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I was invited to give a keynote speech at the recent 2022 UN General Assembly Science Summit on the potential danger of Roundup-like herbicides in our food and in the environment. Interest in the subject reflects a growing concern around the world that these herbicides may be much more toxic than we have been led to believe.

The material below is a brief summary of the talk.

In 2012, Kauai was rocked by demonstrations over the proposed regulation of pesticide spraying on the island. I served on a task force sponsored by the state and county to evaluate the situation.

One of the toxic pesticides we examined closely was chlorpyrifos, an insecticide that affects the central nervous system of insects and animals. The scientific literature is clear that this chemical is toxic even if used as the label mandates.

I was struck by a disparity: Even though the science was clear, the companies that made and sprayed this chemical were dismissive of the concerns voiced by very reputable scientific bodies. It felt like I had entered a twilight zone of truth.

Fortunately, convincing testimony from the American Academy of Pediatrics contributed to Hawaii becoming the first state in the U.S. to ban the use of this insecticide for food production. Now, chlorpyrifos is banned for food production in the entire U.S. and in the European Union.

This same twilight zone of truth may also exist for Roundup-like herbicides. Monsanto patented Roundup in 1974. Since then, glyphosate has become the active ingredient in other Roundup-like herbicides, also known as glyphosate-based herbicides.

Heavy spraying of these chemicals began in the 1990s. They are currently the most heavily sprayed herbicides in the world.

Glyphosate-based herbicides are sprayed on genetically modified organism food crops such as corn, soy, sugar beets, and canola and also on non-GMO crops such as wheat, barley, oats, and rice. have shown that a disturbingly high percentage of Americans now have glyphosate in their bodies.

The addition of glyphosate to American food has made our diet different from any other time in human history. This difference in diet coincides with the increased recognition that the health of Americans has worsened substantially since the 1990s, with an explosion of obesity, autism, fatty liver disease, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, and numerous other adverse health conditions.

One in every two American adults now has a chronic disease. A stated that there has also been a “dramatic” increase of 14 different cancers in people under 50 during this same time period.

This raises an important question: Is it possible that GBHs are contributing to our epidemic of chronic diseases?

Companies that make and sell GBHs claim the following:

1. GBHs have been shown to be safe by hundreds of studies.
2. GBHs are particularly safe because they impact a metabolic pathway found in plants, but not in animals.

There are, unfortunately, significant problems with these arguments, which may have critical implications for our health.

The first problem is that many of the studies referenced as were done more than 30 years ago using much less sophisticated testing methods, many of the studies were paid for by Monsanto, many of them were not published, not peer-reviewed and remain held as private information and therefore are not available for review.

In contrast to Monsanto’s claims of safety, a significant number of the more demonstrate toxicity.

The second problem is that while it is true that glyphosate affects one particular metabolic pathway in plants that is not found in animals, newer studies demonstrate that glyphosate adversely affects other pathways that are in animals.

Equally worrisome is that this one , which they have assured us is not found in animal cells, is found in the bacteria that live in and on our bodies, and there is steadily that GBHs may alter the vital ratios and functions of these bacteria. Its effect on bacteria is so powerful that glyphosate is actually patented as an antibiotic.

One in every two American adults now has a chronic disease.

The billions of bacteria that live in and on our bodies (known as our microbiome) are essential for good health. The scientific knowledge about microbiomes has exploded in the last few years.

We know that a healthy microbiome is vital for digesting foods, producing essential chemicals such as vitamins, and aiding our immune system. There is a growing belief that adverse changes to the microbiome may influence the development of cancer, cause obesity, increase autoimmune diseases, and possibly worsen other significant health conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

The Harvard researchers who described the dramatic increase in cancer also stated that there is a strong possibility that this increase in cancer is due to adverse changes in our microbiome.

As mentioned, an additional reason for concern is that more recent and often more sophisticated studies show GBHs to be toxic to . They are toxic to marine life, birds, bees, insects and mammals.

The evidence is becoming increasingly clear that they do affect metabolic pathways other than the one that is just in plants. When they are tested against (including human cells), they are repeatedly shown to cause injury to numerous cellular mechanisms and even to the genetic material of the cells.

The science clearly does not show these Roundup-like herbicides to be as safe as the chemical companies and crop industry would have us believe. Given the rapid degradation of human health over the last several decades, and the new evidence demonstrating the possible toxicity of a substance that is not only injurious to us but to almost all other life forms, further research, and further regulatory review is urgently needed.