Glyphosate in Breast Milk – Danger for Infants?
Of course it is.
Glyphosate: Glyphosate-containing herbicides are the top-selling herbicides in the world and are sold under trademarks such as Monsanto’s ‘Roundup’.
There is currently no regulatory limit for the amount of glyphosate in breast milk anywhere in the world. Why not?
Because 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, “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.”(2)
The discovery of levels of glyphosate in breast milk is a source of concern as the data suggests that glyphosate is actually bio-accumulative; building up in people’s bodies over a period of time.
Earth Open Source Research Director Claire Robinson said, “Regulators and industry always say it is the dose that makes the poison, and even the increasing levels of glyphosate currently found in food and feed and the environment are not a problem. However, that argument only holds true if glyphosate doesn’t build up in the human body and is excreted as fast as we take it in. These breast milk results suggest glyphosate may bio-accumulate. That means that our body tissues might be exposed to higher levels than the so-called safe levels set by regulators. So the regulations are not protecting us.”
Of course, the tiny study done by Moms Across America and Sustainable Pulse, has been criticized as not being professional or large enough to prove much but to quote someone involved in the study:
“Zen Honeycutt was able to find ONE lab who was willing to test volunteers for glyphosate and for a very reasonable price. I was one on the volunteers who bought the kit and submitted samples. We all want independent and more scientific studies, but not only they are very expensive, but labs and scientists decline to do it so Monsanto doesn’t destroy their careers or businesses. That’s why it is important to get involved, to educate everybody we have contact with, because the government is not going to protect us from these greedy corporations. We have to save ourselves.”
“It’s telling indeed that even among health-conscious eaters there’s still such a high level of glyphosate residue.”
“Monsanto and the US government have such vast resources that it would cost them relative pennies to perform real safety studies on glyphosate as well as GMOs, especially if they really thought the studies were flawed, instead of just shouting them down and censoring them. This is an implicit acknowledgement on Monsanto’s part that these studies are valid, Perhaps their concern is that replicating them would give similar results. They fear what the results would be and scientific testing would find these products to be unsafe for human health.”
The new US testing by Moms Across America and Sustainable Pulse also found maximum glyphosate levels in urine over 10 times higher than those found in Europe.
This case of finding high levels of glyphosate in breast milk is a re-run of the Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) scandal in the 1970s (6), which ended up in the toxic chemical compound’s production being banned by the U.S. Congress in 1979. (Banned the production of it, but does it ban the import of produce from countries that don’t ban it?)
Dr Angelika Hilbeck, senior scientist at the Institute of Integrative Biology in Zurich, stated, “If confirmed in a full investigation... this data 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.“ (3)
For complete article and resources - See Sustainable Pulse at http://sustainablepulse.com/2014/04/06/worlds-number-1-herbicide-discovered-u-s-mothers-breast-milk/#.Vf194t9Vikp
