Meet the new Roundup, worse than the old Roundup

Bayer/Monsanto pulls a bait-and-switch

If we brought Rachel Carson back from the grave, I’m sure she’d be shocked and dismayed at the increased use of pesticides since her book, “Silent Spring,” was published in 1962. For those who don’t know, “Silent Spring” was all about the dangers of pesticide use to people and planet, and had a profound impact on raising awareness among the public about pesticides and their dangers. The book is credited with the banning of DDT and the launching of the modern environmental movement, which led to the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency under the Nixon administration.

Despite those victories, and a few others, the overall situation is much worse now, with worldwide agricultural pesticide use more than doubling since 1990. Since the 1996 introduction of “Roundup Ready” crops (which are genetically modified to tolerate Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Bayer/Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide), Glyphosate usage has gone up 15-fold. I would guess that another factor in the increase of herbicide use over the last couple decades has been the heightening of the war against so-called “invasive” plants, since spraying is such a common method of attempted (and usually failed) eradication, especially (and perversely) in restoration projects. (See: Methods used by land managers to control “invasive” plants at the Conservation Sense & Nonsense website.)

Glyphosate has taken a hit in both the public consciousness and the legal arena, though. When the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer found that Glyphosate was a “probable” carcinogen in humans, the lawsuits started, and Monsanto (at the time recently purchased by Bayer) ended up paying out billions in damages for disease and death by users of their products. Most of the victims were grounds keepers, landscapers and home owners. Thousands of cases are still working their way through the legal system.

In response, Bayer/Monsanto pledged to remove Glyphosate from their consumer products beginning in 2023. Because they were concerned about health? Nope. The report quotes a Bayer statement: “We have taken this action exclusively to manage litigation risk and not because of any safety concerns.” Nonetheless, phasing out Glyphosate sounds like a great idea. Two questions: A) Have they? And B) if so, how?

The Facts, from Friends of the Earth

A recently released report from Friends of the Earth (FoE) answers those questions: A) No, not entirely, and B) by replacing Glyphosate with chemicals that are more dangerous. The report is 20+ pages long. For FoE’s own tldr, see their press release, “New Roundup weedkiller 45 times more toxic to human health.” What follows is my own summation and commentary.

FoE’s report is impressively in-depth and substantiated. Like an academic paper, it contains citations and a Methodology section. Unlike an academic paper, it centers their Recommendations, but after all, they’re activists and that’s what we want from them.

For their analysis, they checked out the Roundup products available at Lowe’s and Home Depot, both online and in person (in California and Maryland). What they found is that seven Roundup products still contain Glyphosate and eight have been reformulated with three to four of four other herbicides instead. The four are: Triclopyr (triethylamine salt), Fluazifop-P-butyl (isopropylamine salt), Imazapic (ammonium salt) and Diquat dibromide.* FoE notes that “All four chemicals pose greater risk of long-term and/or reproductive health problems than Glyphosate, based on the EPA’s evaluation of safety studies” and that the EU has banned Imazapic outright. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. <smh>

The report outlines the harms these chemicals cause to humans, wildlife and the environment. Both acute and chronic effects are spelled out. “Acute” = “a single short-term exposure” and “chronic” = “harm accumulated from long term exposure.” FoE took into account the various concentrations of each chemical in each product when making their calculations. Their baseline toxicity data is from the EPA with the exception of chronic data for Imazapic, which is from the European Food Safety Agency. Yes, there are issues with EPA data, which FoE discusses, and more on that later.

Here’s how much more toxic the new ingredients are for mammals compared to Glyphosate, acutely and chronically:

• Triclopyr—acute: 11 times, chronic: 20 times

• Fluazifop-P-butyl—acute: 1.6 times, chronic: 196 times

• Imazapic—acute: 1 time, chronic: 2.2 times

• Diquat dibromide—acute: 27 times, chronic 200 times

On average, the new formulations of Roundup are 3.9 times more acutely toxic and 45.6 times more chronically toxic than the Glyphosate formulations. This is the opposite of improvement because yeah, for Bayer this is about liability not safety.

Harm to humans, wildlife and the environment

In humans, pesticides in general are linked to “birth and developmental abnormalities; cancer; endocrine disruption; kidney or liver damage; stomach and GI tract toxicity; neurotoxicity; reproductive dysfunction; and irritation, inflammation, or allergic reactions affecting the skin, eyes, or respiratory system” and all four new ingredients are “associated with more than one of these risks.” Not a fun list to pick from!

For wildlife, Diquat dibromide are Fluazifop-P-butyl are worse than Glyphosate for Bees, Birds, Fish, Crustaceans, Algae and Earthworms. Triclopyr is worse for Birds, Fish, Crustaceans and Algae. Imazapic is only worse for Algae, but is always accompanied by the other three in the new Roundup formulations. Diquat dibromide is perhaps the stand-out in toxicity, being 18 times worse in chronic exposure for Birds, 57 times worse in acute for Crustaceans, 63 times worse for Algae and 33 times worse for Earthworms. Fluazifop-P-butyl is 11 times worse and Triclopyr 22 times worse for Crustaceans. Imazapic is an astounding 144 times more toxic for Algae. Most of us might not think about Algae much but in aquatic ecosystems they are “primary producers” meaning they are the foundation of the food chain (or food web), feeding herbivores who in turn feed carnivores. They are also a major provider of oxygen. Seaweeds are Algae (technically “Macroalgae”).

FoE also found that, on average, the new ingredients are “more likely to leach into groundwater and to persist in the soil for longer periods of time than glyphosate.” Both Triclopyr and Imazapic have a “high” potential to move into the groundwater (while Glyphosate is rated as “low”), though both Triclopyr and Diquat dibromide have less potential than Glyphosate. Soil persistence is another matter. Each chemical has a “half life” which is a measure of the time it takes to break down to half its initial level. For Glyphosate that’s 6.5 days and Fluazifop-P-butyl a comparable 8. But for Triclopyr it’s 30 days, for Imazapic 232 days, and for Diquat dibromide a whopping 5,500 days, which is over 15 years. The “microfauna” who are so responsible for soil health are adversely affected by these chemicals, and like Algae are fundamental to the food chain, including to plants. In ancient days, a conquering army would “salt the fields” of their vanquished enemy, but while that was largely symbolic, the salting we’re doing is undeniably grievous.

Limitations of the EPA & their data

The FoE report discusses a fact well-known to anyone familiar with herbicides which is that the active ingredients are not the only harmful substances included in commercial formulations like Roundup. So-called “inert” ingredients are added to, for example, adhere the product to foliage, help it penetrate tissues, or make it easier to mix with other products. Though these “inert” ingredients can increase the toxic effects of the active ingredients, they are not regulated by the EPA and furthermore the pesticide companies are not beholden to reveal them or their concentrations because this is considered “Confidential Business Information.” Tally up another win for Capitalism and another loss for People and Planet.

“The EPA process for review and approval of pesticides is fundamentally flawed and not sufficiently protective of human health,” the report succinctly states in the Findings section. Later, in an Appendix, they give more details, specifically about the serious limitations of EPA data on the chronic health effects of pesticide products. First, much of the research is done through animal testing. What FoE doesn’t mention but I will is that animal testing, besides being cruel, is too often not an accurate indicator of how the substance in question will affect humans. That being said, it can be helpful for predicting outcomes in closely related wildlife. Second, the research only tests for one adverse effect at a time, though it’s common that several effects would typically occur in the field, to both humans and wildlife, effects that might well compound each other. Third, the EPA doesn’t account for “the severity of the adverse effect (e.g., life-threatening damage to the liver versus a period of slower growth among young animals), nor the reversibility of an adverse effect (weight gain or loss versus permanent loss of kidney function).” Finally, when assessing chronic dose, the agency “typically does not consider data on whether a pesticide damages DNA or increases cancer risk” because “chronic toxicity and cancer risk are separate analyses.” All this is to say that their methodology is lacking, to say the least, but, as the report says, the EPA’s ratings are the “only widely accepted measure of chronic toxicity that is available to compare pesticide active ingredients.” So, that’s all we’ve got and we’re probably worse off than we know.

Recommendations from Friends of the Earth

FoE has recommendations for Bayer, retailers, the EPA and consumers. Among them:

The EPA does not require Bayer to call attention to the fact that their reformulated Roundup products contain different chemicals and are more dangerous to humans, wildlife and the environment. Unless a consumer is reading the fine print on the label carefully, they’ll have no idea, and besides, how many people know what Fluazifop-P-butyl even is? I study this stuff and I’d never heard of it. At the very least, the report suggests, Bayer should have to rebrand these reformulations with a new name as the novel products that they are, and not just coast by with the familiar “Roundup” like nothing’s different, but that would affect their bottom-line. Again, Capitalism, perpetuated by a lack of regulation.

Retailers should “immediately” stop selling all Roundup products, “aggressively” phase out other hazardous products, and safer more organic options.

The EPA should require “warnings and cautionary language on all pesticide labels” (whoah, they don’t do this already?), “prohibit companies from changing the active ingredients in brand name products without rebranding and informing consumers” (as mentioned above) and “prohibit the presence of chemicals in consumer products that can pose significant risks to human health and the environment” (again, I thought that was their job!).

Consumers should avoid using any such products, especially when pregnant, and instead use alternative methods (mechanical, organic) for weed removal. And if they insist, at least wear protective clothing so the shit doesn’t get on your skin or in your eyes, and as soon as you’re done, change out of your clothes and launder them right away.

Let’s get this poison off the shelves

I’ve long believed that pesticides shouldn’t be available to consumers at all, period, by law. FoE stops just short of making that recommendation, but not by much (or maybe they’re just being more politic about it). For personally it’s not just because these substances are physically harmful, but also that we should discourage the domineering attitude that motivates their application in the first place. We need to relate differently to nature in general—like, stop being at open war with it as a starter—and having access to poisons makes it too easy to indulge in our culture’s thoughtless malice against living things.

But I’ve also always thought that consumer products were kind of a sideshow in the big picture, just because the sheer amount of chemicals used in agriculture is so much greater. Then this report taught me something new:

“While farmers apply far more Roundup in any given year (approximately 90% of the total pounds applied), most non-agricultural applications are made with small-scale, handheld equipment that leads to much higher exposures for applicators per hour of spraying or per area treated.”

So the consumer products are in some way worse, hence all the lawsuits. And my desire to deny Roundup to Dandelion-hating homeowners has been granted a solid rationale.

Let’s say it together: “Ban Roundup!”

*Note: the names of all the chemicals I mentioned are not capitalized, but I did so for ease of reading.