The continued use of chemical herbicides in the US is due to outdated research. The problem here is that some of these herbicides have already been linked to cancer. The New England Journal of Medicine published this column last Wednesday.
In this article by Reuters, it says that there are two factors that necessitate government intervention on the widespread use of certain chemical herbicides. The first is the sharp increase of herbicide use on genetically modified crops (GMO), and the second is the World Health Organization's (WHO) assessment that glyphosate, the herbicide in question, is most probably a carcinogen.
The article was written by Dr. Philip Landrigan, a Harvard-trained pediatrician and epidemiologist and Dean for Global Health at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, and Chuck Benbrook, adjunct professor at the crops and soil science department of the Washington State University.
Some GMOs like corn are tweaked to tolerate the herbicide and rely abundantly on them to remove weeds. Some non-GMO crops like wheat before harvest are also treated the same way. Chemical herbicides for crops have been increasing recently but the peak-the "largest in a generation"-has yet to come.
The overreliance on glyphosate has made weeds resistant to them already. This means that a cocktail of herbicides must be used. Included in this is 2,4-D, a component of Agent Orange which gained notoriety during the Vietnam War.
While glyphosate is considered as a "probable human carcinogen," 2,4-D is currently classified as "possible human carcinogen" by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Glyphosate use has increased from 0.4 million kg in1974 to 113 million kg in 2014, representing a 250 fold increase.
It is also expected that 2,4-D use will increase by 3-7 fold because of the 2014 ruling by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to go ahead with Enlist Duo, a combination of herbicides including glyphosate and 2,4-D.
The recommendation of the report is for the US to reconsider its GMO labeling laws. The US, unlike 64 other countries, does not require GMOs to be labeled as such. The new findings on these herbicides should be taken to consideration as previous recommendations in 2000 and 2004 by the National Academy of Sciences have gone unheeded by government bodies.
