The US Governments are just lap dogs to these Masters -
The US Governments are just lap dogs to these Masters -
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Source: Activist Post
Increasingly, the front lines of the information warfare being perpetuated by corporations upon the people are moving into peer-reviewed biomedical and life sciences journals. Once considered a place where rigorous, empirical science — i.e. the truth — is vindicated and publicly acknowledged, these journals, and the scientists who publish in them, are no longer capable of maintaining the once hard and fast illusion that they are immune to the corrupting influence of industry.
Corporations like Monsanto, whose GMO-agriculture inventions (Bt corn; Roundup herbicide) now threaten human and environmental health alike, have moved beyond the stage of simply denying or minimizing the science revealing the harm being done by their products (there is too much science now to maintain this strategy!); rather, they are now investing in the burgeoning, multi-billion dollar industry practice known as “check book” science: find willing researchers, research institutions, and journals to create and publish information favorable to the company writing the check, and you’re in business.
Case in point….
Monsanto-Funded “Research” Reveals Monsanto Products Are Safe
A review on glyphosate (Monsanto’s invention and key ingredient in their Roundup herbicide formulation) titled, “Developmental and reproductive outcomes in humans and animals after glyphosate exposure: a critical analysis,” was published in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health late last year which claimed the following:
[T]he available literature shows no solid evidence linking glyphosate exposure to adverse developmental or reproductive effects at environmentally realistic exposure concentrations.
The review authors included a thank you to Monsanto for funding their work:
The authors acknowledge the Monsanto company for funding and for providing its unpublished glyphosate and surfactant toxicity study reports.
Their report aimed to discredit the work of a French research group at the Institut Jaques Monod who published five articles indicating glyphosate’s wide-ranging potential for environmental and human harm.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
In their newly published rebuttal titled, “LETTER TO THE EDITOR: TOXICITY OF ROUNDUP AND GLYPHOSATE,” the French research team pointed out several serious flaws in the Monsanto-friendly scientist’s criticism of their work.
The first major flaw was their total disregard for the scientific context within which their glyphosate research was performed, namely, the DNA-damaging and carcinogenic potential of the chemical.
The second flaw was the claim that their results were “not environmentally relevant” (repeated 5 times in the article), despite the fact that the French researchers were able to demonstrate toxicity in 100% of the individual cells at short exposure time below the usage concentration (20 mM) of the herbicide in present agricultural applications. They elaborated on this point further:
Therefore, regarding the considerable amount of glyphosate-based product sprayed worldwide, the concentration of Roundup in every single micro droplet is far above the threshold concentration that would activate the cell cycle checkpoint. (2) The effects we demonstrate were obtained by a short exposure time (minutes) of the cells to glyphosate-based products, and nothing excludes that prolonged exposure to lower doses may also have effects.
Since glyphosate is commonly found present in drinking water in many countries, low doses with long exposure by ingestion are a fact. The consequences of this permanent long term exposure remain to be further investigated but cannot just be ignored.In the interest of countervailing the mis- and disinformation, we are indexing research on the under-reported, adverse effects of glyphosate (the active ingredient which now includes 20 toxic properties associated with 30+ diseases or disease symptoms.
When Dr. Don Huber, professor emeritus at Purdue University and internationally-recognized plant pathologist, wrote a letter back in January to US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack, warning him about a new mystery disease showing up primarily in genetically-modified (GM) crops, the notice fell on deaf ears.
Research conducted by a team of senior plant and animal scientists found that Monsanto’s glyphosate chemical, which is the primary ingredient in its popular RoundUp herbicide formula, appears responsible for infecting plants with an AIDS-like syndrome that destroys their immunity, blocks their absorption of certain vitamins and minerals, and eventually kills them.
You can read a copy of Dr. Huber’s letter for yourself here:
http://es-la.facebook.com/notes/wood-prairie-farm/the-complete-text-o…
The key factor of Dr. Huber’s discovery was a microscopic pathogen specifically prevalent in GM crops. The pathogen, he explained in an interview with Food Democracy Now! (FDN) as well as in his letter, is common. But an apparent weakening of plant immunity by glyphosate makes plants treated with the chemical more susceptible to contracting the harmful pathogen. And as a result of exposure, large swaths of GM farmland have died, and many animals that feed on GM-tainted meal have become infertile or have had abortions.
But instead of listening to the scientifically sound advice of Dr. Huber and withholding deregulation of GM alfalfa until more intense safety studies could be conducted, the USDA decided to ignore it all and approve the “Frankencrop” anyway.
To watch the full video interview between FDN and Dr. Huber, visit:
http://vimeo.com/22997532
Sources for this story include:
http://www.bnet.com/blog/food-industry/mystery-science-more-details-o…
Source: Activist Post
Alarming new research published in the journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology supports the emerging connection between glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide, and neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and Parkinsonian disorders.
Published this month (April, 2012), the new study entitled “Glyphosate induced cell death through apoptotic and authophagic mechanisms,” investigated the potential brain-damaging effects of herbicides, which the authors stated “have been recognized as the main environmental factor associated with neurodegenerative disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease.”
They found that glyphosate inhibited the viability of differentiated test cells (PC12, adrenal medula derived), in both dose-and-time dependent manners. The researchers also found that “glyphosate induced cell death via authophagy pathways in addition to activating apoptotic pathways.”
Roundup herbicide is now a ubiquitous contaminant in our air, rain, groundwater, and food, making complete avoidance near impossible. A growing body of experimental evidence now indicates that it in addition to its neurotoxicity it also has the following.
Modes of Toxicity
Once marketed as “safe as table salt” by Monsanto, the original patent holder and manufacturer of this glyphosate-based herbicide, evidence now indicates it is toxic to human DNA at concentrations diluted 450-fold lower than used in agricultural applications.
This study only adds to human case reports of glyphosate-poisoning and/or occupational exposure where neurological damage was a direct consequence. A 2011 case study published in the journal Parkinsonism Related Disorders, entitled “Parkinsonism after chronic occupational exposure to glyphosate,” reported the following incident:
Here we report a patient with parkinsonism following chronic occupational exposure to glyphosate. A previously healthy 44- year-old woman presented with rigidity, slowness and resting tremor in all four limbs with no impairment of short-term memory, after sustaining long term chemical exposure to glyphosate for 3 years as a worker in a chemical factory. The chemical plant produced a range of herbicides including: glyphosate, gibberellins, and dimethyl hydrogen phosphite; however, the patient worked exclusively in the glyphosate production division. She only wore basic protection such as gloves or a face mask for 50 h each week in the plant where glyphosate vapor was generated. She frequently felt weak. Two months before she came to our clinic, she had expe- rienced severe dizziness and blurred vision.
Another case study published in 2003 reported a case of parkinsonism subsequent to glyphosate exposure.
These case studies are also backed up by animal research. In the roundworm model of glyphosate exposure the chemical results in neurodegeneration directly associated with damage to the dopamine and GABA producing neurons. In the rat model, glyphosate exposure results in oxidative brain damage, particularly the substantia nigra, where the highest concentration of dopamine-producing cells reside, and which is the primary locus of neurological damage in Parkinson’s disease.
This article first appeared at GreenMedInfo.
Source: OrganicConsumers.org
2,4-D and the dioxin pollution it creates are too dangerous to allow, period, but in the hands of bad actors like Monsanto and Dow Chemical the dangers increase exponentially. What’s the Environmental Protection Agency doing? Helping coverup the chemical companies’ crimes!
In February, Monsanto agreed to pay up to $93 million in a class-action lawsuit brought by the residents of Nitro, West Virginia, for dioxin exposure from accidents and pollution at an herbicide plant that operated in their town from 1929 to 2004.
That may seem like justice, but it is actually the result of Monsanto’s extraordinary efforts to hide the truth, evade criminal prosecution and avoid legal responsibility.
A brief criminal fraud investigation conducted (and quickly aborted) by the EPA revealed that Monsanto used a disaster at their Nitro, WV, plant to manufacture “evidence” that dioxin exposure produced a skin condition called chloracne, but was not responsible for neurological health effects or cancers such as Non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
These conclusions were repeatedly utilized by EPA and the Veterans Administration to deny help to citizens exposed to dioxin, if these persons did not exhibit chloracne.
The EPA knew the truth about Monsanto’s dioxin crimes, but it decided to hide it. Why? It would have affected us all. EPA’s brief criminal investigation of Monsanto included evidence that Monsanto knowingly contaminated Lysol with dioxin, even as the product was being marketed for cleaning babies’ toys.
Here are the details of this jaw-dropping and heart-breaking case of corporate criminality and EPA collusion.
According to Natural News:
According to Source Watch, in 1990, Cate Jenkins, a PhD chemist at EPA, became convinced that Monsanto had deliberately manipulated studies of worker victims of the Nitro disaster showing that dioxin was a human carcinogen.
Dr. Jenkins wrote a memorandum entitled “Newly Revealed Fraud by Monsanto in an Epidemiological Study Used by EPA to Assess Human Health Effects from Dioxins.” Read the memo at PureFood.org.
According to her memo:
Within days of learning that the Office of Enforcement had initiated a criminal investigation of Monsanto based on Jenkins’ allegations, her job duties were withdrawn without warning. She was not given any assignments from August 30, 1990 until she was reassigned on April 8, 1992 to a job which was primarily administrative or clerical.
According to a 1994 report on “EPA’s Phony Investigation of Monsanto,” by William Sanjour, Policy Analyst, US Environmental Protection Agency, published in Rachel’s Hazardous Waste News:
Why did Monsanto and the EPA go to such great lengths to hide the truth? It would have affected us all. EPA’s brief criminal investigation of Monsanto included evidence that Monsanto knowingly contaminated Lysol with dioxin, even as the product was being marketed for cleaning babies’ toys.
Dr. Jenkin’s memo also contained evidence that Lysol, a product made from Monsanto’s Santophen, was contaminated with dioxin with Monsanto’s knowledge. The manufacturer of Lysol was not told about the dioxin by Monsanto for fear of losing his business. Other companies using Santophen, who specifically asked about the presence of dioxin, were lied to by Monsanto.
This is just one example of why we can’t trust the EPA to stop Monsanto and Dow Chemical from poisoning us with dioxin.
TAKE ACTION: Call EPA’s Fail! Tell the EPA You Won’t Accept a Decision on 2,4-D Based on Dow Chemical’s Biased Studies!
TAKE ACTION: Tell USDA to Stop Agent Orange Corn!
To learn more about what’s wrong at the EPA, watch this video from the recent Occupy EPA protest:
It is well known that Monsanto’s GMO crops provide a very real threat to both public health and the environment as a whole, but the depth of Monsanto’s corruption is often a less covered topic. It has been revealed by WikiLeaks that Monsanto not only has key figureheads stationed in powerful government positions inside the United States, but also has many — if not all — U.S. diplomats on their payroll.
In the bombshell report, the leaked cables reveal that many U.S. diplomats work directly for Monsanto. Furthermore, Monsanto also has international titans pushing their agenda to maximize profits and increase the spread of genetically modified food.
The same WikiLeaks cable exposes how in late 2007, the United States ambassador to France and business partner to George W. Bush, Craig Stapleton, urged a ‘target retaliation’ against the European Union and certain nations that did not support Monsanto’s GMO crops. Stapleton, a close business partner of George W. Bush, actually co-owned the Dallas/Fort Worth-based Texas Rangers baseball team with the former president in the 1990s. The ambassador stated:
Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits. The list should be measured rather than vicious and must be sustainable over the long term, since we should not expect an early victory. Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voices.
In addition to threatening trade wars and using political corruption as a business model, Monsanto has also been busted for forcing workers into ‘slave-like’ conditions. Forcing slave workers to work the cornfields for 14 hours per day and buy their food at highly-inflated prices from the company store, Monsanto has been running these slave rings for an unknown number of years. It wasn’t until Argentina’s tax agency, known as AFIP, raided the Monsanto corn field did the operation become unveiled.
Monsanto’s corruption has never been more obvious, with many political figureheads in the U.S. government spearheading the initiative to spread Monsanto’s GMO crops far and wide. Even billionaire celebrities like Monsanto shareholder, Bill Gates, have been pushing GMOs as the answer to everything from starvation to sustainable agriculture. Of course, despite this, it has been proven by a team of 900 scientists that GMO crops are not an effective way to fight starvation.
In addition, scientists have shown that GMOs are damaging to your health. A prominent review of 19 studies examining the safety of these crops found that consumption of GMO corn or soybeans can lead to significant organ disruptions in rats and mice – particularly in the liver and kidneys.
Disregarding this information, the USDA is now preparing to give Monsanto’s new GMO crops even speedier regulatory review in order to secure their financial success.
Explore More:
This article first appeared at Natural Society, an excellent resource for health news and vaccine information.
(NaturalNews) After many months of hopeful anticipation, a preemptive, class-action lawsuit filed by farmers seeking protection against Monsanto’s predatory patent enforcements has been thrown out by U.S. District Court Judge Naomi Buchwald. And in response, a group of food freedom protesters stormed the front steps of Monsanto’s Washington, D.C., office on Wed., Feb. 29, and staged a demonstration where they marched with signs and blockaded the front entrance of the building.
OSGATA et al. vs. Monsanto, which was filed on behalf of organic and non-GM farmers everywhere by the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA), addressed an important agricultural issue about which few people are aware. In the past, when Monsanto’s genetically-modified (GM) seeds have contaminated non-GM and organic farms, the agri-giant has sued those farmers whose fields were contaminated on the grounds that they violated patent restrictions — and in some cases, Monsanto actually won these lawsuits.
Seeking to protect themselves from such ludicrous and exploitative litigation, a consortium of farmers, seed companies, and agricultural organizations filed a preemptive lawsuit to stop Monsanto from ever again targeting farmers in this rapacious manner. The suit also challenged the legitimacy of Monsanto’s seed patents in the first place, which many say are invalid because they do not meet the “usefulness” requirements under patent law.
But Judge Buchwald, who recently heard both sides of the story at a preliminary case hearing, has apparently decided to join forces with Monsanto by declaring the lawsuit to be “a transparent effort to create a controversy where none exists.” And this statement clearly indicates that Judge Buchwald has failed to acknowledge the more than 100 instances in which Monsanto has already sued farmers for “patent infringement” when its own GM seeds and seed traits have inadvertently contaminated non-GM and organic fields.
“We’re Americans. We believe in the system. But we’re disappointed in the judge,” said OSGATA president and organic seed farmer Jim Gerritsen in response to the ruling.
Adding to Gerritsen’s sentiment, Dan Ravicher, executive director of the Public Patent Foundation at Yeshiva University‘s Cordozo Law School, stated that Judge Buchwald’s “failure to address the purpose of the Declaratory Judgment Act and her characterization of binding Supreme Court precedent that supports the farmers’ standing as ‘wholly inapposite’ constitute legal error.”
OSGATA and others are already planning to appeal the decision, which they see as a complete denial of reality. Though Monsanto claimed before the court that it would never sue a farmer over a contamination issue, this has already been shown to be false, a fact of which Judge Buchwald should have been aware.
Sources for this article include:
(NaturalNews) Monsanto’s pipeline of upcoming genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) includes several new varieties specifically engineered with “stacked traits,” which means they contain multiple genetic modifications and built-in resistance traits as opposed to just one. And a new study published in the Journal of Applied Toxicology has found that these new multi-trait GMOs appear to be exponentially more harmful to humans than single-trait GMOs because of their synergistic toxicity.
Conducting actual research on the effects of GMO toxins on human cells — this is something Monsanto will never do — researchers from the University of Caen in France have found that the Cry1Ab protein, a Bt toxin deliberately produced in many GM crops, including Monsanto’s MON810 Bt corn, destroys human cells at levels of 100 parts per million (ppm) dilution and higher when consumed by itself. This level of exposure is relatively low, considering human exposure to Bt toxin comes from multiple sources, including meat and dairy products from animals fed Bt corn feed, as well as direct human consumption of Bt corn ingredients and soon-to-be Bt sweet corn from the produce section.
Additionally, the researchers found that exposure to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide formula, induces human cell death at exposures as low as 50 ppm, which is “far below agricultural dilutions,” according to the report. At a dilution of 57.5 ppm, which is only slightly higher, Roundup effectively kills 50 percent of human cells, which clearly illustrates its severe toxicity.
This important finding confirms the findings of numerous other reports conducted in recent days concerning Roundup’s toxicity in humans, including the fact that this widely-used chemical causes birth defects, cancer, and death
But the real kicker in the new research is the combined toxicity from exposure to both Roundup and Bt toxin which, according to the study, is tremendous. In their conclusion, researchers noted that “modified Bt toxins are not inert on nontarget human cells, and that they can present combined side-effects with other residues of pesticides specific to GM plants” (http://www.greenmedinfo.com).
So much for Monsanto’s claim that Bt toxin, Roundup, and various other chemically-engineered traits are perfectly harmless. Monsanto actually claims on its website that human testing of GMOs is unnecessary because they are no different than conventional and natural crop varieties — and regulatory authorities have never taken the agri-giant to task on actually proving this baseless claim, which flies in the face of independent science.
Sources for this article include:
(NaturalNews) After it was exposed that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the philanthropic brainchild of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, purchased 500,000 shares in Monsanto back in 2010 valued at more than $23 million, it became abundantly clear that this so-called benevolent charity is up to something other than eradicating disease and feeding the world’s poor (http://www.guardian.co.uk). It turns out that the Gates family legacy has long been one of trying to dominate and control the world’s systems, including in the areas of technology, medicine, and now agriculture.
The Gates Foundation, aka the tax-exempt Gates Family Trust, is currently in the process of spending billions of dollars in the name of humanitarianism to establish a global food monopoly dominated by genetically-modified (GM) crops and seeds. And based on the Gates family’s history of involvement in world affairs, it appears that one of its main goals besides simply establishing corporate control of the world’s food supply is to reduce the world’s population by a significant amount in the process.
Source: http://naturalsociety.com
Monsanto tentatively agreed to a $93 million settlement with some residents of Nitro, West Virginia. Nitro is a small town that got its name from manufacturing explosives during WWI. It was also the site of a Monsanto chemical plant that manufactured 2,4,5-T herbicide that was half of the Agent Orange recipe. Herbicide 2,4,5-T was contaminated with the caustic by-product dioxin. This settlement may open the floodgates to successfully suing Monsanto for its poison.
Nitro Settlement
Herbicide 2,4,5-T was phased out in the late 1970′s. Dioxin is the most dangerous chemical known and has a 100 year half-life when leached into soil or embedded in water systems. The Veteran’s Administration recognizes and pays out on Agent Orange injury claims that include cancer, birth defects in children of exposed victims, leukemia, liver disease, heart disease, Parkinson’s Disease, diabetes and chloracne.
Despite an explosion in the Nitro plant in 1949, not a single penny has been paid to residents of Nitro for dioxin injuries, per an attorney that worked on a previous dioxin case. After 7 years of litigation, and on the heels of the EPA releasing part of its dioxin assessment report, Monsanto has made a tentative agreement to settle a class action suit with some Nitro residents for a total of $93 million. Here are the proposed settlement figures:
Medical Testing: $21 Million
Additional Screening: $63 Million
Cleanup of 4500 homes: $9 Million
Bloomberg reports that this settlement will reduce Monsanto’s 2012 net income by 5 cents per share, but Monsanto may face additional lawsuits and fines. There are potentially 80,000 property damage claims alone that could cost Monsanto $3.9 billion in cleanup costs. Dioxin has contaminated soil and has been found in dust in residents’ homes at very high levels.
Nitro Residents vs. Monsanto
Several months ago, the judge in the Nitro case issued a gag order in this case, which was unusual, so details are a bit sketchy. It is unclear whether the following evidence was introduced:
1. Monsanto is alleged to have burned dioxin waste in open pits, spewing dioxin and its ash into the air and polluting land.
2. The EPA recommended that Monsanto be criminally investigated for fraud in covering-up dioxin contamination in its products, including 2,4,5-T herbicide. Monsanto failed to report contamination, substituted false information to show no contamination or sent in “doctored” samples of their products devoid of dioxin to government regulators.
3. The EPA recommended that Monsanto be criminally investigated for fraud in falsifying health studies. These flawed studies that concluded dioxin did not cause cancer and other negative health effects (except chloracne) were used to deny benefits to Viet Nam veterans.
4. Solutia, a Monsanto spin-off company that once owned its Nitro plant, was found by the EPA to have many deteriorating drums of dioxin buried near the Kanawha River. The Nitro plant produced dioxin contaminated 2,4,5-T from 1949 to 1971.
Agent Orange Government Contractor Immunity
Source: BlacklistedNews.com
The EPA announced that it has completed the first part of its study on dioxin, after more than 25 years of stonewalling.
Dioxin is the most caustic man-made chemical known. Dioxin is a general term for hundreds of chemicals that are produced in industrial processes that use chlorine and burning. Disturbingly, it has a half-life of 100+ years when it is leached into soil or embedded in water systems. Dioxin was the most harmful component in Agent Orange (the recipe for Agent Orange is 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T herbicides).
The EPA says that air emissions of dioxin have decreased by 90% since the 1980′s, but dioxin is dangerous at any level. The study appears to omit any analysis of dioxin transmission in water and land. The danger is growing because Dow AgroScience has received preliminary USDA approval for its 2,4-D herbicide resistant GMO corn. This means that dioxin contaminated 2,4-D herbicide will drench US farm land and pollute water supplies if the crops are widely planted.
EPA Dioxin Assessment Report
The EPA’s press release on dioxin’s health effects trumpeted the lie that current exposure rates “don’t pose significant health risks”. But the EPA does admit that there is a cancer risk, although they are not releasing their study on cancer at this time. Perhaps the delay is due to the fact that 95% of Americans have measurable levels of dioxin in their bodies.
The EPA’s claim that current levels are not a health risk is contradicted by another webpage on the EPA’s own site says that dioxin accumulates over a lifetime, persists for years, is likely to lead to an increased risk of cancer, and that the current exposure levels are “uncomfortably” close to levels that can cause “subtle” non-cancer effects. These so-called subtle effects may include birth defects, reproductive problems and immunosuppression.
There were 500,000 victims of birth defects in Viet Nam that can hardly be considered subtle. Dioxin is bad at any level especially since it accumulates in the body.
Humans are exposed to dioxin primarily through food sources. The EPA’s press release fails to mention that people who eat animal based foods like meat, dairy and eggs will continually increase their dioxin levels.
Source: Seeddaily.com
Over-reliance on glyphosate-type herbicides for weed control on U.S. farms has created a dramatic increase in the number of genetically-resistant weeds, according to a team of agricultural researchers, who say the solution lies in an integrated weed management program.
“I’m deeply concerned when I see figures that herbicide use could double in the next decade,” said David Mortensen, professor of weed ecology, Penn State.
Since the mid-1990s, agricultural seed companies developed and marketed seeds that were genetically modified to resist herbicides such as Roundup – glyphosate – as a more flexible way to manage weeds, Mortensen said. About 95 percent of the current soybean crop is modified by inserting herbicide-resistant genes into the plants.
“We do understand why farmers would use the glyphosate and glyphosate-resistant crop package,” Mortensen said. “It is simple and relatively cheap, but we have to think about the long-term consequences.”
The researchers said that increased use of herbicider is leading to more species of weeds that also are resistant to the chemicals.
They report their findings in the current issue of BioScience, noting that 21 different weed species have evolved resistance to several glyphosate herbicides, 75 percent of which have been documented since 2005, despite company-sponsored research that the resistance would not occur.
Source: Sayer Ji, Contributing Writer
Activist Post
New research released ahead of print and published in the journal Archives of Toxicology indicates that Roundup, the most common formulation of the herbicide glyphosate, is not only more toxic than its constituent ingredients, but is capable of damaging DNA within a human cell line when diluted down to 450-fold lower concentrations than presently used in GMO agricultural applications. In the researchers’ own words, Roundup has “genotoxic effects after short exposure to concentrations that correspond to a 450-fold dilution of spraying used in agriculture.”
The chemical – glyphosate – is the highest-selling herbicide in the world and has been identified as having a wide range of potential adverse health effects — largely minimized and/or under-reported — which include over two dozen diseases. Glyphosate’s primary properties of concern are its carcinogenicity, genotoxicity and endocrine disruptive actions.
Roundup contains a surfactant known as polyoxyethyleneamine which functions to reduce the surface tension between Roundup and the cells exposed to it, making the cellular membranes more permeable to absorbing glyphosate and other chemicals within the formula.
The surfactant in Roundup may therefore be responsible for increasing the toxicity of glyphosate by several orders of magnitude higher than it exhibits by itself.
This new research sheds light on a fundamental problem associated with toxicological risk assessments of agrichemicals (and novel manmade chemicals in general).
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