After a scientific paper was published in 2000 claiming that the herbicide glyphosate was safe to use on crops, U.S. government regulators permitted its application, mostly in the form of the weedkiller Roundup, manufactured by Monsanto (now owned by Bayer). This, despite the fact that glyphosate has been banned or its use is highly restricted in many other countries.
According to The New York Times, late last year, the editors of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, which had published the 2000 study, retracted their “safe” claim stating they learned that the company’s scientists played a significant role in conceiving and writing the study.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician and epidemiologist, who directs the program for Global Public Health and the Common Good at Boston College. Here he talks about the problems with that scientific paper, how other studies have pointed to the toxicity of glyphosate concerns that it’s a carcinogen, and what, if any, new restrictions will be expected from the Trump administration on its use.
DR. PHILIP LANDRIGAN: Research on the hazards of glyphosate has been building now for several decades, including epidemiologic studies, toxicologic studies and mechanistic studies, looking at the mechanisms by which glyphosate distorts cellular function. The epidemiologic studies have established a strong link between glyphosate and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, especially in people like agricultural workers and pesticide applicators who are heavily exposed to glyphosate over a long period of time.
And the toxicologic studies have shown very clear evidence that glyphosate actually causes cancer in experimental animals when it’s administered to the animals in their food and drinking water. And the levels of glyphosate that were given to the experimental animals were below, just at and slightly above the acceptable daily intake. They were not sky-high levels as people from the industry like to claim it. That’s simply not true.
So on the basis of these findings, back in 2015, so 11 years ago, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is the World Health Organization’s Cancer Agency determined in their very measured language, they said that glyphosate is probably carcinogenic to humans.
And then since that time, additional epidemiologic studies have come along, additional toxicologic studies have come along. So that’s the science side. I think that the scientific record is quite clear that glyphosate is a toxic and a carcinogenic chemical. And we know that from national dietary surveys conducted in the USA that glyphosate is in foods that people eat, including breakfast cereals that are marketed to children. We know as a general principle, I speak as a pediatrician, that children are more susceptible to toxic chemicals like glyphosate than adults. So it’s very worrisome that glyphosate is in the cereals that kids are eating for breakfast every morning. And we know that the glyphosate is getting into kids into people generally because CDC does rolling surveys through the American population, something called the National Biomonitoring Survey, and they pick up glyphosate and glyphosate’s metabolic breakdown products in the bodies of a very high percentage of Americans today.
And that wasn’t the case 10 or 20 years ago. So on the disinformation side, Monsanto Bayer has orchestrated a campaign extending back over multiple decades now to argue that glyphosate is safe, that people shouldn’t have to worry about it. And they have been quite successful. Glyphosate use has gone up almost exponentially since it came on the market in around the 1970s. It’s become the world’s most widely used herbicide, so it’s an enormous market. So they’ve got a huge commercial interest here to protect. They’ve done multiple things to protect that market. They have packed committees at agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency with their scientists. And for example, the EPA committee that included Monsanto scientists found that glyphosate was safe in contrast to the committee at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in which the Monsanto scientists were not allowed to vote. So that’s one thing they’ve done.
And then another thing that Monsanto has done, and this is the reason for the recent retraction, is that they have actually ghost-authored papers in the scientific literature that claimed glyphosate was safe.
MELINDA TUHUS: One thing I wanted to ask you is there seems to be this growing split, at least for some members of MAGA and MAHA—Make America Great Again and Make America Healthy Again—that some people in the MAHA movement would like to see this banned.
DR. PHILIP LANDRIGAN: Yeah, there’s clearly a split among the administration’s supporters on glyphosate because EPA under Lee Zeldin is very strongly anti-regulatory, but the MAHA mums who have supported Robert F. Kennedy Jr. very specifically want glyphosate use to be at least controlled, if not banned. I read an article in this morning’s Boston Globe that Congresswoman Chellie Pingree who was from Maine, a very senior member of the House of Representatives, just managed to tap into the anger of the MAHA moms about glyphosate and get legislation through the House of Representatives, even in the current composition of that body that is basically anti-glyphosate.
For more information, visit Global Public Health and the Common Good at Boston College website.
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