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WHO Report Links Weed Killer Ingredient To Cancer Risk
An anonymous reader sends word that a common weed killer may cause cancer according to the World Health Organization. "The world's most widely used weed killer can 'probably' cause cancer, the World Health Organization said on Friday. The WHO's cancer arm, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, said glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and other herbicides, was 'classified as probably carcinogenic to humans.' It also said there was 'limited evidence' that glyphosate was carcinogenic in humans for non-Hodgkin lymphoma." Unsurprisingly, Monsanto, Roundup's manufacturer disagrees saying there is no evidence to support the findings and calls on WHO to hold a meeting to explain their conclusions.
Glyphosate has been off patent for years. It is a simple chemical that is cheap to make which is why it's in almost all herbicides now from every manufacturer under the sun.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I can't be the only person who's sick and tired of celebrities pretending they know the first thing about science. Musicians should stick to playing music. Stop trying to save the world! Why does a band even have a "cancer arm"?
I had an Australian Shepherd that had to be put down due to getting eaten by lymph cancer at a relatively young age. After doing some research I'm fairly certain that it was due to my ex spraying copious amounts of Roundup over pavers on which the dog liked to lay/sun on to keep grass from growing from the spaces in between the pavers.
After talking to a couple of vets and researching on the intertubez there appears to be more than a casual connection between canine cancers and liberal use of the product in areas in which they live and play.
If you have pets or children DO NOT spray this poison in their play areas!
If you're that OCD about a few weeds, pluck them rather than turning your yard into a toxic dump...
"Unsurprisingly, Monsanto, Roundup's manufacturer disagrees saying there is no evidence to support the findings and calls on WHO to hold a meeting to explain their conclusions."
Seems like a reasonable request to me. "Your data is different from ours, explain your results."
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
Only Monsanto would make a product that gives weeds cancer instead of just killing them.
Everything 'probably' can cause cancer.
Also, for most vegetables and fruits, glyphosate is not sprayed directly on the crop, because it would kill it. It is used on corn and soybeans, but months before harvest. Glyphosate breaks down in soil. If it is carcinogenic, that is a concern for farm workers, but not a much of a concern for consumers.
"prolific" is still less than you think. Pesticide is expensive, and so is spraying entire crops with it. Farmers target their sprays for the fewest most effective times, they don't just hose it on day after day.
The chances are very good that the last piece of bread, pastry, gravy or soup thickened with flour you have had, would have roundup on it. Thanks to the crops being treated right before harvest.
Many farmers will use roundup a few days before harvest because it dries the wheat out. http://www.washingtonsblog.com...
vi +
Uhh, did you even bother READING the article you linked?
"The Working Group classified glyphosate as âoeprobably carcinogenic to humansâ (Group 2A)."
The "Working Group" is:
"In March, 2015, 17 experts from 11 countries met at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC; Lyon, France) to assess the carcinogenicity of the organophosphate pesticides tetrachlorvinphos, parathion, malathion, diazinon, and glyphosate"
NBC had nothing to do with the word "probably". The group of EXPERTS that met on the topic did.
Further more, if you actually read the article, and more importantly, the scientific studies they cite, you would probably realize a couple of things:
1) The concern is not for end consumers or even joe-schmoe gardener, it's for factory and field workers that are exposed to higher concentrations in greater volume than anything joe-schmoe would ever see.
2) Some of the studies are a bit tenuous. Sure, if you put a rat on an LD50-1 diet of glyphosate for their whole life, freaky things are going to happen.
Don't get me wrong, Monsanto is the fsking devil, just not for their work on glyphosate. Their business processes, the way they exploit farmers, their enforcement of IP, etc... is more than enough to warrant the hate that they deserve. But glyphosate, even with the risks we know about it, is so much better than the alternatives.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Monsanto supplies crops that are engineered to be immune to glyphosate
Those crops are corn, soybeans, canola, cotton, sugarbeets, and alfalfa. None of these are vegetables or fruits that are eaten directly by consumers.
which would imply the use is more prolific than you know.
Glyphosate is a weed killer, and a slow one at that. When weeds are sprayed, it can take a week or two before they are fully dead. The reason to kill weeds is because they compete with the crop for water, nutrients, and sunlight. It makes no sense to spray glyphosate at the end of growing season, when the crops are nearing harvest. It is usually applied in the spring, when weeds are a few inches tall. By harvest time, only traces will remain.
Btw, Monsanto's Roundup Ready gene patents started to expire this year. Soybeans have already gone off patent, and other crops will follow in the next few years.
If you search all possible cancers for a connection with some chemical (e.g. sucrose) you will come up with several positives with a 95% confidence. Which is why you have to use statistical tests that account for all of the different targets.
Thus, at the very least the WHO needs to explain the stats rather than just the raw "probably causes cancer."
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
glyphosate breaks down into what ?
It is basically an amino acid (glycine) with a phosphate group attached. It can be fully metabolized by soil bacteria into phosphorus, nitrogen, CO2 and water. It has a half-life in soil of about 50 days. It has a half-life in surface water of about 90 days. It can be toxic to fish, and runoff is a problem. It should not be applied if rain is expected.
Ever eaten edamame at a sushi restaurant or corn on the cob?
Those are different crops. Sweet corn is not Roundup Ready. Edamame is not made from the same Roundup Ready soybeans grown as a dry seed crop for oil and animal feed.
Experts reviewing the assessment conclude that there is no evidence for increased alarm.
http://www.sciencemediacentre....
Dr Oliver Jones, Senior Lecturer in Analytical Chemistry at RMIT University in Melbourne, said:
"The study itself says that for all compounds, the evidence of human carcinogenicity was limited or considered inadequate."
...
"People might be interested to know that there are over 70 other things IARC also classifies as 'probably carcinogenic', including night shifts."
...
"While absence of evidence is not evidence of absence this does seem to me to be a precautionary rather than a reactionary change."
Prof Alan Boobis, Professor of Biochemical Pharmacology at Imperial College London, said:
"The UK Committee on Carcinogenicity has evaluated possible links between pesticide exposure and cancer on several occasions. It has found little evidence for such a link. At most, the evidence was inconsistent and was considered insufficient to call for regulatory action.
"These conclusions of IARC are important and should be taken into account when evaluating these pesticides, but that must also take into account how the pesticides are used in the real world. In my view this report is not a cause for undue alarm."
Prof Sir Colin Berry, Emeritus Professor of Pathology at Queen Mary University of London, said:
"The weight of evidence is against carcinogenicity"
...
"This assessment has looked at a group of 43 diseases lumped into one category, multiple pesticides with very different chemistry, and has failed to include critical data. There is nothing here to suggest that the variety of genetic changes in these diseases could be caused by these pesticides. This appears to be a rather selective review."
Prof David Coggon, Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the University of Southampton, said:
"Thus, when evaluating the epidemiological evidence, one is looking for a consistent pattern of increased risk for one or more tumour types, which is unlikely to be explained by biases (often unavoidable) in the study methods. It is clear from the summary table in the Lancet report that clear and consistent evidence of this type was not found for any of the pesticides that were considered"
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"In contrast, studies in laboratory animals were judged to show clear evidence of carcinogenicity for four of the five compounds."
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"The IARC report does not raise immediate alarms. However, I would expect regulatory authorities around the world to take note of this new evaluation, and to consider whether it indicates a need to review their risk assessments for any of the pesticides that they currently approve."
Prof Tony Dayan, Emeritus Toxicologist, said:
"In the present report the classification of glyphosate and malathion as carrying a Class IIA risk of causing cancer in humans reflects a variety of laboratory results with a small number of studies in man of varied quality and mixed conclusions. Detailed analysis of the nature and quality of the evidence overall does not support such a high level classification, which at the most should be Class IIB."
ONE expert made a very short remark saying that "study says glyphosate carcinogenic now" so gardeners should be careful when using pesticides.
Prof Andreas Kortenkamp, Professor in Human Toxicology at Brunel University London, said:
"IARC have carefully assessed new evidence about the cancer hazards of pesticides, and have now classified 5 pesticides as either 'probably' or 'possibly' carcinogenic to humans. The authorities in th
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Nowhere in that article does it say there is glyphosate in the wheat that's harvested.I doubt you could find any if the crop was tested because it has to be sprayed weeks before harvest. The article is pure FUD.
Monsanto has been selling Roundup Ready sweet corn since 2011 through their Seminis subsidiary.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Sweet corn isn't RoundUp ready? That's news the the corn farmers I know... and also seed wholesaler Rupp.
http://www.ruppseeds.com/#!rrs...
Monsanto sucks, but this blog seems like BS. One would figure any farmer using roundup would likely be using it to kill weeds on roundup ready crops. Roundup is expensive, why waste it on non GM plants?
Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals.
Read the article and weep. Of course, there's no need to weep for Monsanto, who are slaughtering their way to the bank.
Not a hell of a lot to back up those claims. As the article says, there's "limited evidence." Case-control studies never prove anything; they're merely hypothesis-generating. You can never be sure that you've controlled for every factor. They use case-control studies to "prove" that marijuana causes schizophrenia. I'd like to see the written record of the Working Group that classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A), and how they came to that conclusion.
The Lancet Oncology
Available online 20 March 2015
Kathryn Z Guytona,
Dana Loomisa,
Yann Grossea,
Fatiha El Ghissassia,
Lamia Benbrahim-Tallaaa,
Neela Guhaa,
Chiara Scocciantia,
Heidi Mattocka,
Kurt Straifa,
on behalf of the International Agency for Research on Cancer Monograph Working Group, IARC, Lyon, France
Show more
doi:10.1016/S1470-2045(15)70134-8
Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum herbicide, currently with the highest production volumes of all herbicides. It is used in more than 750 different products for agriculture, forestry, urban, and home applications. Its use has increased sharply with the development of genetically modified glyphosate-resistant crop varieties. Glyphosate has been detected in air during spraying, in water, and in food. There was limited evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of glyphosate. Case-control studies of occupational exposure in the USA,14 Canada,6 and Sweden7 reported increased risks for non-Hodgkin lymphoma that persisted after adjustment for other pesticides. The AHS cohort did not show a significantly increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. In male CD-1 mice, glyphosate induced a positive trend in the incidence of a rare tumour, renal tubule carcinoma. A second study reported a positive trend for haemangiosarcoma in male mice.15 Glyphosate increased pancreatic islet-cell adenoma in male rats in two studies. A glyphosate formulation promoted skin tumours in an initiation-promotion study in mice.
Glyphosate has been detected in the blood and urine of agricultural workers, indicating absorption. Soil microbes degrade glyphosate to aminomethylphosphoric acid (AMPA). Blood AMPA detection after poisonings suggests intestinal microbial metabolism in humans. Glyphosate and glyphosate formulations induced DNA and chromosomal damage in mammals, and in human and animal cells in vitro. One study reported increases in blood markers of chromosomal damage (micronuclei) in residents of several communities after spraying of glyphosate formulations.16 Bacterial mutagenesis tests were negative. Glyphosate, glyphosate formulations, and AMPA induced oxidative stress in rodents and in vitro. The Working Group classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A).
6
HH McDuffie, P Pahwa, JR McLaughlin, et al.
Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and specific pesticide exposures in men: cross-Canada study of pesticides and health
Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev, 10 (2001), pp. 1155–1163
7
M Eriksson, L Hardell, M Carlberg, M Akerman
Pesticide exposure as risk factor for non-Hodgkin lymphoma including histopathological subgroup analysis
Int J C
The supposed use of Roundup as a desiccant is mostly a horseshit myth:
http://www.snopes.com/food/tai...
Why is there a stigma about being cautious about introducing GMOs the the ecosystem if we don't have an untouched backup of the ecosystem that sustains us. It's not as if we can un-introduce GMOs to the ecosystem once they are there so what is the problem with having strict controls over their deployment?
Because, if it was reasonable, the same caution would be applied to all new cultivars. Because we have tested quite a lot of them for quite a long time, and they don't seem to yield catastrophic results, yet it doesn't seem to change anybodies minds. Because people oppose golden rice, where most of the concerns people claim are their reason to oppose GMO does not apply. Because many of the groups opposing GMO are misrepresenting reasearch in order to make GMO seem more dangerous.
In short, because people opposing GMO does not act as they would if they had reasonable cautions about the ecosystem. In stead, they act as if they are dogmatically opposing a new technology for no other reason then it being new. That tends to draw a stigma.