Exposure to Glyphosate, Chemical Found in Weed Killers, Increased Over 23 Years
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Analyzing samples from a prospective study, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers found that human exposure to glyphosate, a chemical widely found in weed killers, has increased approximately 500 percent since the introduction of genetically modified crops.
In a paper published in the journal JAMA on October 24, Mills and a team of researchers compared urine excretion levels of glyphosate and aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA) in 100 people living in a Southern California community who provided samples during five clinic visits that took place between 1993 to 1996 and 2014 to 2016. Samples were extracted from the Rancho Bernardo Study of Healthy Aging (RBS), a prospective population-based investigation started by Elizabeth Barrett-Connor, MD, Distinguished Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at UC San Diego School of Medicine and a co-author of the study.
“What we saw was that prior to the introduction of genetically modified foods, very few people had detectable levels of glyphosate,” said Mills. “As of 2016, 70 percent of the study cohort had detectable levels.”
Of study participants with detectable amounts of these chemicals, the mean level of glyphosate increased from 0.203 µg/L in 1993-1996 to 0.449 µg/L in 2014-2016. The mean level of AMPA went from 0.168 µg/L in 1993-1996 to 0.401µg/L in 2014 to 2016.
In July, glyphosate was listed by California as a carcinogen. As exposure to this chemical has increased, interest in how much risk it poses to human health and what exposure levels are safe has become a topic of ongoing debate.
There are few human studies on the effects of glyphosate, but animal studies demonstrate that chronic exposure to glyphosate-based herbicides can have adverse effects, said Mills. The authors point to other studies in which consistently feeding animals an ultra-low dosage of glyphosate resulted in liver disorders similar to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in humans.