Is glyphosate more dangerous than you thought?

The world's most popular herbicide increases the risk of cancer by 40%

Georgy Golovanov, Hi-tech+

Contact with glyphosate – the most common compound for weed control and accelerating the maturation of crops – increases the risk of lymphomas much more than previously thought, according to American experts.

This is not the first time that studies on the dangers of glyphosate have been conducted, and the conclusions of scientists differ, sometimes radically. Washington State University specialists conducted a new meta-analysis of studies over the past 18 years and found that there is a connection between glyphosate and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and it is very strong.

"Our analysis was supposed to give a definitive answer to the question of whether glyphosate is carcinogenic," says senior author of the article, Professor Lianne Shepherd. "In the end, I am convinced that this is certainly the case."

After studying epidemiological studies published between 2001 and 2018, Professor Shepherd's team concluded that exposure to glyphosate can increase the risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma by 41%. The authors primarily considered studies on humans, but also took into account data from experiments on animals, the University of Washington website reports.

As a result, they processed information about more than 54,000 people who worked with glyphosate – today this is the largest study on this topic.

The use of glyphosate in agriculture began in 1974. Now it is the most intensively used herbicide of all agricultural biochemistry. Since 2000, when the patent of Monsanto, which discovered the herbicidal properties of this substance, expired, its production volumes have grown even more due to the appearance of analogues around the world.

In 2015, WHO recognized the substance as a "possible carcinogen" for humans, assigning it category 2A. In a study a year later, the UN and WHO came to the opposite conclusion.

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