RoundUp Reality: Americans Are Exposed to a LOT More Glyphosate than Europeans
According to a new paper in the journal Environmental Sciences Europe, Americans have sprayed more than 2.4 billion pounds of glyphosate in the past decade.
Last year, cancer experts convened by the World Health Organization determined that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen.
So what did the EPA do? Between 1999 and 2015, the EPA approved a doubling of tolerable glyphosate residues on soybean grain and a 49-fold increase on corn grain.
Since 1993 the EPA has also approved a 2,000-fold increase in the tolerance level of glyphosate residues on alfalfa grown for animal feed.
The agency has also increased the allowable level of glyphosate for wheat—up 5-fold between 2012 and 2015—running the risk of glyphosate ending up in flour.
Globally, glyphosate use has risen almost 15-fold since so-called “Roundup Ready,” genetically engineered glyphosate-tolerant crops were introduced in 1996. Two-thirds of the total volume of glyphosate applied in the U.S. from 1974 to 2014 has been sprayed in just the last 10 years.
Concern is growing around the world. The President of the Portuguese Medical Association, José Manuel Silva, has called for a global ban on the world’s most used herbicide, glyphosate, over the many health concerns surrounding the chemical.
So how does this impact Americans versus other countries, specifically Europeans? It looks like the image above.
Thankfully, the FDA just announced that they will start testing for glyphosate levels in food.
