{"id":14142,"date":"2015-11-04T07:02:29","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T12:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14142"},"modified":"2015-11-04T07:02:29","modified_gmt":"2015-11-04T12:02:29","slug":"epa-used-monsantos-research-to-give-roundup-a-pass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14142","title":{"rendered":"EPA Used Monsanto&#8217;s Research to Give Roundup a Pass"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2015\/11\/03\/epa-used-monsanto-funded-research\/\" target=\"_blank\">EPA Used Monsanto&#8217;s Research to Give Roundup a Pass<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www2.epa.gov\/sites\/production\/files\/2015-06\/documents\/glyphosate-417300_2015-06-29_txr0057175.pdf\">concluded<\/a>\u00a0in June that there was \u201cno convincing evidence\u201d that glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in the U.S. and the world, is an endocrine disruptor.<\/p>\n<p>On the face of it, this was great news, given that some\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/water.usgs.gov\/nawqa\/pnsp\/usage\/maps\/show_map.php?year=2012&amp;map=GLYPHOSATE&amp;hilo=L\">300 million pounds<\/a>of the chemical were\u00a0used on U.S. crops in 2012, the most recent year measured, and endocrine disruption has been linked to a range of serious health effects, including cancer, infertility, and diabetes. Monsanto, which sells glyphosate under the name Roundup, certainly felt good about it. \u201cI was happy to see that the safety profile of one of our products was upheld by an independent regulatory agency,\u201d wrote Steve Levine on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/monsantoblog.com\/2015\/07\/07\/epa-releases-new-glyphosate-safety-report-reaffirms-glyphosate-is-not-an-endocrine-disruptor\/\">Monsanto\u2019s blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But the EPA\u2019s exoneration \u2014 which means that the agency will not require additional tests of the chemical\u2019s effects on the hormonal system \u2014 is undercut by the fact that the decision was based almost entirely on pesticide industry studies. Only five independently funded studies were considered in the review of whether glyphosate interferes with the endocrine system. Twenty-seven out of 32 studies that looked at glyphosate\u2019s effect on hormones and were cited in the June review \u2014 most of which are not publicly available and were obtained by\u00a0<em>The Intercept<\/em>\u00a0through a Freedom of Information Act request \u2014 were either conducted or funded by industry. Most of the studies were sponsored by Monsanto or an industry group called the Joint Glyphosate Task Force. One study was by Syngenta, which sells its own glyphosate-containing herbicide, Touchdown.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Findings of Harm Were Dismissed<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Who pays for studies matters, according to\u00a0<em>The Intercept<\/em>\u2019s review of the evidence used in the EPA\u2019s decision. Of the small minority of independently funded studies that the agency considered in determining whether the chemical poses a danger to the endocrine system, three of five found that it did.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>EPA Used Monsanto&#8217;s Research to Give Roundup a Pass THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY\u00a0concluded\u00a0in June that there was \u201cno convincing evidence\u201d that glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in the U.S. and the world, is an endocrine disruptor. On the face of it, this was great news, given that some\u00a0300 million poundsof the chemical were\u00a0used on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[10464,3185,1470,4130,4473,4543,4131,4470],"class_list":["post-14142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-liberty","tag-endocrine-disruptor","tag-environmental-protection-agency","tag-epa","tag-genetically-modified-organism","tag-glyphosate","tag-intercept","tag-monsanto","tag-roundup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14143,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14142\/revisions\/14143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}