I have written about glyphosate before (there is a list of posts below), but there have been some important new studies since I last wrote about it, and I thought I should discuss the newly discovered and alarming dangers we are facing from our increasing use of this herbicide.

Although I continually collect links and summaries of articles on subjects of interest, including glyphosate, when I began pulling together research for this update, I was truly overwhelmed by the number of studies and articles describing new information about the damage caused by glyphosate and its adjuvants. There were far more than I had realized.

Before I discuss the new studies, let’s briefly review what glyphosate is and how it is used, then I will talk about what the new research tells us.

What is Glyphosate?

As I wrote in a previous post, “Glyphosate is a non-selective herbicide, meaning it kills almost all plants; it is absorbed through the leaves and spreads throughout the plant, including the roots and seeds. Glyphosate is systemic; it can’t be washed off because it’s inside the plant. . . glyphosate kills by preventing the plant from making proteins needed for growth; it stops an enzyme pathway, the shikimic acid pathway [or shikimate pathway], which is found only in plants and some microorganisms; therefore, glyphosate not only kills plants but also microorganisms.”

If you are not familiar with glyphosate, you probably do know about Monsanto’s Roundup. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup as well as in many other herbicides made by other companies. You have almost certainly seen Roundup at garden supply stores, hardware stores, and almost everywhere that lawn, plant, and crop supplies are sold. You may also have seen your neighbors spraying Roundup on their driveway weeds or around their yards. Walking on those driveways and yards tracks glyphosate into the house and onto carpet and floors, unless shoes are left by the door.

How is Glyphosate Used?

As a herbicide, glyphosate is sprayed as weed control on lawns, gardens and parks, in forests, along roadsides and even on water plants; however, it is most heavily used in agriculture, and its growing use is driven by the proliferation of genetically engineered (GE) crops. [source]

Glyphosate has other uses than as a herbicide. it can be a desiccant for crops like grains, canola, maize (corn), and sunflowers, “to make them dry out, or to make them easier to harvest.” [source] Sugarcane is ripened using various formulations of glyphosate. [source]

Since glyphosate is absorbed by the plant and cannot be removed by washing, that means we ingest at least some glyphosate residue every time we eat food made from crops that were treated with it, from GE canola oil to conventional sugar. Every time! How much is too much?

Where is Glyphosate Used?

Glyphosate is the world’s best-selling herbicide. In 2011 around 650,000 tons of glyphosate were used worldwide. Yes, 650,000 tons were applied in just one year, and the amount used is growing every year, primarily through increased planting of GE crops. In 2010 sales of glyphosate were worth about $6.5 billion, yes, billion! [source] It’s easy to understand why chemical companies don’t want us to know about the harm it causes.

Think of the lost profits if its use were limited or banned!

The amount of glyphosate applied combined with the huge variety of uses means that almost all of us are continually contaminated with it, at home, at work, and at play.

Studies Find Glyphosate Causes Infertility and Organ Damage

In a previous post, I talked about some of the harms from glyphosate, including infertility and miscarriage in farm animals fed with glyphosate-contaminated food; reduction of available minerals due to the chelating function of glyphosate; development of glyphosate-resistant weeds due to overuse of the herbicide; combined with an adjuvant, glyphosate has demonstrated organ and systemic damage; and pregnant women exposed to glyphosate may have a 400% increased risk of having babies with developmental malformations such as microcephaly, anencephaly, cleft palate, cranial malformations, etc. [source and source]

Monsanto Claims That Glyphosate is Safe

Before we list more harmful effects of glyphosate, I want to mention that Monsanto claimed that its glyphosate brand Roundup was “‘safer than table salt’ and ‘practically nontoxic’ to mammals, birds and fish” until 1996, when Dennis C. Vacco, the Attorney General of New York, ordered the company to pull the ads.   From the beginning Monsanto has marketed Roundup as “environmentally friendly” and “biodegradable.” [source]

New Data About Harmful Effects Caused by Glyphosate/Roundup

Glyphosate Damages Red Blood Cells

A recent study analyzing the effect of glyphosate on erythrocytes (red blood cells) found that the herbicide caused damage, including rupturing the cells, at levels well below the ppm (parts per million) allowed by the U.S. EPA.  The study admitted that adding adjuvants to the glyphosate in Roundup would cause more damage. [source]

Glyphosate and Roundup (Glyphosate plus Adjuvants) Are Extremely Toxic

The MEDLINE database of the National Library of Medicine lists studies that link glyphosate to “over 40 health conditions, from Parkinson’s to Leukemia, and over two dozen modes of toxicity, from causing damage to the DNA to disrupting hormone receptors, from suppressing the immune system to damaging neurons.” [source]

Another study of 9 pesticides that compared the toxicity of the active ingredient versus the formulations that also contained adjuvants, found that “Despite its relatively benign reputation, Roundup [glyphosate plus adjuvants] was among the most toxic herbicides and insecticides tested.” Only fungicides were found to be more toxic. [emphasis added] [source]

Studies of safety provided by pesticide manufacturers are not required to include adjuvants and usually only test the active ingredient itself, in this case, glyphosate.  Companies often do not list “inert” ingredients, claiming proprietary formulations. The lack of inclusion of the adjuvants in the original testing has allowed a significant underestimation of the toxicity of glyphosate. In fact, the researchers said “so-called ‘inert’ adjuvants . . . were up to 10,000 times more toxic than the so-called active principle glyphosate itself, revealing them to be a greater source for secondary side effects than the main ingredient itself.” [source]

Glyphosate Environmental Toxicity Underestimated

A study published in Ecotoxicology put “serious doubt on glyphosate’s classification as environmentally safe.” The analysis of toxicity on water fleas, “a widely accepted model for environmental toxicity,” found glyphosate to be toxic a very low levels “well within the levels expected to be found in the environment.” This study concludes that the toxicity of Roundup has been underestimated and that “current European Commission and US EPA toxicity classification of these chemicals need to be revised.”

Glyphosate Kills Beneficial Gut Bacteria

A German study has found that toxic botulism in cattle is increasing because glyphosate is harming beneficial gut flora that normally keep the pathogen in check. Gut bacteria in both animals and humans are very sensitive to residual glyphosate levels. According to the study, “lactic acid producing bacteria that help defend against Clostridium pathogens are destroyed by glyphosate, suggesting that the rise in C. botulinum associated diseases may be due to glyphosate-tainted animal feed.” [source]

As mentioned above in the paragraph about What is Glyphosate? Monsanto claims the herbicide to be harmless because its method of action, stopping an enzyme pathway, affects the shikimate pathway (see above paragraph about What is Glyphosate?), which is not found in animals or humans; however, it is found in microorganisms. Additional research finds this fact to be the “key to understanding how it causes such widespread systemic harm in both humans and animals.”

The bacteria in your body outnumber your cells by 10 to 1. For every cell in your body, you have 10 microbes of various kinds, and all of them have the shikimate pathway, so they will all respond to the presence of glyphosate!

Glyphosate causes extreme disruption of the microbe’s function and lifecycle. What’s worse, glyphosate preferentially affects beneficial bacteria, allowing pathogens to overgrow and take over. At that point, your body also has to contend with the toxins produced by the pathogens. Once the chronic inflammation sets in, you’re well on your way toward chronic and potentially debilitating disease. [source]

Another study, supporting the damage of glyphosate to beneficial gut bacteria, says “Glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide, is destroying human and animal health as a result of disruption of gut bacteria. Two key problems caused by glyphosate in the diet are nutritional deficiencies, especially minerals and essential amino-acids, and systemic toxicity.” [source]

In addition to the damage glyphosate preferentially causes to our gut bacteria, it also increases aluminum toxicity, which promotes calcium loss, and its disruption of the shikimate pathway depletes tryptophan which is the sole precursor to melatonin necessary to many functions within the body.  [source]

Glyphosate is Estrogenic and Causes Proliferation of Breast Cancer Cells

Still another study, published in the journal, Food and Chemical Toxicology, has found that glyphosate is “estrogenic and is capable of driving estrogen receptor mediated breast cancer cell proliferation within the infinitesimal parts per trillion concentration range.”

“The researchers also discovered that the naturally occurring phytoestrogen in soybean known as genistein, produced “an additive estrogenic effect” when combined with glyphosate, raising the serious question as to whether GMO soybeans are contributing to the epidemic levels of breast cancer within countries like the US where they are consumed in relatively high quantities.” The authors stated:

This finding should raise concern about the existence of more than one xenoestrogen such as phytoestrogen and contaminants in plant derived food which may be beneficial or harmful depending on the hormonal and pathological status of consumers. This study implied that the additive effect of glyphosate and genistein in postmenopausal woman may induce cancer cell growth. In this present in vitro study, we showed an estrogenicity of pure glyphosate. In summary, we found that glyphosate exhibited a weaker estrogenic activity than estradiol. Furthermore, this study demonstrated the additive estrogenic effects of glyphosate and genistein which implied that the use of glyphosate-contaminated soybean products as dietary supplements may pose a risk of breast cancer because of their potential additive estrogenicity.” [emphasis added] [source]

The results of this study could possibly explain the large mammary tumors found in the Seralini study of GMOs. [source]

Glyphosate Application Linked to Deaths from Chronic Kidney Disease

An epidemic of chronic kidney disease, toxic nephropathy, in agricultural areas of Sri Lanka, India, and Central America’s Pacific coastline (El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica has been linked to a combination of glyphosate and contaminated fertilizer. Over 20,000 deaths have been attributed to the epidemic so far. The farmers normally do not wear protective gear when applying glyphosate, plus they eat the treated crops, and drink water from steams contaminated with herbicide runoff.  [source]

Dr. Don Huber, Professor Emeritus of Plant Pathology at Purdue University, with 55 years of experience with agriculture management practices, sums up the dangers of glyphosate by calling the herbicide “the most toxic chemical we’ve ever had in our environment,” and says “future historians may well look back upon our time and write, not about how many pounds of pesticides we did or did not apply, but about how willing we were to sacrifice our children and jeopardize future generations for the massive experiment we call genetic engineering that is based on failed promises and flawed science, just to benefit the bottom line of a commercial enterprise.” [emphasis added]  [source]

Conclusion

I have only briefly summarized the important findings and implications of each of these studies. You can click on the links to learn more about them; however, it should now be very apparent that glyphosate–and its formulations like Roundup–is far more harmful than Monsanto and the U.S. EPA have claimed. Its safety was not thoroughly tested before it was allowed to become the most widely used herbicide in the world, with thousands of tons being applied every year.

Glyphosate is now found not only in the food we eat, but also in the water we drink and the air we breathe.

Knowing the source of our foods is critical to avoiding contamination with glyphosate, Roundup, and other toxins.  Choosing organic produce, local and grass-fed beef, meat and eggs from pastured animals, and, above all, knowing our farmer and knowing how he raises his animals and farms his produce are essential to minimizing the poisons we eat.  For more information about how our diet can help us stay healthy, read How to Get Started with a Real Food, Traditional Diet.

Update May 18, 2014: A study of tropical fish has found that glyphosate causes birth defects:

Generally, survival and hatching percentage decreased as glyphosate concentration increased. Absence of pectoral fin(s) and cornea, permanently bent tail, irregular shaped abdomen, and cell disruption in the fin, head and abdomen are among the common teratogenic effects observed. Furthermore, risk factor also increased with the increased [sic] in glyphosate concentrations. [source]

Update May 20, 2014: It seems that no matter how often I update posts about glyphosate, new significant studies are published. The latest study, Compositional differences in soybeans on the market: Glyphosate accumulates in Roundup Ready GM soybeans, concluded that GE foods are not “substantially equivalent” to non-GE foods as Monsanto and the USDA claim:

Using 35 different nutritional and elemental variables to characterise each soy sample, we were able to discriminate GM, conventional and organic soybeans without exception, demonstrating “substantial non-equivalence” in compositional characteristics for ‘ready-to-market’ soybeans.  [source]

Sources:

Glyphosate is already in our food, air, and water: What is it and why should we care?
What Does Genetically Engineered (or GMO) Mean?
Introducing Glyphosate, the world’s biggest selling herbicide
Sugarcane Ripener Recommendations – Glyphosate
Glyphosate-Based Herbicides Produce Teratogenic Effects on Vertebrates by Impairing Retinoic Acid Signaling
Teratogenesis by glyphosate based herbicides and other pesticides. Relationship with the retinoic acid pathway
Extreme Toxicity of Roundup Destroys GM/Non-GM ‘Substantial Equivalence’ Argument
Human Blood is Not “Roundup Ready,” New Study Reluctantly Admits
Roundup Herbicide 125 Times More Toxic Than Regulators Say
Introducing Glyphosate, the world’s biggest selling herbicide
Roundup and Glyphosate Toxicity Have Been Grossly Underestimated
Monsanto’s Roundup Herbicide May Be Most Important Factor in Development of Autism and Other Chronic Disease
BREAKING: Glyphosate (Roundup) Carcinogenic In the PARTS PER TRILLION Range
New Study Finds GM Corn and Roundup Causes Cancer In Rats
Prepubertal exposure to commercial formulation of the herbicide glyphosate alters testosterone levels and testicular morphology
Roundup Herbicide: ‘The Most Toxic Chemical In the Environment’
Argentines link health problems to agrochemicals
Government Agents Gave Cover for Roundup’s Birth Defects
GLYPHOSATE: DESTRUCTOR OF HUMAN HEALTH AND BIODIVERSITY
Toxic Combo of Roundup and Fertilizers Blamed for Tens of Thousands of Deaths
Sulfate, Sleep and Sunlight: The Disruptive and Destructive Effects of Heavy Metals and Glyphosate
Glyphosate (Wikipedia)
Teratogenic Effects of Glyphosate-Based Herbicides: Divergence of Regulatory Decisions from Scientific Evidence
The teratogenic potential of the herbicide glyphosate Roundup in Wistar rats

My posts that have more information about glyphosate:

Glyphosate is already in our food, air, and water: What is it and why should we care?
Monsanto wants glyphosate limit in food to be raised up to 150 times
Study finds significant new evidence that GMOs can cause harm
What Does Genetically Engineered (or GMO) Mean?