Glyphosate Study Finds “strong evidence” of Five out of Ten Key Indicators for Cancer Hazard
Editors Note: Pesticide Action Network: What’s On Your Food Database lists most foods and pesticide residuals, see article in News below.
A new systematic review of studies on glyphosate finds “strong evidence” that the weed-killing chemical has five out of ten key indicators for cancer hazard. The researchers from UC Berkeley said their analysis also revealed “strong and consistent positive findings” that glyphosate is an endocrine disruptor and has the ability to cause DNA or chromosomal damage (genotoxicity).
Glyphosate is the world’s most widely used herbicide and the active ingredient in Roundup brand herbicides. “Our findings strengthen the mechanistic evidence that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen and provide biological plausibility for previously reported cancer associations in humans, such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma,” the researchers concluded.
In another new study, researchers from Taiwan analyzed data from the 2013-2014 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of 1,466 adults to explore the relationship between glyphosate exposure and erythrocyte profiles. They found a “significant negative association between urinary glyphosate levels and hemoglobin and hematocrit” which provides “preliminary evidence of a plausible association between glyphosate exposure and anemia.”
A third study out this month reports finding changes in the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis function in rats exposed to low levels of glyphosate, suggesting that glyphosate may “alter the morphometric parameters of the thyroid gland and TH synthesis…”
Read more about the science linking glyphosate to cancer, endocrine disruption, fertility problems and other health effects in our fact sheet, Glyphosate: Cancer and other health concerns.
UNC stonewalls to keep public records secret: The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, responded to interrogatories we prepared for our upcoming trial (scheduled for Nov. 6) seeking public records, mostly Professor Ralph Baric’s records possibly related to the origins of Covid-19. We asked UNC which documents they were withholding; they said they are withholding 4,456 documents under the NC university research exemption, including 193 documents on materials transfer agreements, presumably with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and 1,407 docs about “research project collaboration.” They did not provide any specifics on the documents they are withholding. See Gary Ruskin’s Tweet thread for more information.
More food news of the week
- Undue influence? Anonymous donations to World Health Organization’s new foundation raise concerns – Associated Press
- BBC under fire for doing pesticide giant’s PR – DeSmog
- Independent scientist resigns from pesticide regulator over transparency concerns – CBC
- Small-scale farmers and indigenous groups say they have been shut out of the UN Food Systems Summit, again – Open Democracy
- African perspective on the failures of the Gates Foundation’s approach through AGRA – Democracy Now interview with Million Belay and Raj Patel
- Three widely used pesticides driving hundreds of endangered species toward extinction, according to EPA – Investigate Midwest
- Prominent scientist ‘downplayed Covid lab leak theory to avoid upsetting China’ – The Telegraph
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Emily, Gary, Hana, Karolina, Stacy
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