Poisoning our great-grandchildren?

November 2018

Disturbed by the higher incidence of birth defects he observed after moving to a mid-west farming state, one US paediatrician decided to investigate.  His research homed in on two of the most heavily used herbicides in the state: atrazine and glyphosate.  Atrazine is used on corn and soya crops, and has a habit of ending up in drinking water*.  Glyphosate is used on most GM corn and GM soya and has a habit of ending up everywhere [1].

So far, studies on humans have shown that if you plot the levels of atrazine in drinking water and birth defects, they fit each other "like a hat".  At the same time, glyphosate has been found in the body of "virtually every pregnant mother" tested in the state, and has been linked to shortened pregnancy [2].

Looking at rat experiments carried out in the US (atrazine) and Argentina (glyphosate), things become scary. 

Glyphosate harms the womb

August 2016

Photo Creative Commons

The two words which agrichemical manufacturers least want to hear are "endocrine disruptor". These conjure up the spectres of fertility damage, cancer, no safe level of exposure, and commercial disaster.

Glyphosate-based herbicides, such as 'Roundup' formula, are used for urban and rural seed-clearance, for pre-harvest withering of seed and tubour crops, and are heavily applied to, and accumulated by, most GM crops. Residues of glyphosate-based herbicides are now ubiquitous in our air, water, soil, livestock and bodies [2]. This is not a presence you want to find associated with long-term harm, yet evidence has been mounting for some time that Roundup and its cousins are endocrine disruptors [1].

Due to widespread growing of Roundup Ready soya in Argentina and concerns about the health of the people near Roundup-sprayed areas [3], Argentinian scientists have been particularly busy checking the herbicide out.

The anti-spray movement

July 2016

Photo Creative Commons

"A spray helicopter ... had its electrical wires, oil and fuel lines cut ... a spray crew bus had its brake lines cut." 

" ... a (herbicide spraying) ground crew was attacked by protesters, beaten, their spray gear destroyed, and their leader forced at knifepoint to sign a statement promising not to spray again in that area." 

"... An armed mob threatened to shoot down spray helicopters." 

"Someone ... punctured ten 550 gallon drums of (2,4-D herbicide)" 

"Activists ... contaminated 500 gallons of herbicides to prevent their use." 

"Mobs of activists routinely trespass in areas scheduled for aerial spraying and prevent thousands of acres ... from being sprayed." 

Non-Violent Resistance training weekends are being run to prepare the "occupation forces" to prevent herbicide spraying. 

Civil disobedience and sabotage have become a routine part of the anti-pesticide movement. So much so that an Intelligence Division has been formed with special spray-programme agents to monitor local resistance to herbicides and the activities of local leaders in the antispray movement. 

"... a spray helicopter ... was completely destroyed by fire" after which two women appeared on television and radio to explain that the burned helicopter was "a message to the companies who profit from spraying poisons indiscriminately with disrespect for human and animal life and Mother Earth." Their reason was the years of ill effects from "herbicide contamination, including miscarriages, birth defects, and cancer ... Our present health and genetic future are at stake."

Is this fiction? Are these real people taking action against the threat of herbicides to humanity? Are these ferocious eco-terrorists and saboteurs characters in a novel?

Endocrine disrupting chemicals on the menu

July 2015

Photo Creative Commons

As human fertility plummets, and cancer, diabetes and obesity soar relentlessly upwards, attention is on endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) as a possible major player.

EDCs can mimic, block or alter the level of hormones. Hormones are, of course, vital to many processes in the body. Their disturbance is harmful to health, and can cause irreversible damage at key stages of development.

Exposure to EDCs comes from their wide use in the manufacture of plastics, cosmetics, carpets, computers and construction materials. A special concern, however, is pesticides. Pesticidal chemicals are intimately present in our food, water and air, but despite this they've never been tested for endocrine-disrupting effects.

Roundup untested in drinking water

May 2015

Photo Creative Commons

The biotech industry's 'dream' weedkiller (the one which is "safe-as-salt", sold for use on most GM crops, and has become a global best-seller) seems to be turning into a nightmare. This year has seen a flurry of scientific publications on the safety aspects of glyphosate and glyphosate-based formulations (commonly marketed as 'Roundup'). Following up concerns that glyphosate is an endocrine disruptor, Australian scientists carried out experiments on the herbicide's effects on progesterone production.

Aromatase assumptions

May 2015

An oft-quoted justification for the 'self-evident' safety of glyphosate herbicide is that it interferes with a plant-specific enzyme and therefore won't have any effects on humans.

Glyphosate is widely sprayed on GM crops, most of which have been designed to survive and accumulate it. The weeds around them die because 'aromatase', an enzyme vital to plant protein production, is blocked by the herbicide.

Aromatase enzyme induces 'aromatisation' which means a ring of carbon atoms is formed to produce a new biochemical.

In plants, aromatase acts on amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) to form a class of 'aromatic' amino acids only produced by plants. Animals need aromatic amino acids to build proteins too, but must consume plants (or other animals which have consumed plants) to get them.

The human body, however, also has enzymes with aromatase action (they form a carbon ring). Human aromatase is nothing to do with amino acids or proteins, but acts on the male sex hormone, androgen, to convert it to the female sex hormone, oestrogen. Because our tissues need a precise androgen:oestrogen balance at just the right time for healthy development, most human tissues generate their own specific variant of aromatase.

GM safety testing needs today's science

April 2015
It was thought-provoking to read about a Monsanto-sponsored review of glyphosate safety studies. 

The review wasn't published in an open-access journal, meaning that only the abstract is available. However a response by scientists, whose conclusions of harm caused by the herbicide had been dismissed in the review because their end-points (markers of toxicity) had not previously been used revealed the biotech industry's view of 'safety studies'. It seems the industry position is that glyphosate (used on and accumulated by most GM crops) is unquestionably safe because historically-recognised end-points have proven it so, and that any further science is therefore wrong.

There are a number of problems with this logic.

Roundup and declining fertility

May 2014

Photo from Creative Commons

Male infertility has been rising in industrialised countries worldwide for four to five decades.

 

One in five healthy men between the ages of 18 and 25 produce abnormal sperm counts. In men without fertility problems, the average sperm count has halved, 20 percent of young European men have sperm counts at a level likely to result in infertility, and a further 40 percent have sperm counts likely to result in delayed pregnancy (Word Health Organisation). Demands for assisted reproductive technology (ART) are growing; in Denmark, for example, more than seven percent of all children born in 2007 were conceived using ART.

 

In parallel with the decline in semen quality, there has been a rise in testicular germ cell cancer. This type of cancer is initiated during foetal development, and, in many countries, is the commonest cancer in young men (15 to 35 years of age). Testicular germ cell cancer is associated with impaired fertility even prior to cancer development.

Are pests needed to control climate change?

November 2013

CC photo by William Warby on Flickr

A recent study by American ecologists has cast an interesting new light on our intuitive concept of the carbon cycle, especially on the realities of carbon storage, carbon release as CO₂, and the resulting threat of climate change.

We've never before doubted that plants left undisturbed will grow maximally, and store maximum carbon from their photosynthetic endeavours. Nor have we ever doubted that the destruction of plants by herbivorous animals will reduce carbon storage, while the action of carnivorous animals will keep the herbivores in check and thus offset the carbon lost to them.

We've never questioned the role of liberal applications of insecticidal chemicals, and more recently 'Bt' GM plants which suffuse themselves with insecticidal proteins, in enabling maximal carbon storage and growth of our crops.

But, interestingly, no one's ever scientifically verified these 'intuitions'.

Burying dangerous bad news

June 2012

Illustration by Hendrik Tammen (Enricopedia ⇄)
[CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

Ministers at Westminster have “highlighted the 'urgent need' to generate nuclear electricity to meet climate change objectives” (Cheryl Latham). But what bigger problems will this 'solution' create for the future?

More than 60 years after the dawn of the nuclear age, the mountains of highly dangerous by-products have not been dealt with. In the UK, “we now have enough radioactive waste to fill the Albert Hall five times over”. (Louise Gray)

The UK's current plan for nuclear waste is to solidify it, coat it with concrete or clay, and bury it 3,000 feet underground. Elsewhere in the world, the thinking is similar: Sweden and Finland have chosen sites and started digging, while the US is looking to store its nuclear waste in salt mines.

Glyphosate disrupts chromosomes

April 2012

Frog on lily pad. Photo by Macomorphosis on Flickr

Environmental pollutants have exacted a very heavy toll on amphibians (frogs, toads etc.) around the globe.

A particular offender has been identified as glyphosate, a weed-killer now widely and repeatedly sprayed on crops genetically transformed to withstand it.

Frogs are particularly vulnerable to chemicals because of their life-cycle and physiology. Tadpoles and spawn are unprotected and live immersed in pooled water along with whatever contaminants have collected there. Adult frogs have skin which serves as a 'lung', and doesn't have the tough, impermeable qualities of, for example, mammalian skin.

A recent study by Argentinean scientists on the effects of glyphosate on two species of frog yielded some ominous results.

Roundup endocrine distuptor

March 2012

Two decades ago, scientists began to report a disturbing drop in human sperm quantity and quality, and a rise in testicular cancers. The blame for this has been pinned firmly on our modern exposure to chemicals pollutants. Indeed, due to the nature of its function which involves a hormone-linked cell-proliferation at a huge scale and speed, reactions in the testis have become recognised as a uniquely sensitive monitor for biologically disruptive materials.

Roundup impairs animal fertility

April 2011

Evidence is accumulating that Roundup herbicide affects fertility.

The infamous study by Russian scientist Irina Ermakova, which found that feeding rats on Roundup Ready (RR) soya led to stunted growth, small litter size and pup deaths was dismissed by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) on the basis that an American study on mice published in 2004 had recorded no pup survival, health or litter size problems at all.