How Toxic is the World’s Most Popular Herbicide Roundup?

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is designed to be toxic to plants, but scientists observe some untoward effects on animals in the lab.

katya katarina zimmer
| 9 min read

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ISTOCK, NARONGCPGlyphosate, the active ingredient in the world’s most widely used herbicide, Roundup, is arguably also one of the most contentious. Mass protests erupted in Europe last November after the European Commission, following much discussion, granted a five-year extension for the license to use glyphosate in agriculture in the E.U.

Farmers have relied upon glyphosate-based herbicides to kill unwanted vegetation for more than four decades, but its use sparked hefty debate in 2015, when the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded that it was “probably carcinogenic,” adding it to a category that also contains red meat, for instance. This followed previous conclusions by research agencies such as the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that glyphosate is unlikely to pose a cancer risk to humans.

There’s no question that the research around this small molecule has become highly politicized. Environmental activists have claimed that exposure is linked to everything from cancer to celiac disease to autism, while on the other hand, industry-backed reviews have ...

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Meet the Author

  • katya katarina zimmer

    Katarina Zimmer

    After a year teaching an algorithm to differentiate between the echolocation calls of different bat species, Katarina decided she was simply too greedy to focus on one field. Following an internship with The Scientist in 2017, she has been happily freelancing for a number of publications, covering everything from climate change to oncology.
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