I am only posting a small part of this story see the link for the full story.
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...round-up-trial
Excerpt:
Ever since Monsanto introduced its line of Roundup weedkillers to the world in 1974, the products have been touted by the company and regulators as extremely safe. The EPA reiterated that stance last week.
But the emergence of long-held corporate secrets in three public trials has revealed a covert campaign to cover-up the pesticide’s risks and raised troubling questions about lax oversight of all pesticides by the Environmental Protection Agency and other regulatory agencies that are supposed to be protecting public health.
* When the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry sought to evaluate glyphosate toxicity in 2015, Monsanto expressed concern about what the agency might find and engaged the assistance of EPA officials to delay that review. The efforts delayed the release of the public draft of the review – originally to be issued three years ago – until earlier this month. Just as Monsanto had feared, the agency’s review found links between cancer and glyphosate.
* Although Monsanto was aware of tests showing how easily the chemicals in Roundup are absorbed into human skin, neither the company nor the EPA have warned consumers of a need to wear protective clothing.
* In the 1980s EPA scientists saw that mice dosed with glyphosate developed rare kidney tumors, which they said demonstrated cancer risks for people. But after protests from Monsanto, the EPA’s top brass overruled its own scientists and assured Americans that glyphosate poses no cancer risk.
Precisely because the chemical has been treated as so much safer than other pesticides, over the past 45 years glyphosate has become virtually ubiquitous: residues of the chemical have been documented in food, air, water and soil samples, as well as within the bodies of people who have never used the pesticide. The chemical has even been detected in raindrops.
It all raises this troubling question: if what has been touted as perhaps our “safest” widely used pesticide actually causes cancer, what assurance do we have about the hundreds of other pesticides that the EPA has assured us are safe?