September 7, 2015
This post addresses the August 2015 op-ed article in the New England Journal of Medicine by authors Philip Landrigan and Charles Benbrook, who misrepresent extensive regulatory evaluations of glyphosate and other herbicides.
Three out of four WHO programmes agree glyphosate does not present a cancer or human health risk.
First, the responsibility and authority for evaluating the safe use of pesticides lies with regulatory agencies around the world – not with IARC. Regulatory agencies globally conduct thorough risk assessments based on all available and relevant information about a product. The conclusions of these risk assessments have been consistent and clear: All labeled uses of glyphosate are safe for use by humans and in the environment. And there is no credible evidence that glyphosate is a carcinogen. More information about glyphosate is available here.
The authors of the New England Journal of Medicine opinion piece attempt to argue that the recent classification of glyphosate by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) raises new concerns about glyphosate.
Here’s what the authors didn’t mention.
In contrast, the IARC classification is based on a different approach and selectively used a limited data set. To be clear: There’s nothing new in the IARC classification. IARC did not conduct a study, and it did not look at any new data or studies. Regulatory agencies have reviewed the key studies considered by IARC – and more – to arrive at their more thorough and rigorous conclusions.
Over the decades that glyphosate has been used as an herbicide, there have been more than 800 studies on glyphosate safety – including many by independent researchers. This makes glyphosate one of the most extensively studied agricultural products on the market.
To ensure that pesticides continue to meet health and safety standards, regulatory agencies also conduct periodic registration reviews. As part of the registration review process, pesticide manufacturers are required to submit an up-to-date and complete data set to regulatory agencies and to conduct additional studies to fill any data gaps.
The authors of the opinion piece also make claims about the toxicity of formulated glyphosate products. Most formulated glyphosate products contain three major ingredients: the active ingredient (glyphosate), water and a soap-like surfactant blend.
The surfactant, which is similar to those used in personal care or home cleaning products, enables the glyphosate to adhere to and penetrate the leaves of a weed. The surfactant lowers the usage rates of glyphosate on crops by allowing the glyphosate to move through the weeds’ waxy layer, where the glyphosate is able to inhibit an enzyme that is essential for plant growth. When used according to labelled instructions, glyphosate and the surfactants used with glyphosate don’t pose any unreasonable risks to human health. More details about surfactants can be found here.
A number of regulatory agencies, including the U.S. EPA and a European national regulatory authority on behalf of the EU, are currently conducting a re-evaluation of glyphosate, looking at the IARC monograph.
It should also be noted one of the New England Journal of Medicine article’s authors, Charles Benbrook, has strong links with the organic industry. The Genetic Literacy Project’s website revealed this in an in-depth expose.
The original story on herbicide safe use was published on Monsanto’s Beyond the Rows blog as Our Perspective: The Truth about Public Health and Safety of GMOs and Herbicides.
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