Another round of tests finds weedkiller widespread in
popular cereals and snack bars
Glyphosate— the active
ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller—was found in all 28 samples of
different cereals, oatmeal and snack bars tested by a lab for Environmental
Working Group, according to a report released today.
The nonprofit health and
environmental organization sent 10 samples of different types of General Mills'
Cheerios and 18 samples of different Quaker brand products from PepsiCo,
including instant oatmeal, breakfast cereal and snack bars to Anresco Laboratories
in San Francisco.
"People don't want
this pesticide on their food, especially in foods marketed to and consumed by
children," Tasha Stoiber, a senior scientist at EWG, told EHN.
The report comes two
months after EWG reported glyphosate in 43 out of 45 samples of oat-based
foods, including five foods that used "organic" oats. Since that
report, glyphosate has been consistently in the news as last month a jury in
California found Monsanto's Roundup caused a groundskeeper's cancer, and
awarded him a settlement of $289 million. The damages were reduced to $78
million this week after Monsanto asked for a retrial, which wasn't granted.
Researchers cautioned against being too alarming about the new lab results. "It's hard to look at parts per billion levels and make a connection to what a problem could be if kids ate Frosted Cheerios everyday," Deborah Kurrasch, and associate professor and researcher in the Department of Medical Genetics at the University of Calgary, told EHN.
In response to the
report, a Quaker Foods spokesperson told EHN via email that "the report
artificially creates a 'safe level' for glyphosate that is detached from those
that have been established by responsible regulatory bodies in an effort to
grab headlines."
The levels of glyphosate
in the latest round of food testing all fall far below the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency's threshold, but 26 of the foods tested higher than EWG's own
health benchmark, which is 160 parts per billion. EWG's benchmark, which is set
at what the organization's scientists consider protective of children's health,
is much higher than the EPA's, which is 30 parts per million.
Academic researchers, industry scientists and public health experts have been debating the potential health impacts from glyphosate exposure for years. Three years ago, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans." The chemical also has been linked to hormone disruption, birth defects, reproductive, liver and kidney problems.
These new numbers from
EWG testing "are surprisingly high," Charles Benbrook, visiting
scholar in the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, and
a visiting professor at the University of Newcastle in the U.K., told EHN.
"Even with the high
chronic reference dose the EPA uses for glyphosate, there is already reason for
concern about some of these higher end residues in children's food,"
Benbrook said. "Especially since this could be a significant portion of an
infant's food and it's at a time they're most vulnerable to developmental
impacts of a pesticide."
Pre-harvest
spraying
Almost everyone has
glyphosate in their body. Tests in the U.S. and Europe show roughly 90 percent
of people have traces of the chemical in their urine.
Glyphosate "moves
through the body quickly, so when biomonitoring studies report high levels of
detection, it means people are exposed on a daily or near daily basis,"
Benbrook said.
In the recent round of
testing the highest levels of glyphosate were found in Quaker Oatmeal Squares
Honey Nut, which had about 2,837 parts per million, and Quaker Oatmeal Squares
Brown Sugar, which had 2,746 parts per billion. The levels found are consistent
with not only EWG's first round of testing, but with U.S. Food and Drug Administration
tests of certain foods.
Benbrook said these
levels "no doubt reflect product made with oats in which a substantial
portion or significant share of oats from a field where oats are sprayed right
before harvest to speed up the harvest process."
It's the "only
conceivable way a level that high could wind up in a food as highly processed
as an oatmeal bar," he said.
Farmers will spray
wheat, barley and oat fields with glyphosate herbicides prior to harvest to
hasten and even out the drying of grains, which allows the combine to get into
fields earlier and ensure a productive harvest.
We want "companies
to work with their suppliers ... it's possible to produce oats without
glyphosate as a pre-harvest desiccant," Stoiber said.
In response to the
report, a General Mills spokesperson told EHN via email that the company
continues to "work closely with farmers, our suppliers and conservation
organizations to minimize the use of pesticides on the ingredients we use in
our foods.
"The extremely low
levels of pesticide residue cited in recent news reports is a tiny fraction of
the amount that the government allows."
Small, repeated
exposures can add up
While the levels are
high relative to food concentrations, the amount of glyphosate found in the
food in the new report is roughly 7 million times smaller than what
agricultural workers who apply glyphosate would be exposed to, Vanessa
Fitsanakis, an associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences and vice-chair of
pharmaceutical sciences at Northeast Ohio Medical University, told EHN.
For comparison to the
food, which contained levels in the parts per billion range, the amount of
glyphosate in home-use Roundup herbicide is about 2 percent, or 2 parts per
100. "I'd be much more concerned about children running across the
herbicide in parent's garage or playing in the yard after it's been
sprayed," Fitsanakis said. "That's a much more dangerous
scenario."
However, she added,
"I'm not saying [the food exposure] is not dangerous as they could be
getting a little bit every day."
The EWG benchmark is
based on "the risks of lifetime exposure, because small, repeated
exposures can add up if someone eats food containing glyphosate every
day," the report stated.
The organization
developed their benchmark based on the level set by the California Office of
Environmental Health Hazard Assessment and built in added protections since
children are more susceptible to carcinogens.
In its statement, the
General Mills spokesperson said "most crops grown in fields use some form
of pesticides and trace amounts are found in the majority of food we all eat.
Experts at the FDA and EPA determine the safe levels for food products. These
are very strict rules that we follow as do farmers who grow crops."
Benbrook said the recent
findings are concerning even using the EPA threshold.
"For a 1-year-old
oatmeal could comprise a third of food consumed in day – if it came from a
product with 2 to 3 ppm of glyphosate, it's a substantial amount of
exposure," he said.
"The take home for
me is that we need to make the concerns about glyphosate a higher
priority," Kurrasch said. "For decades it's been considered quite
safe."
