Do you use Roundup?  Do you know anyone that does?

You can probably answer yes to at least one of those questions.  Monsanto, makers of Roundup, have done an amazing job in making people believe their product is safe.   I know organic gardeners who will use Roundup around their garden fence or on poison oak.  They just don’t get it.

Even if you do not personally know someone that uses Roundup, a nearby farmer does.

Roundup is not safe.  We have written about it on many occasions.

• Glyphosate (key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup) linked to human health problems like Autism and Alzheimer’s
• Roundup Herbicide Linked To Parkinson’s-Related Brain Damage
• I Will Only Drink Organic Wine: Wine’s Dirty Little Secret is Roundup
• GMO soya causing birth defects in Argentina thanks to glyphosate
• 13 more reasons to hate Monsanto
• New Report Confirms Monsanto’s Round-Up Causes Birth Defects

Like many other chemicals in our environment, whether we use them or not, exposure is so great that Roundup is now found in mother’s breast milk.  Breast milk is not the canary in the cage.  It is far beyond a warning.

According to Sustainable Pulse:

In the first ever testing on glyphosate herbicide in the breast milk of American women, Moms Across America and Sustainable Pulse have found ‘high’ levels in 3 out of the 10 samples tested. The shocking results point to glyphosate levels building up in women’s bodies over a period of time, which has until now been refuted by both global regulatory authorities and the biotech industry.

The levels found in the breast milk testing of 76 ug/l to 166 ug/l are 760 to 1600 times higher than the European Drinking Water Directive allows for individual pesticides. They are however less than the 700 ug/l maximum contaminant level (MCL) for glyphosate in the U.S., which was decided upon by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) based on the now seemingly false premise that glyphosate was not bio-accumulative.

Glyphosate-containing herbicides are the top-selling herbicides in the world and are sold under trademarks such as Monsanto’s ‘Roundup’. Monsanto’s sales of Roundup jumped 73 percent to $371 million in 2013 because of its increasing use on genetically engineered crops (GE Crops)…

There is currently no regulatory limit for the amount of glyphosate in breast milk anywhere in the world. However, the EPA has set a legally enforceable maximum contaminant level (MCL) for glyphosate of 700 ug/l in drinking water, which is 7,000 times higher than the MCL in Europe.

Monsanto and regulatory bodies worldwide have based all of their regulations on the assumption that glyphosate is not bio-accumulative. Senior Monsanto scientist, Dan Goldstein, even recently stated (2), “If ingested, glyphosate is excreted rapidly, does not accumulate in body fat or tissues, and does not undergo metabolism in humans. Rather, it is excreted unchanged in the urine.”

The discovery of levels of glyphosate in breast milk that are much higher than any reported results for urine samples is a source of concern to both the general public and government regulators worldwide, as the data suggests that glyphosate is bio-accumulative; building up in people’s bodies over a period of time…

Dr Angelika Hilbeck, senior scientist at the Institute of Integrative Biology in Zurich, stated, “If confirmed in a full investigation, it seems that glyphosate has become a ubiquitous chemical in terms of presence and persistence. This data also offers a first indication of potential accumulation in the human body, giving newborns a substantial dose of synthetic chemicals as a ‘gift’ for their start into life, with unknown consequences. This is reckless and irresponsible conduct in a democratic society, which still has a living memory of previous reckless chemical contaminations, such as DDT. It seems we either did not learn, or we have forgotten, our lessons from Rachel Carson! (3)”

I encourage you to visit Sustainable Pulse and read the full article.  This is definitely something we need to be concerned about.

If you or someone you know uses Roundup, please ask them to stop!