Nine Out of 10 Americans Tested Positive for Monsanto's Cancer-Linked Weedkiller Glyphosate

Nine Out of 10 Americans Tested Positive for Monsanto's Cancer-Linked Weedkiller Glyphosate

A probable human carcinogen is found in far too many foods.


May 27, 2016



March Against Monsanto, Akron, Ohio
Photo Credit: bill baker/Flickr CC


If you participated in the glyphosate test project launched last year by the Detox Project (formerly Feed The World) and Organic Consumers Association, you probably failed.
A staggering 93 percent of Americans tested positive for glyphosate, according to the test results, announced on May 25.
What makes that figure even more alarming is that many of you who sent in urine samples for testing probably eat more organic than non-organic food. Which suggests that either your organic food has been contaminated and/or you’re being exposed to glyphosate via unknown sources.
Worse yet? Children had the highest levels.
The testing, carried out by a laboratory at UC San Francisco, was the first-ever comprehensive and validated LC/MS/MS testing project to be carried out across America. According to the results, people who live in the west and mid-west tested higher than those living in other regions of the country.
It's way past time for the world to wake up and smell the poison.
Even before glyphosate, the most-used herbicide in the world, was labeled a ‘probable human carcinogen’ by the World Health Organization’s cancer agency IARC in 2015, the chemical, prevalent in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, was under fire from scientists who say the chemical makes us sick. Internal documents reveal that Monsanto has known this all along.
Despite the warnings, in 2012, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, under pressure from Monsanto, raised the allowed limits for glyphosate residue on fruits and vegetables. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, claiming pesticide residues are “safe,” doesn’t test for glyphosate residue on food.
Only recently has the U.S. Food & Drug Administration said it will begin testing human food for glyphosate. The FDA is a bit late to the testing party. Independent testing has already found glyphosate in many foods. It’s also been found in breast milk.  
The endocrine-disrupting (and more) chemical is even in your beer.
Fortunately, there are glimmers of hope that at least some parts of the world are waking up to the obvious dangers associated with poisoning our food, our ecosystem and ourselves. The European Commission has so far rejected Monsanto’s bid to renew its licensing of glyphosate in the EU.
Glyphosate is also up for renewal in the U.S. The EPA, amid controversy and under pressure, is stalling.
What progress has been made so far, in exposing the dangers of Roundup and glyphosate and taking steps to ban it, have resulted from people power. In October, we’ll take that people power to the next level, when we expose Monsanto’s crimes at the Monsanto Tribunal, a citizen’s tribunal that will be held October 15-16 in The Hague, Netherlands.