THIRD WORLD NETWORK BIOSAFETY INFORMATION SERVICE
Dear Friends and Colleagues
Reanalysis of Carcinogenicity Data Shows Glyphosate Can Cause Cancer in Experimental Animals
Since the introduction of glyphosate-tolerant genetically modified (GM) plants, the global use of glyphosate has increased dramatically making it the most widely used pesticide on the planet. A recent review reanalyses thirteen chronic exposure animal carcinogenicity studies of glyphosate using trend tests, historical control tests and pooled analyses. The analyses identified 37 significant tumor findings in these studies. The conclusion was that exposure of rats and mice to glyphosate in the 13 studies caused a variety of tumors that differ by sex, species, strain and length of exposure.
According to the author, the analyses conducted for this review clearly support the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (IARC) conclusion that there is sufficient evidence to say that glyphosate causes cancer in experimental animals. In contrast, the regulatory authorities reviewing these data appear to have relied on analyses conducted by the registrant and not their own analyses of the data. As such, they uniformly concluded that the subset of tumour increases they identified as showing an association with glyphosate were due to chance. The paper concludes: “Had regulatory authorities conducted a full reanalysis of all of the available evidence from the 13 animal carcinogenicity studies as was done here, it is difficult to see how they could reach any conclusion other than glyphosate can cause cancers in experimental animals.”
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A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS OF THE ANIMAL CARCINOGENICITY DATA FOR GLYPHOSATE FROM CHRONIC EXPOSURE RODENT CARCINOGENICITY STUDIES
Christopher J. Portier
Environmental Health 19:18
12 Feb 2020
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12940-020-00574-1
https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-020-00574-1
Abstract
Since the introduction of glyphosate-tolerant genetically-modified plants, the global use of glyphosate has increased dramatically making it the most widely used pesticide on the planet. There is considerable controversy concerning the carcinogenicity of glyphosate with scientists and regulatory authorities involved in the review of glyphosate having markedly different opinions. One key aspect of these opinions is the degree to which glyphosate causes cancer in laboratory animals after lifetime exposure. In this review, twenty-one chronic exposure animal carcinogenicity studies of glyphosate are identified from regulatory documents and reviews; 13 studies are of sufficient quality and detail to be reanalyzed in this review using trend tests, historical control tests and pooled analyses. The analyses identify 37 significant tumor findings in these studies and demonstrate consistency across studies in the same sex/species/strain for many of these tumors. Considering analyses of the individual studies, the consistency of the data across studies, the pooled analyses, the historical control data, non-neoplastic lesions, mechanistic evidence and the associated scientific literature, the tumor increases seen in this review are categorized as to the strength of the evidence that glyphosate causes these cancers. The strongest evidence shows that glyphosate causes hemangiosarcomas, kidney tumors and malignant lymphomas in male CD-1 mice, hemangiomas and malignant lymphomas in female CD-1 mice, hemangiomas in female Swiss albino mice, kidney adenomas, liver adenomas, skin keratoacanthomas and skin basal cell tumors in male Sprague-Dawley rats, adrenal cortical carcinomas in female SpragueDawley rats and hepatocellular adenomas and skin keratocanthomas in male Wistar rats.