In secret internal Monsanto documents released last week by legal firms in the U.S. it was revealed how Monsanto scientists admitted that they were aware of the possible carcinogenic and genotoxic risk posed by their number one product, the glyphosate-based herbicide – Roundup.
The new revelations follow similar revelations in May, which showed how the same Monsanto manager, Dr. George Levinskas, who helped hide the carcinogenic potential of PCBs in the 1970s, also influenced the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate in the 1980s.
In amazing revelations from court documents released last Tuesday, Monsanto’s Product Protection and Nutrition Lead, Dr. Donna Farmer discusses the potential adverse effects of the formulated Roundup product in a 2003 internal company e-mail, conceding that “you cannot say that Roundup is not a carcinogen…we have not done the necessary testing on the formulation to make that statement.”
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The revelations do not stop there below is an amazing summary of the other secret e-mails on the possible damage caused by Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide:
- Farmer wrote in 1999: “I will not support doing any studies on glyphosate, formulations or other surfactant ingredients at this time with the limited information we have on the situation.”
- In an e-mail from 2010, Stephen Adams, Monsanto’s Chemistry Regulatory Affairs Manager, stated “With regards to the carcinogenicity of our formulations we don’t have such testing on them directly…”
- In 2013 Xavier Belvaux, Monsanto’s Regulatory Affairs Lead also confirmed that: “We (Monsanto) do not conduct sub-chronic, chronic or terotogenicity studies with our (Roundup) formulations.”
- In a Monanto PowerPoint presentation from 2008 concerning the “EU Expert Advisory Panel”, Page 6 of the presentation is astonishingly titled: “Monsanto’s Roundup ® acts on one of the key stages of cellular division, which can potentially lead to cancer in the long term.” The page references a French in-vitro study which observed adverse effects associated with Roundup. The final page contains “questions” regarding how to “position” in-vitro hazards using “urine concentrations from applicator exposure into plasma concentrations.”. Monsanto also considers the risks in “running a new study”.
- In an e-mail in 2014 sent by Monsanto’s Head of Product Safety, Dr. William Heydens, regarding the “IARC evaluation of Glyphosate” (which announced that Glyphosate is a probable carcinogen in 2015), Heydens concedes that “while we have vulnerability in the area of epidemiology, we also have potential vulnerabilities in the other areas that IARC will consider, namely, exposure, genetox, and mode of action…”
- Heydens also admits in 2015 to the “Low level presence of formaldehyde” (carcinogen by inhalation) in Roundup; and “Low level presence of NNG (N-nitroso-glyphosate) in Roundup – many N-Nitroso compounds are carcinogenic.”
- Heydens and Farmer, discuss various studies which observed adverse effects by the formulated Roundup product. Specifically, Dr. Farmer acknowledges: “[t]he interest point is glyphosate all basicially [sic] had no effect the formulated product did – does this point us to the coformulants – sufactants? [sic]”. Dr. Heydens also admits, after discussing with Monsanto consultant John Desesso, that “we are in pretty good shape with glyphosate but vulnerable with surfactants. . . What I’ve been hearing from you is that this continues to be the case with these studies – Glyphosate is OK but the formulated product (and thus the surfactant) does the damage.”
- Farmer summarizes the findings of Monsanto’s expert, Dr. James Parry: “Dr. Parry concluded on his evaluation of the four articles that glyphosate is capable of producing genotoxicity both in vivo and in vitro by a mechanism based upon the production of oxidative damage.”
- Heydens states in 2015 that “surfactant in the formulation will come up in the tumor promotion skin study because we think it played a role there.”
The full e-mails and internal documents can be found here.
The released court documents have also shown how Monsanto led the attack on the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), after the Agency announced that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is a probable human carcinogen in 2015.
Further secret documents made clear how Monsanto successfully pressured Wallace Hayes, Editor of Food and Chemical Toxicology Journal to retract the famous Séralini study, which discovered the damage caused by GM maize NK603 and low doses of Roundup herbicide on rats.
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Thank you for this concise and powerful compilation of the true science that has been secreted away by our government, and very soon they shall all be brought to task.
Do you have copy of that rat study using glyphosate to determine if glyphosate causes non hodgkins lymphoma so that I can study what was or was not done in that study . I believe they failed to do one thing and because some were Oncologists they should have known better .
I want to find what was missed in rat studies so that I may educate Judge Vince Chhabria . He may , or may not , know , personaly any fit rat study scientists
I consider myself to a glyphosphate experiment. I spent a significant amount of time as a teenager spraying the herbicide on farm fields. We didn’t have the ability to wash our hands in the field and I ate lunch with my hands covered in glyphosphate and the dyes used to indicate which plants had been sprayed. They dye remained on my hands for weeks at a time.
As an adult, I was diagnosed with a rare from of cancer, neuroendocrine carcinoid tumors of the small bowel with metastases to the liver and mesentary. The cause of this disease is unknown but the mechanism is a genetic mutation of the cells in the small bowel and other major organs. There is no cure for this cancer and I’ve been fighting the cancer and its symptoms since 2010.
I have no proof that glyphosphate is responsible for this genetic mutation but I’m concerned about Monsanto’s lack of transparency, their unabashed defense of their product and the profit motive for burying and covering up evidence showing it may cause cancer. I would be interested in receiving information regarding its cupability in causing mutations in humans or rats.
MONSANTO is killing futher existence and killing the ecological home where human and all existence are living and leaning on for surviving.