Study Finds Long Exposure to Tiny Amounts of Monsanto’s Roundup Damages The Liver & Kidneys
Glyphosate continues to be the most used herbicide in the world, despite the fact that the World Health Organization’s cancer agency, IARC, labelled it a probable human carcinogen in
2015. And evidence suggests GBH, like Roundup, poses particular health
risks to the liver and kidneys in large doses. Small doses, however,
hadn’t been tested, until a 2015 study came along.
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The study, published in the journal Environmental Health,
found harmful effects in the liver and kidneys of rats exposed to low
levels of Roundup in drinking water. The international group of
scientists from the UK, Italy, and France involved in the findings
studied the effects of prolonged exposure to small amounts of the
Roundup herbicide and glyphosate.
In the two-year study, the scientists
honed in on the influence of Monsanto’s Roundup on gene expression in
the kidneys and liver, adding tiny amounts of Roundup to water that was
given to rats in doses much smaller than permitted in U.S. drinking
water.
The researchers noted that some of the
rats had a 25% body weight loss, presence of tumours over 25%
bodyweight, hemorrhagic bleeding, or prostration.
And while Monsanto has continued to
claim its products are safe, it has kept quiet on the research calling
out its dangers, including this 2015 study.
“There were more than 4,000 genes in the
liver and kidneys [of the rats that were fed Roundup] whose levels of
expression had changed,” said the study’s leading scientist, Michael Antoniou,
head of the Gene Expression and Therapy Group at King’s College
London. “Given even very low levels of exposure, Roundup can potentially
result in organ damage when it comes to liver and kidney function,” he
added. “The severity we don’t know, but our data say there will be harm
given enough time.”
Nichelle Harriott, the science and
regulatory director at Beyond Pesticides, a Washington, DC-based
nonprofit organization, agreed, saying that
it is important to take into account that the study “used very low dose
levels in drinking water,” so in “a country that uses a lot of
glyphosate . . . this study should have some kind of public health
influence.”
In recent years, scientists have come to
believe that Roundup’s main ingredient, glyphosate, is so toxic it
partially accounts for a widespread kidney disease epidemic in Sri Lanka and parts of India and Central America.
But will the mounting evidence that
takes into consideration small doses do any good? The herbicide has only
increased its sales exponentially, skyrocketing more than 250 times over the past four decades in the U.S., no matter the headlines.
Health researchers and environmental
groups refuse to let the sales statistics stop them from calling on
government to ban or more strictly regulate glyphosate. They were even
more apt to speak up after IARC determined glyphosate is probably
cancer-causing in humans.
For skeptics of the study who write it
off because of its use on rats, it’s important to note that the results
are still concerning for people, since these tests are specifically
designed to study what chemicals might do to humans.
“Normally when you see negative effects
in these rats from a chemical treatment, then you get very worried,”
Antoniou said. “And normally you would consider whether to approve the
use of the chemical or not.”
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