The Trouble with Glyphosate

Glyphosate is nasty stuff. Really nasty stuff. The active ingredient in Roundup has been linked to a whole host of health conditions, from cancer and endocrine-disruption—that’s disruption of the body’s crucial hormonal balance—to gut conditions and obesity.

Today, I wrote about a credible new study that suggests glyphosate-exposure may be responsible, at least in part, for the stunning rise in autism cases we’ve seen in recent decades. Scientists know, from rodent studies, that glyphosate disrupts the production of melatonin (you might take it for sleep), and melatonin regulates PIN1, a substance that’s crucial for neurological health and development. All of the main symptoms associated with autism-spectrum disorder can plausibly be attributed to dysregulation of PIN1, and therefore to glyphosate-exposure.

The maker of Roundup, Bayer (they bought Monsanto in 2016), is facing tens of thousands of lawsuits and billions of dollars in payouts to people who claim to have had their lives and their health ruined by glyphosate. Bayer and the EPA still maintain that glyphosate is perfectly safe, but that says more about the huge sums of money involved in the production and sale of this chemical and the cosy relationship between regulators and the industries they’re supposed to be regulating at arm’s length than it does anything else. They talk about a “revolving-door culture,” but the truth is, regulators and top industry execs inhabit the same enormous building with “PROFIT” inscribed over the entrance.

The problem with glyphosate isn’t just that it’s awful for you. It’s awful and it’s everywhere. Since 1974, it’s estimated that at least 1.6 billion kg of glyphosate has been used in the US alone, or roughly 20% of the total global usage of the chemical. Glyphosate is sprayed on everything from lawns to soybeans, wheat and corn. Bayer, good corporation that it is, is constantly looking to maximise its profits by finding new uses for the chemical, and so now farmers are using glyphosate as a dessicant, to dry out crops for harvest. That means a double-dose of this nasty chemical: one during planting, and another during harvesting, much closer to consumption. More glyphosate than ever is getting into our environment and our food.

It’s not a wonder that, when a large-scale study of glyphosate in urine samples was carried out recently, 80.2% of Americans over the age of six had detectable levels of the chemical in their samples. A study of pregnant women from the Midwest, where glyphosate is used most extensively for agriculture, showed that 99% of the women surveyed had it in their bodies. Glyphosate has been shown to cross the placental barrier during pregnancy, and is found in cord blood after birth.

Glyphosate was also recently discovered in the semen of French men at concentrations four times higher than in the blood. Seventy-three of 128 men tested as part of the study had the chemical in their seminal fluid. The highest concentrations, unsurprisingly, were found in the semen of a farmer, who was probably spraying the stuff all over his fields.

You inhale glyphosate, you get it on your skin, you eat and drink it. It’s in your urine, it’s in your blood and, if you’re a dude, even your sperm are probably swimming in it. Like I say, it’s everywhere.

When I write pieces like this, my intention isn’t to scare you or demoralise you. I want you, first of all, to understand the nature of the problem—we are being poisoned by the food, water, air (because of agriculture and industry) and consumer goods—but I also want to empower you to do something about it, because there are things you can do about it. Simple things.

So here’s a simple thing you can do about glyphosate exposure. Eat organic. That means organic food you’ve bought from trusted sources—and you need to look beyond the label to be sure—or food you’ve grown yourself, without the use of chemicals, in your own garden.

A study of 40 pregnant women in rural and urban Idaho showed that just one week of eating organic food can reduce concentrations of glyphosate in the urine by as much as 43%. One week!

This shouldn’t be surprising. Testing of non-organic food has revealed that glyphosate is omnipresent, especially in processed and fast food, which uses ingredients of the worst quality. An investigation by non-profit Moms Across America showed that 100% of food samples from the top 20 fast-food outlets contained glyphosate. Most shockingly, the highest levels were in samples from Panera Bread, which claims to be a purveyor of “clean, wholesome foods.” Levels of glyphosate in samples from Panera Bread were almost 95 times higher the total in samples from Chipotle.

If the intervention study had gone on longer, the reduction would surely have been even greater, which is good news. Whether the reduction would have reached 100% is hard to tell. It’s an unfortunate fact that even non-organic food ends up contaminated by agrochemicals, which can drift many miles or even tens of miles on the wind; although manufacturers deny this vehemently. Organic farming also takes place in soils that are already contaminated with agrochemicals like glyphosate.

And then there’s the fact of wider environmental exposure, including in drinking water and inhalation. The study of pregnant women had a sting in the tail, because it showed that the women in rural areas didn’t experience the same level of reduction as the women in towns and cities, even when they stuck to a strict organic diet. This was almost certainly because they were being exposed to higher background levels of the chemical outside their diet.

I always caution my readers to be realistic about what they can achieve. There’s no point aiming to go all out and reduce your exposure to harmful chemicals totally, because you just can’t. Microplastics, which are vectors for harmful endocrine-disrupting chemicals and have harmful effects of their own, fall in snow over mountains, circulate in the air and have been found in places humans have never set foot. There’s no getting away from them.

You can easily become too fixated on achieving a perfect purity, at the expense of everything else in your life. Remember: stress and anxiety are bad for you. Probably as bad as glyphosate, in certain respects. Making positive changes to your life really should make you feel better. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Even so, as the study of pregnant women demonstrates, a simple intervention like eating organic food can make serious inroads into your exposure to the nasty chemicals like glyphosate. And in an imperfect world, that’s still a lot better than nothing.

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