In December 2017, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (under pressure from whom?) issued a draft human health risk assessment that said glyphosate was most likely not carcinogenic to humans.
The E.P.A. is currently reviewing public comments on that assessment as part of a standard review, and will decide on whether or not the agency needs any "mitigation measures" by 2019.
The United States Food and Drug Administration, which regulates domestic and imported food to make sure it does not exceed levels set by the E.P.A., said that based on 2016 samples, it had not found any violations of E.P.A. standards with glyphosate. More recent samples are still under review, an agency spokeswoman said.
Both Quaker Oats and General Mills, which makes Cheerios, said that their products were safe and met federal standards.
"While our products comply with all safety and regulatory requirements, we are happy to be part of the discussion and are interested in collaborating with industry peers, regulators and other interested parties on glyphosate," a Quaker spokesman said Wednesday.A General Mills spokeswoman said, "Our products are safe and without question they meet regulatory safety levels."
In further comments, both companies had more to say:
In response, Quaker and General Mills each said their products are safe and cited E.P.A. and European Food Safety Authority safety rules and standards governing producers, suppliers, millers and manufacturers.
"We continue to work closely with farmers, our suppliers and conservation organizations to minimize the use of pesticides on the crops and ingredients we use in our foods," General Mills said.
"While our products comply with all safety and regulatory requirements, we are happy to be part of the discussion and are interested in collaborating with industry peers, regulators and other interested parties on glyphosate," Quaker officials said.
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Far from the perverted soothsaying of corporate-strangled "science," we find some interesting and even optimistic analyses by Stephanie Seneff, a senior research scientist at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2011, she began adding to unsubstantiated conspiracy theories by publishing controversial papers in low-impact, open access journals on biology and medical topics; the articles have received "heated objections from experts in almost every field she's delved into," according to columnist Ari LeVaux.
I first became aware of her insights while researching the Zika virus in Brazil that results in microcephalic heads in so many children in Brazil, which comes to them as a mosquito-borne vector. Stephanie has posited that at least this illness might have its roots an immunodeficiency that stems from the presence of Roundup in tissues and in developing fetuses. Already, as shown in my last article, there is an agricultural soybean-growing state in NE Brazil wherein 83% of the women in maternity wards have Roundup in their breast milk!
"I think glyphosate comes in and plays an important role because I think glyphosate messes up eNOS (an abbreviation for NOS3 Endothelial nitric oxide synthase 3, a vital enzyme with anti-oxidant properties that has profound effects on the vascular system). Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the pervasive herbicide Round-Up. It's supposed to be non-toxic to humans. It's supposed to be a wonderful chemical that we use to kill weeds and it makes our food production much cheaper and more efficient is the claim, and that it's harmless to humans and therefore it's great.I beg to differ. I think that glyphosate is probably the most important toxic chemical in our environment today. I believe it is the source of the epidemic that we're seeing in autism. It's also actually the source of the high serum LDL problem that we have which puts people on statin drugs and the source of many, many other problems, both cancers and Alzheimer's disease and various gut problems, kidney failure; all kinds of different problems that we're seeing. Rheumatoid arthritis. I connect all of them to glyphosate. I think it's an insidious, cumulative toxin that is pervasive in our environment.
In America we are completely overwhelmed in the health care system right now by all the diseases that people are experiencing, all these chronic diseases, diabetes, obesity, autism. It's just very, very challenging in this country right now to be able to afford health care because so many people are so sick. I blame the epidemic - it's not that glyphosate's the only thing that causes these diseases, but it is causing the epidemic in all of these diseases and it's doing so through a remarkable toxic mechanism which involves its insidious ability to get into proteins by mistake in place of the coding amino acid glycine.
So glyphosate is a glycine molecule with extra material stuck onto its nitrogen atom. I believe it is infiltrating the proteins and messing them up. And so you can go and find all the different proteins that have this natural glycine. One of them is eNOS. eNOS has terminal glycines that are essential for it to be able to attach to the membranes. eNOS also has additional highly conserved glycines that are necessary for it to form a dimer. Normally eNOS has two molecules that go together and they form a cavity in the middle and that cavity contains a zinc atom and that zinc atom is, I think, attracting the Sulphur. It's the place where the sulphate happens, where the sulphate is made.
So both the dimer formation and the attachment to the membrane depend on glycine. Glyphosate I believe is substituting for that glycine, messing up the molecules, preventing it from going to the membrane, preventing it from making sulphate and causing therefore a crisis with sulphate insufficiency.
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