Chemicals giant Bayer AG is reeling after a jury awarded $2 billion in damages to people who say they contracted cancer after years of using Roundup, a popular weed killer manufactured by Bayer subsidiary Monsanto Co. Bayer probably won’t pay out the full $2 billion. But more than 10,000 further cases are pending, worrying Bayer investors as well as farmers who rely on the product as a cheap, effective herbicide.
Cancer may only be part of the story. Studies over the past decade suggest that glyphosate — the active ingredient in Roundup — pollutes water sources, hangs around in soil far longer than previously suspected, and routinely taints human food supplies. In both the U.S. and Europe, the supposedly safe limits for human ingestion are based on long-outdated science. Research also points to serious adverse consequences for the environment, and there are indications glyphosate can cause disease in mammals even several generations removed from the initial exposure.
Glyphosate isn’t as safe as its manufacturers would like us to believe, and steep reduction in its use is probably long overdue.
The United State allows the use of 85 pesticides that have been banned or are being phased out in the European Union, China or Brazil, according to a peer-reviewed study published to day by the academic journal Environmental Health.
In 2006 the United States used 322 million pounds of pesticides that are banned in the E.U., accounting for more than one-quarter of all agricultural pesticide use in this country, according to the study. U.S. applicators also used 40 million pounds of pesticides that are banned or being phased out in Brazil.
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