Activist and trial lawyer attacks on herbicides imperil US and global health and nutrition  

Activist and trial lawyer attacks on herbicides imperil US and global health and nutrition  

President Trump recently signed an Executive Order invoking the Defense Production Act to ensure increased domestic supplies of elemental phosphorus – a critical component of glyphosate-based herbicides that are vital for America’s non-organic crop productivity and thus national security.

The EO has rekindled anti-pesticide activism and public concern about glyphosate, which used to be the primary ingredient in Roundup for home use but was changed following numerous class-action lawsuits. It’s also created internal conflicts within the “Make America Healthy Again” movement because the President and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are asking MAHA to defend a chemical that it had previously battled as carcinogenic. 

Glyphosate herbicides are extensively used with corn, soybean and cotton crops – and less so with sugar beets, alfalfa, wheat, oats, barley, canola, and some fruits and vegetables, utilizing “Roundup Ready” crop variants that are immune to the highly efficient herbicide. Up to 90 percent of soybean and corn acreage is treated to manage weeds and increase crop yields remarkably in recent decades.

Right now, there is only one domestic phosphorus producer, and herbicide manufacturers rely heavily on imports. That has become a major national security concern due to the dominance some countries have exerted over many metals, minerals and products. Often, contentious global politics can lead to threatened or actual import restrictions or bans.

Glyphosate has become controversial mostly because of longstanding activist opposition, advertisements seeking “cancer victims” who “may have been exposed” to the chemical, and class-action lawsuits that employ highly questionable (verging on fraudulent) “science” to impugn the chemical and persuade sympathetic but scientifically uninformed juries to deliver billion-dollar “jackpot justice” verdicts. 

The chemical has been used for more than 50 years. It is licensed in 130 countries and was used by millions of homeowners and gardeners to control weeds. Tens of thousands of farmers still utilize it.

Studies and reviews by the US Environmental Protection Agency, European Food Safety Authority, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Health Canada and dozens of other experts have determined it is safe and non-carcinogenic at exposure levels found in foods or use according to normal safeguards. It is less acutely toxic than aspirin, table salt or acetic acid. 

The US “Agricultural Health Study” has followed 52,000 pesticide applicators (mostly farmers) and 32,000 of their spouses for three decades. More than 80 percent of them use or have used glyphosate. The study has found no glyphosate-cancer link.

Only one agency, the France-based International Agency for Cancer Research, says otherwise. Over the years, IARC has determined that more than 550 chemicals, products, occupations, and biological and physical agents are carcinogens – based on other researchers’ work. IARC does no research of its own.  

In 2015, it ruled that glyphosate is “probably” carcinogenic to humans – along with anabolic steroids, red meat, acetaldehyde from yeast fermentation and baking bread, emissions from high-temperature food frying, drinking “very hot” beverages, working as a hairdresser, and 76 other sources.

IARC’s “possibly carcinogenic” category includes diesel fuel, pickled vegetables, carpentry work, caffeic acid in coffee, foods like apples and broccoli, and over 300 other items.

Moreover, the pathway by which glyphosate attacks plants – preventing them from synthesizing essential amino acids – is totally absent in animals and humans.

Still more problematic, its glyphosate ruling was based heavily on two mouse studies, which multiple investigators said manipulated data, ignored studies that contradicted IARC’s decision, and employed “hazard” tests that subjected laboratory animals to long-term high-exposure levels that animals and humans would rarely encounter in the real world.

In fact, some chemicals may be harmful, even carcinogenic at high doses – but are harmless, beneficial or essential at low levels. Toxicologists call this hormesis. About 81 mg of aspirin is a good example; so is selenium. Even drinking too much water can kill you.  

Neither IARC nor any lawyer, judge or jury can prove that a plaintiff got cancer because of glyphosate – instead of from exposure to countless other “definitely” to “probably” to allegedly carcinogenic chemicals, substances, occupations and industrial processes the plaintiff may have encountered or engaged in over a lifetime. IARC’s carcinogen lists underscore this.

Having “linked” glyphosate to 20-some “serious health consequences,” campaigners now accuse the weed killer of causing gluten intolerance, celiac disease, fatty liver disease, autism, immune disorders, autism, obesity, Alzheimer’s, depression and more – setting the stage for new mass-tort lawsuits.

They say these problems increased at the same time glyphosate use was rising. But what about increased use of fluorescent lights, birth control pills, television, computers, social media and anesthesia? They have not demonstrated by any accepted scientific standard of evidence that glyphosate caused any of this.

Glyphosate has joined the “climate crisis” as a primary cause of countless bad things affecting Earth and humanity. And yet, IARC and attack lawyers don’t even mention another category of serious health risks.

Copper sulfate was widely used on organic farms for decades before being somewhat restricted recently. Its oral LD50 is 450-790 – meaning it can take just 450 milligrams per kilogram of body weight to kill half the lab animals that ingest it. Its dermal (skin contact) LD50 is lower, above 2000 mg/kg. But the chemical is deadly to fish, hugely harmful to avian reproductive systems … and highly toxic to humans.

In glaring contrast, it takes more than 5000 mg/kg of glyphosate, orally or dermally, to kill rats. 

Other approved organic farm favorites, like rotenone and pyrethrins, also have problematic LD50 levels.

No chemical (or activity) is totally safe. But glyphosate is far safer (and far more effective) than almost any other herbicides: past (arsenic!), present or organic. If it is banned, the impacts will be far-reaching.   

Weed control chemicals eliminate the need to till cropland. That protects soil organisms, conserves soil moisture, reduces irrigation and erosion, sequesters CO2, saves time and tractor fuel, and allows more land to be conserved as wildlife habitat, instead of being planted in crops. Most obviously, they eradicate weeds that steal water and nutrients from food crops.

Eliminate herbicides, and these benefits decline or disappear. Weeds will be controlled by regular tilling or human hands – or by more expensive and dangerous chemicals. Far more land will have to be cultivated to get the same crop tonnage – on top of what has already been removed from agriculture or degraded in productivity by industrial wind and solar installations.

Farming costs will skyrocket. Crop yields will decline dramatically. Food prices will soar. Food aid for malnourished people around the globe will shrivel.

We are dealing with the “precautionary principle” on steroids. Focused on alleged, highly speculative risks of using chemicals – never on the risks of not using them. Highlighting risks a technology allegedly might cause – but ignoring often far greater risks it would reduce or prevent.

Demonizing, prohibiting, suing and regulating vital chemicals out of existence is a surefire way to slash US and global living standards and nutrition. It’s time to rein in the activists and jackpot-justice lawyers.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books, reports and articles on energy, environmental, climate and human rights issues.

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