Monsanto’s Herbicide, Roundup, Causes Cancer
The research arm of the World Health Organization has declared the key ingredient in the herbicide Roundup a carcinogen. . . .
Roundup is the most popularly used herbicide in the world. Its key ingredient is glyphosate.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer provides scientific research for the World Health Organization. Seventeen oncology experts from eleven countries reviewed the science on glyphosates and other organophosphates on various human cancers. They found that there is limited evidence that it causes Hodgkins lymphoma in humans. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has four catagories for carcinogens: known carcingogens, probable or possible carcinogens, not classified and probably not carcinogenic. Glyphosate is now catagorized as the second most serious: a probable carcinogen for humans (The Lancet Oncology 2015;doi.org/10.1016/S1470-2045(15)70134-8).
This is not the first time the glyphosates in Roundup have been condemned. Though Monsanto insists that Roundup is only minimally toxic, research published two years ago disagrees, instead concluding that Roundup may be “the most biologically disruptive chemical in our environment”.
The researchers call glyphosate a “text book example” of “the disruption of homeostatsis by environmental toxins”. Glyphosate inhibits cytochrome P450 enzymes and, therefore, inhibits our bodies’ ability to detoxify toxins. Because of this harmful action, glyphosate “enhances the damaging effects of other food borne chemical residues and environmental toxins”.
The practical effect of this, according to the researchers, is that using Roundup as a herbicide on crops could contribute to a huge number of health conditions, including cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, ADHD, autism, ALS, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, depression and infertility (Entropy 2013;15:1416-1463).
And last year, researchers compared glyphosate application with disease epidemiological data in the U.S. and found highly significant correlations between glyphosate application and several serious illnesses including high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, multiple sclerosis, autism, inflammatory bowel disease, kidney disease, and cancers of the thyroid, liver, bladder, pancreas and kidney as well as leukemia (Journal of Organic Systems 2014;9(2)).