A new study unveiled the exposure of ordinary American citizen to the herbicide Glyphosate last week. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that the reach of glyphosate, an established human carcinogen, among ordinary Americans has gone up by roughly 500% since introduced into U.S. agriculture about 20 years ago.
Monsanto a pesticide maker manufactured Glyphosate and marketed it under the brand name “Roundup”. It is the most popular herbicide in the world. Especially in the Philippines, farmers usually use it for all sorts of vegetables and root crops! Farmers also apply the chemical to genetically modified corn and soybean crops. It also makes them resistant to weeds and other crop pests. Moreover, farmers who use Roundup (Glyphosate) also spray it on oats, barley, wheat and soybean crops before harvesting them in the U.S.
Participants in the study were not farmers or residents living near farm fields. They are local residents of Rancho Bernardo, a retirement community east of San Diego, California. Researchers who conducted the study were from the Iowa-based Health Research Institute Laboratories and the University of California in San Diego.
Researchers collected urine samples and measured it to check for glyphosate. And there was a breakdown product in 100 residents of Rancho Bernardo. Researchers provided consents to residents in this long-term study. There were five sets of urine samples that taken between the years 1993 and 2016.
The chemical Glyphosate have detected by the researchers based from the revealed result from 1990s, but found in 70% of recent samples of twice the amounts seen before.
This result is the strongest evidence that Monsanto’s Roundup glyphosate has reached the U.S. food supply and nestled in the bodies of a lot of Americans. Considering that it’s a chemical that increases your risk of cancer. It also has an effect on unborn fetus’s development. This takes the icing on the cake on the unending saga of Monsanto’s disastrous chemical effects on the population!
They had introduced Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup in the U.S. when grains were still not genetically engineered. Use of herbicide increased in 1994 and genetically modified crops where already introduced in the U.S. Aside of glyphosate, its metabolite aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA) were also measured in the urine of the aging participants from San Diego’s Rancho Bernardo community.
Last July 2017, the state of California officially listed glyphosate. It is the key ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide “Roundup”. Considered as a “chemical known to cause cancer” under the state’s Proposition 65 law. Under the carcinogenic listing, Roundup must now carry a label warning California consumer that it can cause cancer in people. A government authority issued a regulation based on Roundup’s reported carcinogenicity, and this is the first time.
Likewise, scientists at the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment have proposed a limit of 1.1 milligrams of daily exposure to the herbicide. It’s a level that is 127 times less than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s legal allowance for the average-sized adult. Environmental groups like the EWG have clamored for lower limits of daily exposure to Roundup for children’s sake as well.
Should we also clamor for a least daily limit to herbicide/Roundup exposure here in the Philippines? Which agency would regulate that for us? Send in your opinions on the comments section below!
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