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Monsanto's Roundup Linked to Pregnancy & Reproductive Problems & Endocrine Disruption

June 3, 2005

Dear Readers,

I think this study just released from a French university finally allows us to understand the Roundup toxicity problem. As you read this you will find that the Roundup formulation is actually much more toxic than glyphosate. When you read that the main ingredient of Roundup, glyphosate, has been studied you are getting a small part of the picture. I quote from below "Surprisingly, Roundup is always more toxic than its active ingredient." I hope this study and the attached references can help us to be assured that there is more to the Roundup issue than we are hearing about.

To view the entire study (and I suggest you do) go to ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2.../7728.html You can read this as a web document or print it out as a pdf. I have pasted in the conclusions and references below Thank you, Thomas Wittman
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Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 113, Number 6, June 2005

Differential Effects of Glyphosate and Roundup on Human Placental Cells
and Aromatase

By: Sophie Richard, Safa Moslemi, Herbert Sipahutar, Nora Benachour, and Gilles-Eric Seralini

Laboratoire de Biochimie et Biologie Moleculaire, USC-INCRA, Université de Caen, Caen, France

Abstract

Roundup is a glyphosate-based herbicide used worldwide, including on most genetically modified plants that have been designed to tolerate it.

Its residues may thus enter the food chain, and glyphosate is found as a contaminant in rivers. Some agricultural workers using glyphosate have pregnancy problems, but its mechanism of action in mammals is questioned. Here we show that glyphosate is toxic to human placental JEG3 cells within 18 hr with concentrations lower than those found with agricultural use, and this effect increases with concentration and time or in the presence of Roundup adjuvants. Surprisingly, Roundup is always more toxic than its active ingredient. We tested the effects of glyphosate and Roundup at lower nontoxic concentrations on aromatase, the enzyme responsible for estrogen synthesis. The glyphosate-based herbicide disrupts aromatase activity and mRNA levels and interacts with the active site of the purified enzyme, but the effects of glyphosate are facilitated by the Roundup formulation in microsomes or in cell culture. We conclude that endocrine and toxic effects of Roundup, not just glyphosate, can be observed in mammals. We suggest that the presence of Roundup adjuvants enhances glyphosate bioavailability and/or bioaccumulation. Key words: adjuvants, aromatase, endocrine disruption, glyphosate, herbicide, human JEG3 cells, placenta, reductase, Roundup, xenobiotic. Environ Health Perspect 113:716-720 (2005). doi:10.1289/ehp.7728 available via dx.doi.org/ [Online 25 February 2005]

Conclusion

Our studies show that glyphosate acts as a disruptor of mammalian cytochrome P450 aromatase activity from concentrations 100 times lower than the recommended use in agriculture; this is noticeable on human placental cells after only 18 hr, and it can also affect aromatase gene expression. It also partially disrupts the ubiquitous reductase activity but at higher concentrations. Its effects are allowed and amplified by at least 0.02% of the adjuvants present in Roundup, known to facilitate cell penetration, and this should be carefully taken into account in pesticide evaluation. The dilution of glyphosate in Roundup formulation may multiply its endocrine effect. Roundup may be thus considered as a potential endocrine disruptor. Moreover, at higher doses still below the classical agricultural dilutions, its toxicity on placental cells could induce some reproduction problems. References

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www.bobmantz.com
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all chemicals have there consequences. if it kills a plant...what do you think its going to do to you?

I didn't invent the what I said JaSin, I merely repeated what I got from a source I regard as worthy.
Nice link - sort of - maybe. How do you know the science is good?? It looks to pat too easy and too much like industry propoganda.
Yes, I read the credits. It tells me nothing. The studies for long term effects on the rats ran only three generations. That's not substantial.



"Adsorption" Now that's not a term one sees frequently here. Are you really referring to the entrance of the molecule into the first mole layer of some molecullar structure of some random bit of matter making up the soil? Wou'dn't that depend on soil composition IE: organic mass, inorganic, carbon, etc.?? Then you'd need to address desorption as well. Desorption as you know is the re entry of the molecule back into the environment. A molecule desorbs with an unknown vector and energy. So you can't know whether it'll adsorb again or when.

Really, if you are going to insult me by using phrases such as "Blurted out" you might think about being tad more circumspect about contemplating that maybe just maybe you don't know everything. Or that some website isn't necessairly a meaningful source of information merely because you liked it. This especially so when you are contemplating interactions in an uncontrollable environment such as soils, groundwaters, etc.,

Where did you get your Doctorate?


Granted aminomethylphosphonic acid, is fairly innocous. However, I am unconvinced that that acid is the only degradation product, and I am unconvinced by company claims regarding time to degrade. Remember it's a wild environment. The operative word being "wild."


No, I don't think even the "Round Up" people would suggest that one use the stuff to kill the weeds in your intended vegetable garden location. That was the context of the comment I made.


Hey, while you are at, it why not discuss the rammifications of salting the soil. That is what you suggested. That's a rather scorched earth procedure. What do you do to remove the salts? Treat it as a common ememy and let it run into the water table?

Donna wrote:
>"I went with blackberry bushes instead not as tall but thick and spreading great natural fence . Ya see if you can sell it"<

That is funny... Up here in the Pac Northwest Blackberry is one of the most hated noxious weeds around... especially Norwegiean blackberry which out competes native species and destroys literally acres of habitat and reserved land.

JSin

Black bamboo will get under that as well. I have found black bamboo roots going through a concrete basement wall over 3 feet down. Very nasty stuff.

The best option and the only one I have found with really persistent bamboo is to dig the soil up and screen it picking out every little bit of root you find. keep digging till there are no roots to be found. The watch for new growth and use roundup on the younguns as they emerge.

There is no easy quick way if it is persistent.

JSin