Glyphosate is a very strong chelator. A long-lasting ability to hold on to minerals means that glyphosate at very low levels (parts per million or less) in the soil, plant or animal ties up crucial elements and causes nutrient deficiencies.
Roundup is also patented as an antibiotic. It has been shown to possess the uncanny ability to knock out the beneficial soil and gut microbes like bifido-bacteria and lactobacilli while making the pathogens, like pithium, rhizoctonia and clostridium, stronger.
How many of you haven't heard the statement that glyphosate breaks down quickly in the soil? Monsanto has lost two law suits in France for making that claim in its advertising. As more research is done the picture looks more like this: Within weeks of an application, glyphosate can bind itself to the soil's clay particles and remain there until pulled back into circulation by soluble phosphate fertilisers such as Super Phosphate. Glyphosate takes 10 to 20 years to break down, depending on the clay content of the soil. Plant mineral deficiencies of 20 to 80 per cent have been documented in crops several years after a single glyphosate application.
The original claims made for glyphosate being harmless were based on a little-known system called the Shikimate Pathway. This metabolic pathway is how microbes and plants make the amino acids essential to the functioning of any living organism. Glyphosate shuts down this key metabolic pathway, eventually killing beneficial soil microbes and weakening the sprayed plants. What the Monsanto researchers failed to acknowledge is that human health is dependent on similar microbes in our gut where 80 per cent of our immune response happens. There is more microbial DNA on and in us than there is human DNA. We are a walking residence for microbes, which don't respond well to repeated doses of something which is a broad spectrum antibiotic, which locks up key minerals and shuts down their essential protein production.
Glyphosate also inhibits an even more obscure animal system - the cytochrome P450, or CYP enzyme system which help us to detoxify the harmful chemicals we are often exposed.
Medical researches Samsel and Seneff have this to say about the glyphosate's multiple impacts on human health:
"Consequences are most of the diseases and conditions associated with a Western diet, which include gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer's disease."
New Zealand's maximum residue level in food is 0.1 part per million (ppm), but testing is infrequent and unpublicised. Testing for glyphosate residues in soils or food is pretty much non-existent. The surfactant or 'sticker' for glyphosate, POEA, is more toxic than the herbicide itself but are not required to be considered in product safety evaluations.
Glyphosate is increasingly sprayed immediately pre-harvest as a grain desiccant. The US EPA has doubled the allowed residue level in seed oil crops, such as corn, canola and soy, twice in the past four years. This was done without a science justification simply to keep those foodstuffs available to the public.
The allowable level in food crops in the US is now 6000 ppm. Glyphosate disrupts hormones in animals and accelerates the growth of breast cancer cells at levels of parts per billion to parts per trillion. In 2011, government scientists in the US said they detected significant levels of glyphosate in air and water samples. Levels of glyphosate 1000 times higher than is allowed in European drinking water have recently been found in the breast milk of American mothers.
Imported food or animal feed containing corn or soy are highly likely to contain carcinogenic levels of glyphosate above what is allowed under New Zealand regulations. It also means that our watersheds, milk products and backyards are likely to contain harmful levels of glyphosate.
What practical steps can you take to reduce your exposure?
-Don't spray glyphosate or other pesticides around your home
-Grow your own veggies and fruit, if feasible
-Buy organic food
-Explore cover and green manure plantings to reduce glyphosate use.
-Lobby local and national government to do frequent, transparent and publicised glyphosate testing of food, animal supplements, air and water.
-Phyllis Tichinin is an agricultural consultant with a background in hazardous substances.
-Business and civic leaders, organisers, experts in their field and interest groups can contribute opinions. The views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz.
