Newly Unsealed Documents Reveal EPA & Monsanto Always Knew Roundup Was Deadly Toxic
If you get all of your news from mainstream media and cable TV infotainment, then you’re probably unaware that glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide) has been linked to cancer. The World Health Organization stated in March that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen, and California will soon label it as such.
The MSM addict will also be unaware that long-term exposure to glyphosate—even tiny amounts deemed “safe” by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—can lead to liver and kidney damage.
The “safe” level of glyphosate for U.S. drinking water was set at 0.7 ug/L in 1994, and this has not been revised, despite studies over the years showing glyphosate’s toxicity. For comparison, the European Union’s safe glyphosate level for drinking water is 0.1 ug/L.
Several countries have banned or restricted the herbicide’s use, and other leading nations are considering legislative bans.
Nowhere is glyphosate more prevalent than in the U.S., which uses 20% of the world’s RoundUp, or more than 280 million pounds per year. These incredible figures have to do with the fact that Monsanto’s GMO “RoundUp Ready” brands now comprise most of the corn and soybean crops grown in the U.S. This has brought staggering profits to the multinational corporation that now controls vast swaths of the global food supply.
As more research is carried out, we are finding that glyphosate is far more toxic than its maker Monsanto, along with corrupted federal agencies, have led us to believe.
Now the grand deception has been confirmed.
Forty years ago the biotech giant began its own research on glyphosate, and these studies have just been unearthed. The documents reveal that Monsanto always knew about the human health hazards of glyphosate.
There is now an enormous cache of evidence on both scientific and legal grounds that Monsanto in fact conducted numerous studies in the 1970s and 1980s on glyphosate’s toxicity and health risks and intentionally sealed this research from independent and public review and scrutiny.
Equally astonishing is the fact that this body of research was given to EPA, who hid it from the public at Monsanto’s demand on the basis of proprietary trade secrets.
The EPA sat on these documents for decades, but the dedication of independent research scientist Anthony Samsel pierced that shroud of secrecy. After trying unsuccessfully to gain access through Freedom of Information requests, Samsel managed to acquire the research documents through his senator’s office.
Samsel and his co-investigator, Dr. Stephanie Seneff of MIT, analyzed 15,000 pages of scientific documents covering Monsanto’s complete glyphosate research. They have concluded that Monsanto’s claims of safety are patently false, and it knew that glyphosate was responsible for a variety of cancers and organ failures.
When the company’s research showed adverse effects, it used a variety of deceitful tricks to hide and obscure those conclusions, so the lackluster EPA would simply nod its head in acquiescence.
“Monsanto misrepresented the data and deliberately covered up data to bring the product [glyphosate] to market,” said Samsel in an interview.
Samsel and Seneff will be presenting their findings in a peer-reviewed paper approved for publication this month, titled Glyphosate Pathways to Modern Diseases IV: Cancer and Related Pathologies.
In the meantime, analyst Richard Gale and documentarian Gary Null provide a comprehensive review of the scientists’ devastating findings.
In order to minimize and cancel out its adverse findings, Samsel explained that Monsanto had relied upon earlier historical animal control data, toxicological research with lab animals afflicted with cancer and organ failures, and completely unrelated to glyphosate. In some cases the control animals displayed kidney, liver and pancreatic diseases. Many of Monsanto’s own studies required the inclusion of extraneous studies in order to cancel out damaging results. This is not an uncommon industry habit, particularly in toxicological science. It enables corporations to mask undesirable outcomes and make claims that observable illnesses and disease are spontaneous occurrences without known causal factors. Frequently, Monsanto would have to rely on three external control studies to negate the adverse effects of a single one of its own. Samsel found other incidences in Monsanto’s data where 5, 7 and in one case 11 unrelated studies were necessary to diminish the severity of its own findings. In effect, glyphosate received licensure based upon a platform of junk tobacco science. By ignoring cause and effect relationships behind the onset of multiple cancers and other life-threatening diseases throughout many of its research trials, Monsanto engaged in a radical scientific denialism that has since raked in tens of billions of dollars.
In addition, Monsanto’s studies included doses from low to high range. Samsel observed that low glyphosate doses were equally if not more toxic than higher doses. The company later discontinued low dose trials, relying only on higher levels because it is customarily assumed to have greater toxicological risks. Samsel’s observation has recently been confirmed by a study published in the August issue of the Environmental Health Journal by scientists at Kings College London and the University of Caen in France. The two year study found that glyphosate administered at an ultra low dose of 0.1 ppb (the EU’s safety limit) in drinking water altered over 4000 gene clusters in the livers and kidneys of rats. These alterations, the study reports, “were consistent with fibrosis, necrosis, phospholipidosis, mitochondria membrane dysfunction and ischemia.”[14] Consequently low doses of Roundup are far more toxic than US EPA limits.
During its years investigating glyphosate’s bioactivity, Monsanto conducted hundreds of trials on mice, rats, beagle dogs, rabbits and other life. Among the many cancers and diseases Monsanto’s own research found associated with glyphosate are:
Adenoma cancer in the pituitary gland
Glioma tumors in the brain
Reticular cell sarcomas in the heart
Malignant tumors in the lungs
Salivary mandibular reticular cell carcinoma
Metastatic sarcomas of the lymph gland
Prostate carcinoma
Cancer of the bladder
Thyroid carcinoma
Adrenal reticulum cell sarcomas
Cortical adenomas
Basal cell squamous skin tumors
In female mammals there were cancers of the lung, liver, thymus, stomach, bladder adrenal glands, ovaries, colon, uterus, parathyroid and mammary glands.
Samsel and Seneff also noticed that Monsanto had conducted many long-term studies, as much as two years, on mice and rats. When Gilles-Eric Seralini and his French team reproduced and extended the length of Monsanto’s 3-month GMO maize rat-fed study for the life of the animals, they observed profuse cancer and tumor development started after the 4th month of the study. Monsanto continues to stand by its 3-month study as sufficient proof of GM maize’s safety. Yet the thoroughness and variety of Monsanto’s research operations should give strong reason to suspect that Monsanto has likewise conducted long term studies and knows all too well the deleterious effects of its pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified crops.
One of Monsanto’s claims is that glyphosate doesn’t bio-accumulate in tissues, rapidly bio-degrades and is excreted from the body readily. Contrary to this claim, Monsanto carried out meticulous studies to determine levels of accumulation and the organs, tissues and cells glyphosate reaches. Glyphosate was radio labeled with carbon 14 and given in 10 mg doses to seven groups of animals, male and female. After only 24 hours, the toxic chemical was found in the lungs and all body fluids: lymph, blood, urine and cerebral spinal fluid. Glyphosate also accumulated in the bone by 30 ppm and in the bone marrow by 4 ppm. Monsanto’s studies were comprehensive. It found an accumulation of the chemical in red cells, thyroid, uterus, colon, testes and ovaries, shoulder muscle, nasal mucosa, heart, lung, small intestine, abdominal muscle and the eyes.
Samsel and Seneff noted that the bioaccumuilation in the pancreas was not reported. Why would such meticulous efforts be made to measure radio labeled carbon 14 laced glyphosate levels in all the other organs, tissues and bodily fluids and then ignore the pancreas? The scientists believe this was deliberate.
Monsanto developed glyphosate in 1973, at a time when many of its products such as dioxin, saccharin and the herbicide Lasso, were either being banned or facing intense scrutiny.
As sales were falling and profits taking a hit, Monsanto put all its chips into RoundUp. Through an enormous onslaught of falsified data and unscrupulous research, Monsanto got the green light from health regulators and proceeded to spread its toxic product across the country and the world.
If Sansel and Seneff manage to voice their findings through the scientific community and alternative media, they just may be able to stand strong against the immense noise machine of biotech’s propaganda network.
Monsanto’s body of falsified research and its willful poisoning of the human population on the altar of profit are tantamount to crimes against humanity. The EPA’s withholding of this damning evidence, putting “proprietary data” above human health, also constitutes a grievous crime.
Please share this article in the hope that justice can be served and we can put a stop to the toxic assault of Monsanto.
Justin Gardner writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com
