Shocking Study Shows Glyphosate Herbicides Contain Toxic Levels of Arsenic

Posted on Jan 8 2018 - 12:24am by Sustainable Pulse

A shocking new study published in Toxicology Reports has shown that the current regulatory assessments of the world’s most used herbicides are wrong, with ingredients such as arsenic being regularly found in Glyphosate based herbicides and other pesticides at toxic levels.

Glyphosate’s toxicity is currently being debated at an international level by regulatory and health authorities, but other formulants in Glyphosate-based herbicides (such as Monsanto’s Roundup), are rarely considered. The formulants used with glyphosate are declared as inert and confidential by the pesticide industry.

Find the full peer-reviewed paper here.

Prof. Gilles-Eric Séralini from the University of Caen Normandy, France, and his colleagues Dr. Nicolas Defarge and Dr. Joël Spiroux, have discovered several new findings which crush the pesticide industry’s claim that the ‘inert’ ingredients in glyphosate-based herbicides do not need regulating:

  • Glyphosate-based herbicides are shown to contain heavy metals such as arsenic. These are not declared and are normally banned due to their toxicity.
  • Tested on plants, herbicide formulants such as POEA are toxic in isolation, while glyphosate alone is not toxic to plants at normal agricultural levels, but apparently only at higher levels.
  • Tested on human cells, formulants composed of petroleum residues have a more endocrine disruptive effect and are more toxic than glyphosate.

The comparative effects of glyphosate alone and 14 of its formulations were studied by Seralini’s team. Glyphosate was clearly shown to not be the major toxic compound in the herbicide formulations – Petroleum-based compounds in the herbicide formulations were more toxic than glyphosate.

Seralini and his team also searched for other known toxic and endocrine-disrupting elements in 22 pesticides, including 11 glyphosate-based herbicides. They discovered several heavy metals in most formulations, in particular arsenic, chromium, cobalt, lead and nickel, which are known to be toxic and endocrine disruptors. All diluted formulations except one contained a cocktail of these metals. This phenomenon thus appears to be widely distributed in the world, as the pesticide samples mainly came from the European Union and North America. In Asia, large amounts of Arsenic were found in the glyphosate-based herbicides previously sold in Sri Lanka before the country banned such herbicides due to concerns about CKDu – Chronic kidney disease.

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Prof. Séralini stated Sunday: “These results show that the declarations of glyphosate as the active principle for toxicity are scientifically wrong, and that the toxicity assessment is also erroneous: glyphosate is tested alone for long-term health effects at the regulatory level but the formulants – which are composed of toxic petroleum residues and arsenic – are not tested over the long term. We call for the immediate, transparent and public release of the formulations and above all of any health tests conducted on them. The acceptable levels of glyphosate residues in foods should be divided immediately by a factor of at least 1,000 because of these hidden poisons. Glyphosate-based herbicides should be banned.”

Sustainable Pulse Director, Henry Rowlands, concluded; “These results show that the difference between “active ingredient” and “inert compound” is a regulatory assertion with no demonstrated toxicological basis and thus an immediate ban on glyphosate-based herbicides is the only way to protect public health. It is clear that glyphosate is a serious health concern but it is now also clear that glyphosate-based herbicides, to which we are all exposed, are an even greater risk to human health than glyphosate alone. We all now urgently need a comprehensive safety study on glyphosate-based herbicides”

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8 Comments so far. Feel free to join this conversation.

  1. ralph a. applegate,statesman January 8, 2018 at 01:32 - Reply

    Judge Vince Shhabria has copy of my Motion for Intervention and Motion for Directed Verdict on Pleadings based on 62 husbands and wives being exposed to and to have acquired Non Hodgkins Lymphoma fro Roundup.

  2. Oliver Tickell January 8, 2018 at 11:57 - Reply

    As with all toxins, the poison is in the dose. Sadly we all not told how much of these toxic metal(oid)s is to be found. What is a ‘high level’ of arsenic? Clearly there is a worry as these substances may accumulate in soils and remain on food crops as residues, but whether the problem is real depends entirely in how much there is.

    • Sustainable Pulse January 8, 2018 at 15:19 - Reply

      Please find the full paper with details of the levels discovered here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221475001730149X

    • Jeanne Hensley January 9, 2018 at 19:45 - Reply

      That’s an often repeated phrase but it’s simply not true where the substance referred to is a toxin. If this was water, for instance, that statement would be true. However, for any toxic substance that has no known required function in the body it is toxic regardless of dose. True, the results you see can be dependent on an acute dosage level, but toxic is toxic at any level. It’s always doing damage. As well, toxins are cumulative, and especially so once the body can no longer breakdown and dispose of them, which most people can no longer do effectively due to the load we all are exposed to on a daily basis.

  3. Lynn Wood January 10, 2018 at 01:41 - Reply

    See. Glyphosate is safe. You so started in this article.
    Thus this hysteria against the use of glyphosate in agriculture must be ended.
    Wow. That was simple.
    And now. Once again scientists are proving that a natural occurring element such as Arsenic is dangerous and thus one should note the peril of “natural” pesticides and herbicides.

    See. I have learned the required logical discernment to parse this article.

  4. jeffery January 10, 2018 at 05:22 - Reply

    get a hair analysis done to confirm your toxicity, your arsenic and copper and lead should be off the charts, hello!

  5. Gerald L. January 10, 2018 at 06:56 - Reply

    Glyphosate is a Mineral Chelator first designed to Clean Boiler Tubes and Industrial Piping of Mineral Scale. In India 20,000 farmers suffered Kidney Disease because the Chelate separates Heavy Metals in the soil which washes down into their Shallow Surface Wells. Anyone living near fields in North America where GMO corn and wheat are grown should be worried about Water Aquifer Contamination, especially those on Shallow Casing Wells. Ref;

    Glyphosate, Hard Water and Nephrotoxic Metals: Are They the Culprits …
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945589/
    by C Jayasumana – 2014 – Cited by 112 – Related articles
    Feb 20, 2014 – Furthermore, it may explain similar kidney disease epidemics observed in Andra Pradesh (India) and Central America. Although glyphosate alone does not cause an epidemic of chronic kidney disease, it seems to have acquired the ability to destroy the renal tissues of thousands of farmers when it forms …

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