The
revelation that Roundup causes cancer demands a response that goes beyond
restricting the commonplace chemical's use.
When I began writing about agriculture nearly a decade ago, I
learned quickly that people generally believed that Roundup, the best-selling
weed killer made by Monsanto, was relatively harmless.
Roundup breaks down quickly, everyone said — and into non-toxic
components, they added.
If homeowners can buy it at gardening stores, and
cities around the United States use it to kill weeds in parks where children
play, it must be benign, right?
Wrong. Within the past year, the story has changed.
After all, studies use flawed methodology and find false results
all the time. Far too often, journalists take them at face value and publicize
their results without careful fact checking. I try to be more diligent than
that.
This time, however, all factors pointed to credibility. The
conclusion came from the World Health Organization. The New York Times wrote about it. And now, California might require labels on Roundup warning
consumers that it causes cancer.
Wow. After all this time, it turns out that spreading this
“safe” pesticide all over your yard — while farmers spray it all over
their corn, soybeans, and other crops — might kill you.
The obvious conclusion: We must change the way we use Roundup,
since everything we do now is based on the potentially wrong assumption that
it’s entirely safe. For starters, how about not letting anyone spray it in
public parks where kids play?
For me, this speaks volumes about humans’ imperfect ability to
assess the toxicity of manmade chemicals. If we were so confident for so many
decades that a potentially cancer-causing chemical was safe, then what other
“safe” chemicals are actually harmful?
The U.S. government doesn’t subscribe to the precautionary
principle, a rationale that basically asserts “better safe than sorry.”
Instead, if the best science of the day can’t prove that a chemical is harmful
with relative certainty, the government holds, then the maker of that chemical
should be allowed to sell it and profit from it.
They don’t have to prove affirmatively that it’s actually safe.
Decades later, with more rigorous research, we might find that
something pretty commonplace is actually bad for us. By then, the harm’s been
done. That’s how it went for DDT, asbestos, lead paint, arsenic-laced
pesticides, parabens, and cigarettes. And now it’s the case for Roundup.
Maybe it’s time to change our policy. Why not require proof
that a product is safe before putting it on the market and exposing Americans
to it?
The grass is probably going to be safer without Roundup.
OtherWords
columnist Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our
Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. OtherWords.org.