Christina Spicer  |  May 17, 2019

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Glyphosate Overview

Controversy continues over whether glyphosate toxicity causes cancer, and how much should be allowed in the food we eat.

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, a line of herbicides from chemical giant Monsanto, which was purchased by Bayer AG last year.

The World Health Organization has identified glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen.” Monsanto is facing hundreds of lawsuits by consumers who allege the weed killer made them ill, many of them alleging glyphosate resulted in a cancer diagnosis.

Glyphosate Toxicity and Food

A report released last summer by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a non-partisan, non-profit agency, revealed potentially dangerous levels of glyphosate were found in 31 out of 45 children’s cereals and breakfast foods tested. The foods contained a higher level of glyphosate than what most scientists regard as safe levels for consumption by children.

EWG’s research team tested Cheerios, Back to Nature Classic Granola, Quaker Dinosaur Egg Instant Oats and at least 16 organic breakfast foods. Trace amounts of glyphosate was in 43 regular foods and five organic selections. A total of 95 percent of oat-based foods contained glyphosate.

The EWG said 31 of the regular products had more than 160 parts per billion of glyphosate, which is above the level considered safe for children to consume.

The EWG also tested wheat-based foods and released those results in February. Glyphosate was found in all the tested wheat-based products. Pasta contained anywhere from 60 to 150 parts per billion of glyphosate. Wheat-based cereals barely tested positive for the herbicide for the most part.

Friends of the Earth, an environmental group, reported in February that glyphosate was found on 100 percent of the oat cereal samples and 100 percent of the pinto beans they tested.

Based on the EWG’s determination that a one in a million cancer risk would exist if a person ate 0.01 milligrams of glyphosate a day, a person eating pinto beans from the grocery store in this test would be eating 17 times that amount.

LA County Bans Roundup Weedkiller on County Properties

In the latest move targeting the prevention of potential glyphosate toxicity, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors issued a ban of glyphosate on county properties, effective March 19, 2019.  The board said the ban will be enforced until public health and environmental scientists can determine the herbicide’s safety.

At this point, more than 50 cities in the U.S. have banned glyphosate from being applied where children play, including parks and school grounds.

The LA County Board of Supervisors announced the moratorium on glyphosate on the same day that a federal jury in San Francisco entered a verdict that supported Edward Hardeman’s complaint that Roundup caused him to develop cancer.

Late last year, a different jury awarded a man with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma a $289 million award after he alleged Roundup gave him the disease. Dewayne Lee Johnson had been a groundskeeper at a school where he had experienced at least two heavy exposures to Roundup over the years.

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