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Roundup is the UK’s most widely used weedkiller and the most popular in history
However, the safety of its big ingredient, glyphosate, has since been challenged
Some claim it's linked to serious conditions including liver and kidney disease
So should we be worried by Roundup and other popular glyphosate products?

We eat it in our food and spray it on our gardens and allotments. It is all over our parks and farmers’ crops.

Roundup is the UK’s most widely used weedkiller and globally the most popular in history.

When the U.S. company Monsanto launched the product in 1974, its marketing men proclaimed it to be a technological breakthrough that killed almost every weed without harming humans or the environment.

But since the Nineties, the safety of Roundup — and its active ingredient glyphosate — has been challenged by studies that suggest that the weedkiller is linked to serious conditions including liver and kidney disease, infertility, birth abnormalities and cancer.

Nevertheless, its use in UK farming has increased by an astonishing 400 per cent in the past 20 years, government figures show.

One-third of Britain’s crop-growing land is now treated with glyphosate (Monsanto’s patent for Roundup has expired, but while there are now more than 20 suppliers of glyphosate in Europe, Roundup remains the market leader, earning it some £1.5 billion a year worldwide).

Now its use is effectively being challenged in a landmark legal case in America.

In San Francisco, DeWayne Johnson, 46, a father of three and former school groundsman, is taking Monsanto to court.

He has a form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the white blood cells that caused cancerous lesions to form over most of his body. Doctors say he may have only months to live.

Johnson says he developed symptoms after he was twice accidentally drenched in Roundup while spraying schoolyards at work. He also had the chemical waft regularly into his face.

His lawyers have claimed in court that Monsanto has known for decades that Roundup is carcinogenic but didn’t disclose it.

There is sparse clinical research to support Johnson’s claims about a specific link between Roundup and his non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

In 2014, a meta-analysis of previous studies, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, found only a ‘handful’ of papers that reported associations between glyphosate and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

COUNTRIES THAT HAVE BANNED HERBICIDE

The analysts, from the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, said that much more research is needed to establish whether an actual cause-and-effect link exists between the herbicide and this type of cancer.

However, in courts across the U.S. more than 400 other people are suing the chemical giant in a class-action lawsuit which says that they or their deceased family members contracted non-Hodgkin lymphoma caused by contact with Roundup.

The cases are the culmination of years of litigation and weeks of court hearings about the controversial science surrounding the safety of glyphosate.

Monsanto is fighting the claims vigorously, saying that there is no evidence for a cancer link.

But should we be sufficiently worried by Roundup and other glyphosate weedkillers to avoid using them in our gardens?

Some European countries are deeply concerned about the chemical’s possible effects on humans and the environment. In January, Germany’s government agreed to begin the process of banning glyphosate over safety fears — and in April its agriculture minister said she was finalising a resolution to end its use in household gardens, parks and sports facilities, with further plans to set ‘massive’ limits for its use in agriculture. Last year the Belgian government banned domestic gardeners from using it.

Portugal prohibited glyphosate’s use in all public spaces two years ago. Last November, President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would ban it outright within three years.

Such laws have been prompted by evidence such as a study in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology in 2013, which warned that glyphosate can, in lab studies, cause human breast cancer cells to proliferate up to 13 times faster than normal.

Glyphosate seems to act as a synthetic form of the female hormone oestrogen, according to the oncologists at Bangkok’s Environmental Toxicology Program who led the study. They suggested that this can accelerate the growth of forms of breast cancer that are fuelled by oestrogen.

Nevertheless, in Britain, the National Farmers’ Union is lobbying for glyphosate to be retained.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/ar...ing-weeds.html