Many are aware of the problems with the herbicide Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Round-up. It’s the most commonly used herbicide in the world today and has been known to cause cancers, fertility problems, and many other health problems not just in humans, but in other wildlife.

Producing glyphosate can cause just as much environmental damage as spraying it can. One of the main ingredients is phosphorus, produced by extracting it from the mineral phosphate ore, mined Florida and Idaho. Florida is called the “phosphate capital of the world”. Around 80% of the mineral is mined in Florida.

The chemical treatment used to create phosphoric acid creates large amounts of phosphogypsum, a radioactive waste product.

It may ultimately be impossible to determine whether the finished product or sourcing the material caused more damage to human health and the environment. What is certain is the financial gain enjoyed by the agrochemical industry. The global fertilizer market was worth $83.5 billion in 2020¹⁷ and estimated to grow 1.69% from 2020 to 2027. This means the industry may be worth more than $93.9 billion by 2027.

Radioactive Waste Is a Damaging Agrochemical Byproduct

To avoid glyphosate try to shop organic whole produce as much as possible. Better yet, grow as much of your own food as you can!

A new peer-reviewed scientific paper concludes that glyphosate-based herbicides do not contribute to sustainable agriculture, and in fact harm human and animal health, soil, and biodiversity.

This contradicts the narrative that glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides are good for the environment because they allow farmers to avoid plowing, consequently conserving soil.

The paper explores whether glyphosate-based herbicides are sustainable by examining their effects in the areas of human health, no-till agriculture, soil quality, aquatic creatures, and beneficial non-target species

It occurred to me that most of the emphasis was being placed on whether glyphosate caused human cancer and not on its impacts on the environment. That’s when I thought that if glyphosate was ever to be compatible with sustainable agriculture, it would have to have benign effects on the quality of the soil, non-target species, and mammalian cells. Pro-glyphosate supporters emphasised its value for protecting topsoil in no-till agriculture. That is what got me to investigate the science of glyphosate-based herbicides in their system-wide effects.

Glyphosate-based herbicides do not contribute to sustainable agriculture

The study is not the first of its kind, as many are now aware of the problems with glyphosate. To learn more about the effects of glyphosate both on your health and the environment, check out this article.

Related: How to Eliminate IBS, IBD, Leaky Gut 

A new study has shown Glyphosate and Roundup disturb the gut microbiome and blood biochemistry at any level, even the levels that have been deemed safe.

Image credit: Philippe Huguen/AFP via Getty Images

The study was conducted by an international team of scientists bases in London, Italy, France, and the Netherlands, and was led by Dr. Michael Antoniou of King’s College London. The study is published in the Journal of Environmental Health Perspectives.

The research found that that glyphosate disrupts the microbiome the same way in which it kills weeds.

Humans and animals do not have the shikimate pathway, enabling industry and regulators to claim that glyphosate is nontoxic to humans.[2] However, some strains of gut bacteria do have this pathway, leading the researchers on the new study to investigate whether Roundup and glyphosate could affect the gut microbiome. Imbalances in gut bacteria have been linked to an ever-growing array of diseases, including cancer, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and depression.

Glyphosate and Roundup disturb gut microbiome and blood biochemistry at doses that regulators claim to be safe

Numerous studies have been done to show the negative effects of glyphosate on humans. Glyphosate has been shown to cause cancer and numerous other health problems.

Related: How to Eliminate IBS, IBD, Leaky Gut 

A new study by a group of researchers has further shown the damages of Glyphosate on honeybees at or below recommended levels. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup.

Image credit: VAN AZIMOV SHUTTERSTOCK

The research was published in Scientific Reports, and conducted by researchers associated with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing and the Chinese Bureau of Landscape and Forestry.

Honeybees were found to be significantly impaired after being exposed to Roundup, indicating that exposure to Roundup may “negatively affect the search and collection of resources and the coordination of foraging activities” by the honeybees. The climbing ability of the bees was also negatively affected after exposure to Roundup.

Related: How To Heal Your Gut 

The researchers said there is a need for a “reliable herbicide spraying early warning system” in rural areas of China because beekeepers in those areas are “usually not informed before herbicides are sprayed” and “frequent poisoning incidents of honeybees” occur.

New study examines Roundup herbicide impact on honeybees

This is not the first study of its kind. Many studies have shown the negative effects of Roundup. Roundup has done significant damage to all aspects of the environment.

Related: Foods Most Likely to Contain Glyphosate

Mexico has put out a decree stating its plans to phase out glyphosate over the next four years. Glyphosate will not be used in any government-sponsored programs throughout the transition period. Mexico will also revoke existing and future permits for the cultivation of GMO corn as well as the use of GMO corn for human consumption. The use of GMO corn in human consumption is to be phased out no later than January 31st, 2024.

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the herbicide Round-up. It’s commonly known to cause numerous types of cancer, along with other health problems. Round-up has also caused detrimental damage to the environment.

Mexico’s Organic Producers’ Society has welcomed the proposal but has proposed a special label to certify certain products that are free of glyphosate.

“We do not use glyphosate on our crops, but we have been the victims of external contamination by this substance anyway. This has caused economic losses for organic producers, mainly of coffee and honey.”

Homero Blas Bustamante, president of the organic society.

This decree comes after the Secretariat of Environment and natural resources said that glyphosate-based herbicides would be phased out to protect the environment and human health.

Mexico has begun preparing government campaigns with the purpose of informing the public of the dangers involved in glyphosate and other herbicides.

Much of the uproar surrounding the herbicide has focused on the active ingredient, glyphosate. But for glyphosate to penetrate plant cells, it needs an adjuvant. If you’re familiar with vaccine adjuvants like mercury or aluminum, you probably have a sinking feeling in your gut. And guess what?

You’re right!

Say hello to polyethoxylated tallow amine or polyoxyethyleneamine (POEA). POEA is derived from tallow, or animal fat (usually beef or sheep). It’s a detergent that constitutes 15% of Roundup formulations, and it’s one of the reasons roundup works as well as it does. When glyphosate-based products that don’t contain an ethoxylated tallow amine (ETA) formulation are used, water is more easily able to wash the herbicide off the plant. This renders the formula 6% effective.

Related: How to Eliminate IBS, IBD, Leaky Gut 

So why would farmers have to do without that extra 6% effectiveness? Easy answer there – the European Union banned POEAs in 2016. In their scientific assessment, the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) said,

Therefore the exposure assessment for operators, workers, bystanders, residents and consumers could not be performed. Compared to glyphosate, a higher toxicity of the POE-tallowamine was observed on all endpoints investigated.”

Statement of EFSA

According to another study in 2004,

As a result, human poisoning with this herbicide is not with the active ingredient alone but with complex and variable mixtures. Therefore, It is difficult to separate the toxicity of glyphosate from that of the formulation as a whole or to determine the contribution of surfactants to overall toxicity. Experimental studies suggest that the toxicity of the surfactant, polyoxyethyleneamine (POEA), is greater than the toxicity of glyphosate alone and commercial formulations alone.”

Glyphosate Poisoning

To be clear, POEA and other similarly formulated adjuvants are more toxic than glyphosate, yet regulators have no way of measuring how much exposure you’ve had because it isn’t the formula’s active ingredient. Yet studies that were done on fish and aquatic animals have found that Roundup formulations are significantly more toxic than glyphosate alone. Original Roundup was 10-40 times more toxic than glyphosate alone in fish species and 10-50 times more toxic in frogs. A fruit fly study in January 2020 found that fruit flies exposed to less than lethal amounts of both Roundup Concentrate Plus and POEA had decreased fertility.

POEA isn’t the active ingredient in Roundup, which is the reasoning used to explain why this substance has not been tested to the extent glyphosate has been. All that companies need to do is provide documentation saying an ingredient doesn’t kill weeds or insects for regulating agencies to see no need to ask for safety studies. Much of media coverage of the dangers of Roundup has focused on glyphosate because it has been labeled a probable carcinogen by a major worldwide health organization. What would POEAs be labeled if regulators actually looked into it?

Sources:

• Ignoring Adjuvant Toxicity Falsifies the Safety Profile of Commercial Pesticides – Frontiers in Public Health
• Ethoxylated adjuvants of glyphosate-based herbicides are active principles of human cell toxicity – National Library of Medicine

California Appeals Court rejected Monsanto’s effort to overturn a trial victory by California school groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, who developed cancer after continual use of Monsanto’s product Round-Up. Glyphosate, among other ingredients in Round-Up, is known to cause non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

Image: BENOIT TESSIER / REUTERS

Johnson is entitled to $10.25 million in compensatory damages and another $10.25 million in punitive damages. The appeals court stated that Johnson was entitled to punitive damages because Monsanto acted with “willful and conscious disregard of others safety” Johnson’s lawyers presented the courts with internal emails and other records clearly showing Monsanto scientists discussing ghostwriting scientific papers to support the safety of Monsanto’s products as well as plans to discredit critics.

Documents also showed plans to suppress the government’s evaluation of the toxicity of glyphosate. Monsanto anticipated that the International Agency for Research on Cancer would classify glyphosate as a probable or possible human carcinogen.

Related: How To Heal Your Gut 

Tens’s of thousands of plaintiffs have filed lawsuits against Monsanto, with 2 trials taking place after Johnson’s, both resulting in verdicts against Monsanto. Bayer, which finalized purchased of Monsanto in 2018, stands behind the safety of Round-up.

The appeal court’s decision to reduce the compensatory and punitive damages is a step in the right direction, but we continue to believe that the jury’s verdict and damage awards are inconsistent with the evidence at trial and the law. Monsanto will consider its legal options, including filing an appeal with the Supreme Court of California.

Appeals Court Upholds Groundskeeper’s Roundup Cancer Trial Win over Monsanto