
Monsanto Weedkiller Is ‘Probably Carcinogenic,’ WHO Says - walterbell
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-20/who-classifies-monsanto-s-glyphosate-as-probably-carcinogenic-
======
rmason
I know that its hard for someone to understand who doesn't work with farm
chemicals on a regular basis but Roundup is on the low side in terms of
toxicity.

Here's a copy of a Material Safety Data Sheet that all those who handle
herbicides need to maintain for employee access:

[http://greenhouse.ucdavis.edu/pest/pmsds/Roundup.PDF](http://greenhouse.ucdavis.edu/pest/pmsds/Roundup.PDF)

Almost anything is toxic, even salt, if the dose is high enough. The question
that must be answered is if there is a realistic chance that people in contact
with the herbicide can receive a high enough dose to raise the chance of
cancer. Or that the average person either living in the country or consuming
the food has an increased risk.

It's becoming increasingly common for states to take blood tests at the
beginning and ending of the season of commercial pesticide applicators to
monitor them.

If anyone was to have an increased level of ill health this group, because of
the sheer volume of material that they handle, would be the first to show it.

~~~
fit2rule
Whats your point? That the WHO are scare-mongering? That Monsanto shouldn't be
held accountable for knowingly marketing a poisonous, carcinogenic substance
and profiting from it in the billions?

~~~
healthisevil
The acetaminophen in Tylenol ( a common over the counter pain and fever
medication used by millions of children and adults every day ) is carcinogenic
and hepatotoxic.

" There are, however, published data giving clear evidence that paracetamol
causes chromosomal damage in vitro in mammalian cells at high concentrations
and indicating that similar effects occur in vivo at high dosages. Available
data point to three possible mechanisms of paracetamol-induced genotoxicity:
(1) inhibition of ribonucleotide reductase; (2) increase in cytosolic and
intranuclear Ca2+ levels; (3) DNA damage caused by NAPQI after glutathione
depletion. "

"Paracetamol induced sister chromatid exchange in human cells in vivo, and it
was aneugenic and induced chromosomal aberrations but not micronuclei in
mammalian cells in vivo. It induced DNA single-strand breaks in mice treated
in vivo. Paracetamol induced sister chromatid exchange and chromosomal
aberrations in human cells in vitro. It weakly induced cell transformation in
a mouse cell line. It induced chromosomal aberrations, micronuclei and sister
chromatid exchange in mammalian cells in vitro. It did not induce gene
mutation, and the results of tests in mammalian cells in vitro for unscheduled
DNA synthesis and DNA damage were inconclusive. Overall, paracetamol was
genotoxic in mammalian cells in vivo and in vitro. It was not mutagenic to
insects but was clastogenic in plant cells."

And here is an entry from the NIH TOXNET database about liver and bladder
cancers induced by tylenol.

[http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cpdb/chempages/ACETAMINOPHEN.html](http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cpdb/chempages/ACETAMINOPHEN.html)

Everything including water is toxic under the right conditions.

~~~
fit2rule
Oh, well then, no need to worry about this at all .. _everything is toxic in
the right numbers_ , so there's no wrong-doing here in the slightest and we
shouldn't stop big companies from polluting the planet, because .. after all
.. its already all polluted.

What a ludicrous position.

~~~
azinman2
Exactly. Especially since it's apples and oranges.

Water is not optional. Without it you die. Roundup is optional. Without it the
world can still grow crops (we SOMEHOW have for thousands of generations).
Dumping many many tons off chemicals designed to kill (however small the
organism) all over our food and planet, let alone planting homogeneous,
patented, and GM'd "basic" plants, is a recipe that likely isn't good for the
planet over time.

~~~
tsotha
>Without it the world can still grow crops (we SOMEHOW have for thousands of
generations).

Historical yields were tiny compared to what we get from contemporary farms. I
don't know if we need Roundup in particular, but if we went back to
traditional farming methods half the world would starve.

There's no going back.

~~~
realusername
Actually there is no evidence of this, a good proportion of of the food
produced is actually used to feed animals which is the most inefficient way to
produce food.

Just by eating less meat (which makes sense because we are not supposed to eat
so much meat), suddenly we don't need to product so much. The actual price of
the food is so low currently that what you pay in a supermarket is mostly the
externalities. Switching to cleaner methods would not lead to starvation
providing that we would eat differently.

~~~
sukilot
Most americans would happily choose cancer over vegetarianism. That part isn't
Monsanto's fault. Source: I am a vegetarian who talks to omnivores and near-
carnivores.

~~~
realusername
Yeah, that's the main problem I guess, the system is providing people what
they want but not what they need. It works like any other market, the
consumers want cheap meat so the industry is providing cheap meat. The whole
industry is then shaped to solve the wrong problem. They don't even need to
fully switch to vegetarianism for it to work but they need to understand that
eating meat once in a while is healthier and more reasonable than having a
diet based on eating meat every day.

------
TeMPOraL
This _article_ (not the study) is total trash. Every other thing on this
planet - from water to oxygen to sunlight to common cold[0] to _turning a
light on when you go pee at night_ [1] apparently causes cancer. People read
bullshit like that, start being afraid of everything they interact with, and
_then_ newspapers are _surprised_ we have anti-vaccine movements, or that the
general population doesn't trust science at all.

If anything is a serious danger to humans here, it's not Roundup, it's
_reporting like this_.

EDIT: because it seems not clear to some - "causing cancer" is _not a binary
thing_. There are degrees, and types, and required exposure levels, etc., and
not all types of cancer are actually dangerous. And all of this is more
important than "oh welp, it's carcinogenic", yet none of it is even mentioned
in the article.

[0] - [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-371451/Common-
cold...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-371451/Common-cold-major-
cause-child-cancer.html)

[1] - [http://gawker.com/5515697/turning-on-the-light-to-pee-at-
nig...](http://gawker.com/5515697/turning-on-the-light-to-pee-at-night-causes-
cancer)

~~~
fit2rule
The reason this is important to discuss is that Roundup is out there, in
massive quantities, and if it is determined that it can cause cancer in much
higher rates than previously expected - then something _must be done about it,
because of the sheer magnitude of the market penetration of this product_. If
it is discovered that Roundup-poisoned regions have extraordinarily high rates
of cancer - and this is yet to be determined - then there is indeed an
industry- and culture- changing event on the horizon.

We don't get to that horizon unless we discuss the issues - so why are you
attempting to thwart discussion of this issue by people who are intelligent
enough to understand the science behind the conundrum?

~~~
TeMPOraL
I totally agree with you here. And the study done by WHO is a step in the
right direction. I'm not objecting studying things - on the contrary, I'd be
happy to see more studies about Roundup because, as you said, it's used with
our food on a mass scale.

What I'm objecting is _not quantifying the findings_. Asbestos doesn't "cause
cancer" the same way Roundup may or may not do, nor is it the same type of
cancer. Bundling it all together is what I find harmful. Articles should give
threat level.

------
thesimon
This interview about the topic (Glyphosate by Monsanto) is also quite telling:

[http://m.canalplus.fr/?vid=1122650](http://m.canalplus.fr/?vid=1122650)
(English with French subtitles)

Interviewee: It is completely safe and you could even drink it

Interviewer: We got a glass of it here, you want to drink some

Interviewee: No, of course not, I'm not an idiot and the interview is over
now.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yes, it's a good clip, I suggest watching it _from the start to the very end_
and then making up your mind.

The interview was apparently supposed to be about the golden rice, which is a
topic that is _completely unrelated_ to Monsanto in _any way at all_.

Also, if I was in the shoes of the interviewee, I wouldn't drink it as well,
even if I trusted it was completely safe for me - it probably doesn't taste
well, and I don't feel like doing a show for a disrespectful jokester in front
of me who thinks he's funny, and refuses to talk about the thing he was
supposed to.

~~~
prapam2
Moore tells the interviewer that one "could drink a whole quart of [Roundup]"
without any harm. When Moore is offered a glass of the weedkiller, however, he
refuses and says "I'm not stupid." \- Why did he bring it up when he was not
going to follow it through.

~~~
SquareWheel
He might have expected a modicum of respect from the interviewer, and not a
gimmick to "win" an argument.

~~~
anon1385
Saying you are prepared to drink it is a gimmick. The same basic idea has been
used a million times before for everything from asbestos to tobacco to coal
dust to lead paint. Common enough for it to be parodied in a 25 year old
episode of the Simpsons ("Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every
Fish").

Also Patrick Moore is a professional science denier. He doesn't deserve
respect from anybody.

~~~
Dylan16807
"can drink" and "prepared to drink" are different things.

Also I don't assume that random glasses of chemicals handed to me have been
processed and handled in a food-grade manner.

~~~
sukilot
Claiming you could drink a quarter of it implies you believe it is food grade.
It's extreme my disingenuous to hypothesize that a Roundup bottle imparts more
health hazard than the contents.

~~~
Dylan16807
>Claiming you could drink a quarter of it implies you believe it is food
grade.

This makes no sense. Chemicals aren't inherently food grade or not. I won't
drink a non-food-grade quart of water either.

>It's extreme my disingenuous to hypothesize that a Roundup bottle imparts
more health hazard than the contents.

You've heard of agent orange, right? It wasn't the herbicides that injured
people, it was small quantities of potent contaminants.

It's not just the bottle, it's every container it's ever touched, every source
for dirt or bad-to-ingest chemicals to get in that wouldn't bother plants at
all.

Edit: And to be clear, this applies just fine to things that are human-safe in
small doses or for farm use. Contamination by literal dirt is a great example
of something fine to spray on plants and dumb to consume directly.

------
walterbell
Is there a link between the WHO classification and California food labels, as
claimed by
[http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/03/2...](http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/03/28/monsanto-
sustainable-agriculture-company.aspx) ?

 _Indeed, the IARC’s classification of glyphosate as a probable carcinogen is
more significant than you may realize. IARC is one of the five research
agencies from which the OEHHA—which is the California agency of environmental
hazards—gets its reports to declare carcinogens under Prop 65. What this means
is that in a few years’ time, foods containing glyphosate will have to have a
Prop 65 Warning label to be sold in California. While it will take time, that
process is now in motion with the IARC classifying glyphosate as a Class 2
carcinogen._

------
doughj3
I found this NPR article to be a bit more informative:
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2015/03/24/394912399/a-top-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2015/03/24/394912399/a-top-
weedkiiller-probably-causes-cancer-should-we-be-scared)

------
tim333
The report's a bit light on details. All sorts of things can cause cancer in
lab animals if you give them enough. It's more a question of what
concentration.

And if the human exposure studies are that bad I wonder why there's not been
much fuss since they were published in 2001.

~~~
soufron
The monograph this re-classification is based on is not yet published.

------
ghostberry
It's not a matter of if something is carcinogenic, but how carcinogenic, at
what dose and under which circumstances. The article doesn't go into details
about whether it'd be carcinogenic at the levels you can get in food.

------
TaylorAlexander
I encourage anyone who wants to know more about glyphosate to watch this
video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqWwhggnbyw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqWwhggnbyw)

Stephanie Seneff is a Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Artificial
Intelligence lab (BS in Biophysics, MS & EE in Electrical Engineering, PHD in
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) and she has done research
suggesting glyphosate is responsible for a whole host of human health issues
due to broad spectrum effects on our gut microbes.

Glyphosate doesn't affect any human systems as many may point out, but
according to Seneff it does kill a lot of our gut bacteria, and I've seen a
lot of articles suggesting how important our gut bacteria are to our health.
Seneff suggests that gut bacteria effects are only seen at around the 4 month
or later mark in humans, but says every official study has been 3 months or
less because they only examined it for toxicity.

There are a lot of take down articles claiming she is a quack, but none I've
seen that really call into question the science of what she claims. Most take
down articles accuse her of working too far outside her field, as if her BS in
biophysics followed by her several advanced degrees shows her unable to gather
research in biology. Some people think her claims about autism and glyphosate
prove she is not worth listening to, but I disagree that a scientist who does
original research should be broadly ignored because a subset of their claims
are hard to swallow. Even if the autism connection is false, there are many
other issues.

She points out that glyphosate use has grown exponentially in the last 15
years since it went out of patent, and runoff from glyphosate (which kills
plants) is causing real harm to our ecosystems. She also says they have new
harvest techniques where they just spray the poison on wheat crops before
harvest. It kills the wheat but I guess makes harvest easier. So if her claims
are correct, your food could have been directly sprayed with this stuff right
before it was taken from the farm to the factory. She then points out that
until recently no studies of glyphosate occurrence in food have been done, nor
had any studies of glyphosate in humans been done. A recent study found
something like a third of european food and a fifth of europeans to have
measurable levels of glyphosate in their urine.

So there's this chemical that everyone swears up and down is SO SAFE that we
don't even need to study it. Meanwhile we have a clearly brilliant woman who
makes a compelling case that spraying this stuff left, right and center on our
food may be a bad idea.

I do not think the people who say "we shouldn't look into it" have a leg to
stand on. Seneff may not be right, but the ONLY way to know is to examine her
claims and prove or disprove them. We should examine the data she presents in
the youtube talk linked above and try to see if her claims hold water.

If you disagree with me or know more than me, that's fine. I'm just sharing
what I know. I'm not saying we shut down your farm, I'm just saying we should
have the facts. Her talk has at least convinced me some facts are missing,
including long term studies of glyphosate's effect on our gut microbes. If you
can point me to a study of this, please do.

~~~
cowsandmilk
Quickly looking at her CSAIL page, I note 2 things about her glyphosate
research:

(1) Her talks generally are not at scientific conferences.

(2) Her published articles are in "predatory open access journals". Since she
is not stupid, I assume she is publishing this work there because she cannot
publish in more respected journals.

The WHO is respected, it is relying on well-performed studies. If they say
glyphosate is probably carcinogenic, I'll pay attention. Seneff is publishing
in Omics and MDPI journals, which are viewed as publication mills by the
community. It appears the community has examined her claims and rejected her
from being publishing them anywhere respectable.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Good points, thanks for the rational assessment.

I still can't tell if her claims don't hold water (specifically, that
glyphosate materially harms gut microbes), but your observations do show she
has been shunned by the scientific establishment. I'm no conspiracy theorist
there, so that does lend credibility to the idea that she's making an error
somewhere.

I would love to see a specific debunking of her claims that didn't cop out and
say "glyphosate has already been proven safe, DUH" or attack her personally.

But your observations are good food for thought, thanks.

------
mkempe
Here is a better source for the hypothesis and evidence: Glyphosate probably
causes cancer, says WHO + Lancet paper. [1]

Yes, Glyphosate happens to be an ingredient in Roundup, which happens to be
manufactured by Monsanto. Neither are the primary subject of the scientific
hypothesis.

[1, PDF] [http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-
centre/iarcnews/pdf/MonographVol...](http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-
centre/iarcnews/pdf/MonographVolume112.pdf)

~~~
mkempe
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer
agency of the World Health Organization, has assessed the carcinogenicity of
five organophosphate pesticides. Here is the key finding for glyphosate:

 _For the herbicide glyphosate, there was limited evidence of carcinogenicity
in humans for non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The evidence in humans is from studies of
exposures, mostly agricultural, in the USA, Canada, and Sweden published since
2001. In addition, there is convincing evidence that glyphosate also can cause
cancer in laboratory animals. On the basis of tumours in mice, the United
States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) originally classified
glyphosate as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group C) in 1985. After a re-
evaluation of that mouse study, the US EPA changed its classification to
evidence of non-carcinogenicity in humans (Group E) in 1991. The US EPA
Scientific Advisory Panel noted that the re-evaluated glyphosate results were
still significant using two statistical tests recommended in the IARC
Preamble. The IARC Working Group that conducted the evaluation considered the
significant findings from the US EPA report and several more recent positive
results in concluding that there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in
experimental animals. Glyphosate also caused DNA and chromosomal damage in
human cells, although it gave negative results in tests using bacteria. One
study in community residents reported increases in blood markers of
chromosomal damage (micronuclei) after glyphosate formulations were sprayed
nearby._

------
owly
Bet you $1000 that some of the commenters here work for Monsanto. :)

~~~
soufron
Bet $2000 that you're right :)

------
soufron
Waiting for the pro-GMO crowd to come forward calling all this "anti-
science"...

~~~
thomasfoster96
GMOs have very little to do with weed killers.

~~~
soufron
Well not when it comes to Round-up Ready. It's Roundup Resistant GMO + Roundup
= we kill everything in the field except the crops.

~~~
thomasfoster96
Your first comment seems to suggest that people who are pro-GMOs will be going
against these findings. GMOs and weed killers are two parts of Monsanto's
business model, but as far as the science behind the two goes there is
virtually nothing in common.

~~~
fit2rule
.. except the marketing of Roundup as safe to use only in combination with
other GMO products from Monsanto, that is.

