Thursday, March 16, 2017

Round-Up: Is it Carcinogenic? Is it an Endocrine Disruptor?


Documents unsealed in a federal court proceeding (in San Francisco) suggest that regulators have doubts regarding the safety of Monsanto's Roundup:
Danny Hakim. March 14, 2017. Monsanto Weed Killer Roundup Faces New Doubts on Safety in Unsealed Documents. The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/business/monsanto-roundup-safety-lawsuit.html?emc=edit_th_20170315&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=32962000&_r=0

The reputation of Roundup, whose active ingredient is the world’s most widely used weed killer, took a hit on Tuesday when a federal court unsealed documents raising questions about its safety and the research practices of its manufacturer, the chemical giant Monsanto.

...The court documents included Monsanto’s internal emails and email traffic between the company and federal regulators. The records suggested that Monsanto had ghostwritten research that was later attributed to academics and indicated that a senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency had worked to quash a review of Roundup’s main ingredient, glyphosate, that was to have been conducted by the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

The documents also revealed that there was some disagreement within the E.P.A. over its own safety assessment....

I recommend reading the article. In May of 2016 I blogged about my son's freshman biology science experiment involving tadpoles and Round-Up. I think the post is relevant here so I'm re-posting below:

Saturday, May 21, 2016

GMO Safety and GMO Chemical Safety Confounded

CLARIFYING ISSUES
 
It is important to separate out two issues when it comes to GMOs:
1. Safety of genetic modified products
2. Safety of chemicals used widely on the majority of GMO products.
Most GMOs on the market are Round-Up ready. 
 
While there are considerable uncertainties associated with studying the safety of genetic modification techniques, there are fewer uncertainties in applying classical laboratory testing procedures to evaluate the safety of the chemicals that are widely and extensively used on the GMO crops that we consume in the US. 

IS ROUND-UP SAFE?
This week my son completed his first year of college at a very rigorous college. Under the careful supervision of his professor, his freshman biology class conducted experiments on the effects of Round-Up and glysophate on developing Xenopus laevis  (frog).

Their study had several experimental conditions:
1. A control condition where the embryos had no added chemical exposure

2. A glysophate condition (the active ingredient in Round-Up)

3. A Round-Up condition (using the off-the-shelf product)
The results were very significant. Development was very negatively impacted most by the Round-Up condition (with shrunken bodies), although mutations were also found in the glysophate only condition.

My son's study replicates the findings of numerous other laboratory studies that have concluded that the "inert" ingredients in Round-Up, in combination with glyosophate, are detrimental to normal development in laboratory animals (e.g., see here).

 
ADDITIONAL PREVIOUS POSTS ON ROUND-UP


Majia's Blog: GM Food, Round-Up, and Health

Majia's Blog: Obesity, Birth Defects, GM and Round-Up

Majia's Blog: Round-Up Produces Birth Defects

Majia's Blog: LINKS: GM AND ROUND-UP

Majia's Blog: RNA interference Modified Food to Hit Markets

Majia's Blog: GM NOT Safe: More Evidence

Majia's Blog: GM Is Not the Solution for Pest Resistance


 

1 comment:

  1. What significance does survival of the fittest have, in a world saturated by genotoxins? The human genome is well on its way to such extreme damage that, there will be no viable homo sapiens or, many other complies life forms on earth in 3 to 8 generations. I guest to the psychopaths it means murder, ravage, destroy, pilfer, genocide.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.