've heard in 30 years" of studying agriculture. Though a critic of the agrichemical industry, Benbrook has long seen glyphosate as a "relatively benign" herbicide. The WHO report challenges that widely held view, he said. "I had thought WHO might find it to be a 'possible' carcinogen," Benbrook said. "'Probable,' I did not expect."