Organic Answers Column – August 16, 2023 – Glyphosate

Glyphosate Hurts Human Health and More

In a recent exchange with a homeowner unfamiliar with organics, I debunked a comment by a local “so called” horticulturist. This was the wrong answer by that horticulturist:

Answer: The original Roundup contains only glyphosate (no other active ingredient). You could use it near the roses. However! You must keep it off any desirable green stem or leaf tissue. You would want to use a piece of really stiff cardboard or thin plywood in one hand to lift up the rose stems while you sprayed beneath them with a trigger squeeze bottle with the other hand. Work your way all around each plant, taking care not to let overspray hit the leaves of the nearby plants. The glyphosates are not active in the soil, so you don’t have to worry about the herbicide being carried in through the plants’ roots.

Dirt Doctor: There should be some liability here but unfortunately the university he attended still gives out the same tripe. Here instead is some much more accurate info on this health hurting chemical:

Glyphosate-based herbicides are toxic and endocrine disruptors in human cell lines, from researchers at the University of Caen’s Institute of Biology, in France.

And if you’re not up to reading the abstract of that scholarly article, this link connects to a review of that French paper:

Roundup More Toxic Than Officially Declared – New Study

Glyphosate in Food and Water from the DetoxProject.org

Roundup Resistant Weeds (Rise of the Superweeds) from the New York Times

And, alas, news that the fight continues: Judge Halts California Bid for Cancer Warnings on Roundup from BeyondPesticides.org, as Monsanto is able to block California’s labeling Roundup as carcinogenic.