What should one do when scientists differ on safety of glyphosate?

by Chandre Dharmawardana,
chandre.dharma@yahoo.ca

Ravindra Jayananda (RJ), has written to The Island (18-10-2022) expressing concern on my article (14-10-22, The Island) entitled “Toxin gonibillas cry wolf again, wanting agrochemical ban”. I thank him for raising these concerns, although I myself, and previous writers like Dr. Waidyanatha, Dr. Illeperuma, Dr. C. S. Weeraratne, Dr. Buddhi Marambe and many others have also addressed them from time to time, in previous newspaper articles.For instance, Jayananda (who I believe is an engineering academic), has raises the following issues.

(a) He (i.e., Professor Dharmawardana) claims that Glyphosate is not a toxin and goes to say that, even 300 mg of vitamin A is a toxin…(then)…everything is toxic depending on the dose.

Exactly. This was stated six centuries ago by Paracelsus, the father of toxicology, with his famous dictum, “What is there that is not poison? All things are poison and nothing is without poison. Solely the dose determines that a thing is not a poison.”

There are basically two extremes of toxicity, known as “acute toxicity” and “chronic toxicity”. The relevant dosages are quite different, and it is very important to distinguish between them. Acute toxicity is the immediate toxicity if you ingest a large amount of the substance at once, either orally, via the skin, or by inhalation. The lethal dose for oral, dermal, or inhalation toxicity are widely different even for once substance. For oral acute toxicity to kill 50% of the rats in a sample, approximately 4-5 grams of glyphosate per kilo of body weight are needed. Animal and human data suggest that a 60 kg human would be at extreme risk if he/she were to drink a cup (200 ml) of full-strength glyphosate. So, it is much safer than many common pharmaceuticals and household cleaners as far as acute toxicity is concerned. A safety factor of 100 is applied to results based on animal experiments in extrapolating to humans.

However, what is important is the chronic toxicity of any substance. This results from prolonged intake of very small quantities over a long time. The Joint Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR) is an expert ad hoc body of the FAO and WHO for the purpose of risk assessments of pesticide residues and their long-term effects. A press statement by the JMPR, May 16th 2016 in Geneva, states that no significant chronic toxicity has been found for glyphosate. This is definitely the case for all higher animals. This assessment was re-confirmed by the “Giant Study” published in 2018 on glyphoaste toxicity to humans conducted by the US government Dept. of health using some 54,000 farmers and their families (amounting to over 90,000 people) who regularly used commercial glyphosate formulations (containing adjuvants), over a period of 23 years (see: http://www.dailynews.lk/2018/04/19/features/148615/glyphosate-ban-has-gmoa-studied-research/ ) . No unusual increased risk of cancer among them was found, when compared to the general population that does NOT use agrochemicals.

However, a controversy has been launched, mainly by the opponents of Genetically Modified (GM) Foods who also oppose glyphosate for its key role in GM agriculture, based on the fact that glyphosate is toxic to some micro-organisms and hence they argue, invoking the so-called “precautionary principle” that the glyphosate should be banned. Furthermore, based on such observations, the International Agency for Research into Cancer (IARC) ruled in 2014 that glyphosate may probably be carcinogenic to humans although not established to be so. This was prior to the 2018 Giant Study by the US Dept. of health. Hence at that time it was classified as a class-II carcinogen, unlike tobacco, wine or red meat which are established carcinogens and hence classified as class-I.

The anti-Glyhosate and anti-GM lobby continue to quote the IARC classification of 2018, while ignoring the JMPR press release of 2016, or the Giant US Dept. study released in 2018. When litigation is made against glyphosate, the jurors selected from the general public are already frightened by the fear-mongering that has gone on for decades against glyphosate, and court verdicts are invariably against the use of glyphosate.

Environmental organisations like the so-called “Friends of the earth”, Greenpeace, etc were warned by a joint press statement signed by 107 Nobel laureates (carried by, e.g., The Washington Post, July 2016 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/06/29/more-than-100-nobel-laureates-take-on-greenpeace-over-gmo-stance/ ), inviting those “environmental organizations” to not to propagate false information or back so-called “research” which is “setup” to give results against agrochemicals and GM foods.

(b) The ban of Glyphosate by advanced countries is a strong indication that there is a problem with the use of Glyphosate.

This shows the political power of fear mongering against agrochemicals that started in the advanced countries. The legitimate cry of warning against the misuse of agrochemicals initiated in the 1970s by writers like Rachel Carson was used by Richard Nixon, a cunning US politician to win the Green vote in California by banning DDT, and imposing punitive sanctions on countries that use DDT. However, in 2006 the Pasteur Institute in France showed that the domestic use of DDT for the control of mosquitoes was completely safe, while its use in agriculture is not. The US still prevents the export of DDT to African countries where it is badly needed.

Most bans of glyphosate are “paper legislation”. Various politicians campaign to ban glyphosate, and even pass legislation, but remain without being gazetted or applied in practice, or the ban is lifted when farm incomes collapse, as in Sri Lanka. In Lichtenstein, the legislation contravenes EU rules and is under a Court Injunction. In France, President Macron promised to ban Gylphosate, but delayed its application indefinitely. In Macron’s new second term too, practical reality has displaced electoral polemics (see the review in the French newspaper Le Mond, 19-Oct-2022). Health Canada, US Dept. of Health, and similar agencies in the UK, Japan, China, India, and News Zealand have upheld the safety of glyphosate.

(c) There are numerous research articles by scientists on this topic… and that they emphasize the negative effects of the use of Glyphosate.

Indeed, when scientists differ, the public (as well as scientists who are not directly in research on the topic) should follow the mainstream point of view. Google, Scopus etc., should be used for an initial search and only peer-reviewed publications or symposia sponsored by learned societies should be used. The WHO, FAO and their offshoots like IARC, JMPR etc., provide the main-stream scientific view on pesticide usage.

The “numerous research articles” against glyphosate may quote reviews articles, e.g., by Mayers et al (2016, Environmental Health, DOI 10.1186/s12940-016-0117-0) or that by Vandenberg (2017), “Is it time to assess current safety standards for glyphosate-based herbicides? However, such reassessments, even those published since the 2018 completely and conveniently ignore the Giant Study by the US Dept. of health and similar studies in their so-called “reassessments! The EU will make a new official reassessment in December 2022, and most probably re-affirm its usage for another four years.

(d) We should not forget that the multinationals are famous for influencing even the scientific researchers by providing grants for research and PhD degrees. So, if such contrary results can be found … the scientific community has not conclusively given their verdict on this issue

This is precisely why we should follow the UN-based international organisations like the WHO, FAO etc. rather than individual Ph.D studies. The influence-peddling multinationals are not just agrochemical companies, but also foreign-funded NGOs and political operators and organic-food lobby group wanting to capture a larger share of the food market. At present they cater merely to the elite strata, and provide less than 2% of the world’s food needs. In spite of their efforts, many large chains of organic food in Europe have filed bankruptcy in the inflationary aftermath of Covid.

An Engineer launching a building project follows the accepted Building code rather than the ancient “Mayaamatha” building manual based on astrology used medieval ancient Sri Lanka.

The views on agriculture expressed by “Friends of the Earth” groups, self-styled “Environmental Justice” activists, the likes of Vanadana Shiva in India, Ven Ratana, or Ven SamanthaBadhra of the Umandawa project, (or the views of Prof. Nalin de Silva who rejects modern science as a fallacious Western tool for domination), or those who push the teachings of “traditional hela agriculture”, are inconsistent with main-stream science.

While Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and many other countries that lagged behind Sri Lanka in the 1960s are now advanced countries with high standards of living, Sri Lanka has failed due to continued experiments with its destiny by implementing ideology-based developmental policies inspired by jingoism and “revolution”, rather than depending on evidence-based technology-inspired policies.