If You Go Down to the Woods Today....
Monsanto, herbicides and the blueberries

HighGrader Magazine September/October 1999
by Linda Pannozzo
In the first nine months of l996, Monsanto's worldwide agro-chemical sales increased by 21% to (US) $2.5 billion, due largely to sales of the herbicide Roundup. It goes by the name Rodeo when used to kill water weeds, Accord, when taking out vegetation below power lines and Vision, when used in clearcuts. Different names, but all the carry the same active ingredient - glyphosate. The chemical was first introduced as far back as l971 and registered in Canada in l976. Its use has increased ever since.
The Missouri based corporation, best known for introducing products such as Agent Orange, PCBs and BGH (a controversial hormone that boosts milk production in cows), has described glyphosate as "environmentally friendly" and "safe."
It claims Vision is "less acutely toxic than table salt or aspirin," and that one would have to guzzle 21 litres of a "normal-use solution" at one sitting to obtain a lethal dose.
And yet, compared to the astronomical use of these weed-killing concoctions worldwide, there has been little in the way of independent study into their effects on human and environmental health.
And the few studies that have been done have raised questions about the veracity of Monsanto's claims. There are two major issues outstanding - whether this herbicide use may be affecting other plants and animals and secondly, whether there is an impact on human health.


Toxic Bears
A recent report published in l998 in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research, found that glyphosate is doing more than killing "unwanted" weeds that could impede the growth of Black Spruce seedlings.
The report's authors (Faisal Moola, A.U. Mallik and R.A. Lautenschlager) say they initiated the study of clearcuts in Northwestern Ontario's boreal forests near Atikokan because of concerns that glyphosate was killing off blueberries and, in turn, affecting the physical and reproductive potential of Black Bears.
They drew on other studies which found that blueberries are a critical food source for Black Bears as well as at least 32 other species including Red Fox, chipmunks and thrushes.
Bill Freedman, a biology professor at Dalhousie University, has also studied the short-term effects of glyphosate on clearcuts in Nova Scotia. He found aerial spraying favoured the growth of evergreens, "the economically desirable [trees]." But what of blueberries - a necessary food source for wildlife, and key to the diets of many rural and First Nation's people?
According to Moola, if spraying were done in late August or early September, there would be less damage done to blueberries because their leaves were ready to drop off. But his report admits that this may be "impractical." And even though this recommendation may address the issue of saving the plant, there is still the question of the residue left on the berries and its potential impact on people and animals.
Bill Murray heads International Harmonization at the Pest Management Regulatory Agency - the Federal body that looks after the registration and regulation of pesticides and herbicides. Murray says glyphosate "isn't very toxic" and fairly high maximum residue levels (MRL) on food are allowed in Canada. "For instance, cereals are very high [in residues], and the consumption of these items is also high - consumers are eating quite a bit of it."
According to a l993 report published by the School of Public Health at the University of California, glyphosate was the third most commonly reported cause of pesticide illness among agricultural workers and another study found it was the most commonly reported cause of pesticide illness among landscapers (both studies were based on data from l984 to l990).
In l997 Monsanto agreed to change its advertising for glyphosate-based products in response to five years of complaints by the New York Attorney General's office that the ads were misleading. The Attorney General's office felt advertising which portrayed Monsanto's weed killing products as safe was misleading. According to the State, the ads implied the risks of products such as Roundup and Vision were the same as those of the active ingredient, glyphosate, and didn't take into account the risks associated with the product's inert ingredients. As part of the agreement, Monsanto agreed to stop using the terms "bio-degradable" and "environmentally friendly" in all advertising in New York State and paid $50,000 US toward the state's court costs saying it settled only to avoid costly litigation but remained faithful to its original claims.

Glyphosate only makes about 41% of the total pesticide. The rest is a combination of water and any combination of nearly 2,300 substances which could be added by the manufacturer but not listed on the label. The company claims that these chemicals are trade secrets.
It wasn't until l996 a Federal Court in the United States ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to disclose information about the inert ingredients in six named pesticide products. Roundup was one of them.
The Plaintiffs in the case - Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides (NCAP) and the National Coalition Against Misuse of Pesticides (NCAMP) hoped the ruling would ultimately force the EPA to release the inerts of all pesticides. They fear that while glyphosate may seem relatively benign, the inerts could be down-right nasty.
Two inerts, for example, called POEA's (polyethoxylated tallowamines) cause a host of health problems including nausea, burns, excess fluid in the lungs and eye, skin and gastrointestinal irritation.

Human Impact
The debate over glyphosate has brought attention to the ongoing debate about the effects of industrial herbicide use are having on global health. Two studies, one conducted in l992 on rats by the US National Institutes of Health and the other in l995 by researchers at the University of Alexandria, Egypt on rabbits concluded that glyphosate treatment results in a decline in sperm count, libido and body weight of male rats and rabbits.
The Lund University Hospital in Sweden recently linked herbicides to one of the most rapidly increasing cancers in the Western world - non-Hodgkin's lymphoma - which has risen steadily since l973. The study found that patients were 2.7 times more likely to have been exposed to the herbicide MCPA, sold as Target by the Swiss company Novartis and 2.3 times more likely to have had contact with glyphosate. The researchers suggest the chemicals suppress the patient's immunity, allowing viruses such as Epstein-Barr to trigger cancer.
Murray doesn't deny there may be other studies around, besides the ones the Agency looked at, that indicate an adverse effect, but he stresses you have to look at the doses administered and "need to pull the studies apart."
But the Agency isn't doing this - it's already made up its mind. In fact, the MRLs for glyphosate are on the rise.
Prior to June, l992 the MRLs for glyphosate on all foods was 0.1 ppm (parts per million). Now, soybeans are a whopping 20 ppm, cereals such as barley and oats are 10-15 ppm, lentils are 5 ppm. Some animals headed for dinner tables feed on crops that have been sprayed with glyphosate and so MRLs exist for them as well - 0.2 ppm for the liver of cows, goats, pigs, chickens and sheep. Any food that doesn't have a specific MRL for glyphosate is automatically 0.1 ppm.
So, how come some of these numbers are so high? Murray explains. Monsanto submits to the Agency the rate it says is necessary for the herbicide to work. Monsanto then conducts field trials using its proposed rate and residue amounts are collected on the tested crops. These results are reported back to the Agency where they are reviewed. The government reviewers determine how much of that crop Canadians would ingest and by this establish an acceptable daily intake level. When it comes to cereals, the MRL is quite high (10-15 ppm) due largely to the fact that glyphosate is often sprayed later in the season and remains on them at high levels. When it comes to looking at health studies, Murray says the ones the Agency refers to are usually done at "independent labs funded by the manufacturer."
And yet, a number of recent scandals has thrown a harsh light on the influence some companies may be having over government approval processes.
Last year, liver specialist Dr. Nancy Olivieri was threatened with legal action by Canadian pharmaceutical giant, Apotex Inc. when she tried to publish her criticisms of a new drug they were developing, based on data she collected during a clinical trial sponsored by the company. Six Health Canada scientists recently complained to an internal labour board they were being pushed to approve Monsanto's BST, a genetically engineered milk enhancer for cows, despite their concerns the drug was not safe.
Then, in October l998, the Senate Agriculture Committee heard sworn testimony from a Health Canada drug reviewer that Revalor-H, one of the growth hormones banned in Europe as a carcinogen, was approved by managers who overruled the reviewer on the file, who felt the hormone posed an undue risk, especially to children.
Evidence of drug/chemical company influence is equally prevalent across the border. Studies done by Monsanto, the manufacturer of Agent Orange, showed that dioxin, an unwanted by-product in the making of the defoliant sprayed over Vietnam forests, caused no cancers in humans. With no other studies to go on, the government accepted Monstanto's claim.
But when Dr. Cate Jenkins, a scientist with the EPA did a bit of digging, she accused the study of being "rigged". After trying to draw attention to what she claimed were fraudulent studies, she was transferred to another branch and given no duties. It was only after the National Institute of Health conducted its own study that dioxin was found to be highly carcinogenic - a widely accepted fact today.
Glyphosate herbicides account for at least one-sixth of Monsanto's total annual sales and half of the company's operating income. Monsanto's US patent will expire in the year 2000, and competition from generic glyphosate products is already emerging worldwide. To counter this threat, Monsanto is packaging Roundup herbicide with the genetically altered Roundup Ready seeds (seeds that are designed to survive Roundup spraying) to ensure their share of the market.

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