A recent study by eminent oncologists Dr. Lennart Hardell and Dr. Mikael Eriksson of Sweden, has revealed clear links between one of the world's biggest selling herbicides, glyphosate (RoundUp), to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of cancer.
In the study published in the 15 March 1999 Journal of American Cancer Society, the researchers also maintain that exposure to glyphosate “yielded increased risks for NHL.” They stress that with the rapidly increasing use of glyphosate since the time the study was carried out, “glyphosate deserves further epidemiologic studies.”
Glyphosate, commonly known as Roundup, is the world's most widely used herbicide. It is estimated that for 1998, over a 112,000 metric tons of glyphosate were used world-wide. It indiscriminately kills off a wide variety of weeds after application and is primarily used to control annual and perennial plants.
71% of genetically engineered crops planted in 1998 are designed to be resistant to herbicides such as glyphosate, marketed by Monsanto as Roundup. Companies developing herbicide resistant crops are also increasing their production capacity for herbicides such as glyphosate, and also are requesting permits for higher residues of these chemicals in genetically engineered food. For example, Monsanto has already received permits for a threefold increase in herbicide residues on genetically engineered soybeans in Europe and the US, up from 6 parts per million (PPM) to 20 PPM.
According to Sadhibh O' Neill of Genetic Concern, “this study reinforces concerns by environmentalists and health professionals that far from reducing herbicide use, glyphosate resistant crops may result in increased residues to which we as consumers will be exposed in our food.”
“Increased residues of glyphosate and its metabolites are already on sale via genetically engineered soya, common in processed foods. However no studies of the effects of genetically engineered soya sprayed with Roundup on health have been carried out either on animals or humans to date,” she continued.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) statistics from 1997 show that expanded plantings of Roundup Ready soybeans (i.e., soybeans genetically engineered to be tolerant to the herbicide) resulted in a 72% increase in the use of glyphosate. According to the Pesticides Action Network, scientists estimate that plants genetically engineered to be herbicide resistant will actually triple the amount of herbicides used. Farmers, knowing that their crop can tolerate or resist being killed off by the herbicides, will tend to use them more liberally.
O' Neill concluded: “The EPA when authorizing Monsanto's field trials for Roundup-ready sugar beet did not consider the issue of glyphosate. They considered this to be the responsibility of the Pesticides Control Service of the Department of Agriculture. Thus nobody has included the effects of increasing the use of glyphosate in the risk/benefit analysis carried out. It is yet another example of how regulatory authorities supposedly protecting public health have failed to implement the ‘precautionary principle’ with respect to GMOs.”
It’s a finely crafted piece of propaganda. It claims a study “shows links” between A and B, without mentioning what those links are (for two, they’re both in the alphabet and both in the study), and then goes on to harp on numbers that have nothing to do with it except to inflame the imagination of people easily persuaded that A CAUSES B, because they’re already primed to think so. And then they talk about how there’s more A around than ever, and recommend more studies, which is always a good idea. More proper studies. But saying it in the way the author does implies, to the same people, further proof that A causes B, when it’s not.
And that was 1999. Articles like this since then refer to articles like this and to each other as further confirmation. (See? There are a hundred articles that mention the link between A and B. Two hundred. Five hundred.) Also since then, and adding to the propaganda, a man literally soaked in concentrated weed killer every day for his job, and also out in the actinic sunlight every day for /years/, developed skin problems and, afraid to lose his job by making a fuss, continued in this way until he developed cancer. Did the weed killer cause his health problems? Maybe, maybe not, but that’s not what his successful lawsuit against Monsanto was about; the jury was convinced that Monsanto didn’t sufficiently label the danger of saturating an improperly trained worker in weed killer every day for years, and that was used by anti-weed killer groups as proof that this particular product is a deadly poison. Which, again, it may be, if you’re exposed to its concentrate every day on your skin and breathing it in massive quantities.
So in the anti-weed-killer propaganda they leave out the inconvenient true information and only mention the huge amount of the product used globally, which is a big number, but no-one anywhere is exposed to the total product everywhere. The amount of exposure to you is beneath the noise floor, meaning effectively no exposure at all.
Using instruments sensitive enough, which we have now, you can find a harmless few molecules of /nearly any substance/ in macro quantities of /anything else/. In fact, glyphosate was found in wine grapes and this was used by the anti-glyphosate crowd to panic people about the cancer danger of it, but they remained silent on this: in order to get a hazardous dose of glyphosate from actual wine, you’d have to drink some insane number of bottles of wine per hour, day and night, for decades. Pure distilled water, let alone wine, drunk in those quantities would kill you in an afternoon. And alcohol consumed in normal quantities is a toxic health hazard that kills an undisputed three million people every year.
As far as we know, glyphosate might have killed one. Now read the article again. Maybe glyphosate is bad for the environment, maybe it isn’t, we can find that out using science, but it’s clearly not been shown to be the danger to bunnies and puppies and babies that the UV component of natural sunlight is, or paint, say, or fibers used in clothing, or chairs. Sitting in a chair can and does cause everything from depression to heart failure to constipation to cancer. That’s been shown by science. And who is agitating against sunlight, paint, clothes, and furniture? Nobody, because that would be crazy.