Opinion Sur Joven

When you google glyphosate, 903,000 results appear on the screen. That’s quite a lot for a word that represents almost nothing in social imaginary.

Those who have heard or read about it, relate it to some icide (perhaps herbi, pesti or insecti?) used for soybean, that “green gold” that causes conflicts, battles and is mostly used to feed swine, poultry and livestock, and sometimes ends up on our plates.

The glyphosate is a herbicide used for Roundup Ready soybean crops, as its technical name describes it, though it’s popularly known as transgenic soybean. The use of agrochemicals (herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, fertilizers, etc.) has been causing conflicts since the seventies, but glyphosate has particularly accumulated resistance since the mid-nineties. It is accused of being harmful both for the environment and human beings, despite being strongly defended by its creator, the almighty agricultural biotechnology company Monsanto.

Over the last years, the issue has been in the spotlight due to the so-called “soybean boom” in Argentina, Brazil and the United States, since the market value of this “little weed” (as Argentine president Cristina Fernández once called it in the middle of the conflict between the government and farmers) has exponentially increased thanks to high demand from China and India, among other factors.

Is this herbicide really so harmful? Is it just some environmentalist’s delusion, or a scientific fact that some sectors are trying to hide due to economic interests? In this first part of a special two-article report, Opinión Sur Joven will try to clear some doubts and bring clarity upon a serious issue, which deserves everyone’s attention.

The experiment

Claims came first: certain abnormalities had been detected in animals and human beings who inhabited regions “soaked” in glyphosate. That’s how some studies began to be conducted to determine whether this was a result of chance or not.

Since 2006 to date, one of the worldwide icons of these reports is the French scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini, specialized in molecular biology and professor at University of Caen (France). In Argentina, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata has been insisting on this matter since 2007.

But just this year the issue has gained attention in Argentina, perhaps due to the political dispute between the farming sector and the national government, when the experimental study (and particularly its conclusions) conducted by Dr. Andrés Carrasco, director of the Molecular Embryology Laboratory of UBA [1] and main researcher at CONICET [2], became public.

In an interview with Opinión Sur Joven at his own battlefield (a laboratory in the university), Carrasco explained he conducted experiments with embryos exposed to glyphosate, and the results led him to believe the herbicide causes -both in animals and humans- alterations during the gestational period which may result in malformations and even spontaneous miscarriage. These conclusions unleashed media criticism against him and in favor of transgenic soybean, bringing this matter to the public eye at least for a few days.

But let’s analyze one thing at a time. Carrasco explained his tests were conducted with two methods: on the one hand, he cultivated embryos in glyphosate dilutions; on the other, he directly injected the herbicide into one of the embryos’ cells. “In these types of experiments, the four available models in embryology are mice, birds, fish or amphibians. Here we use amphibians with the certainty that the development of all vertebrates is highly conserved, which means it can be mostly extrapolated to human beings”, he pointed out.

“At first we observed development alterations with some significant characteristics. Both types of studies reach the same conclusion, and if two different studies render the same result, we should start believing”, he said.

“What we did would occur over and over from experiment to experiment. It’s always the same type of malformation: the embryos get shorter, and that’s not good. And we observed it has effects on the areas in charge of generating the renal system and the cephalic structure, causing microcephaly; in some cases, this condition is so severe that they end up developing not two but only one eye in the middle”, he said referring to the studied amphibians.

But why does glyphosate cause these malformations? Carrasco assured his main suspicion lies on the failure of some of the mechanisms occurring at early stages.

“We believe this is due to the metabolic alteration of a substance all vertebrates have, which -in normal levels- is a powerful regulator of a number of genes, a vitamin A derivative: retinoic acid. This substance is already present in the ovum, and is used in cosmetic products to treat stretch marks and wrinkles”, he points out.

Carrasco’s team members consider irregular levels of this acid generated by exposition to glyphosate turn the substance into a teratogen, that is, an agent that causes malformations in the limbs, the brain and some essential organs. And that they may even lead to miscarriages if contact with the herbicide is too strong during the first stage of the pregnancy.

But these aren’t the only negative effects of glyphosate. It also affects the inhabitants of the regions where the herbicide is spread: “In those cases, acute symptoms such as skin and breathing conditions may appear, and if the use of the herbicide is permanent in time, it probably explains the increase of cancer incidence in the long run”.

Toxic rain

“Soybean production in Argentina requires the use of 80 million gallons of agrotoxic substances per crop, out of which 58 million are glyphosate. That’s about one gallon per acre”, warned horticultural scientist, geneticist, college professor and historian Alberto Lapolla in an interview with Opinión Sur Joven.

“The use of these products together is devastating. If they were used in a reduced surface, they would have milder effects. Today, 86 million acres in Argentina are used for farming, out of which 83 millions are used with fertilizers or pesticides, which end up affecting groundwater. And that’s how they end up contaminating rivers”, he indicated.

Once they reach fresh water channels, according to Lapolla, the remains of agrotoxic substances generate moss, lichens and algae, affecting fauna. “This is one of the reasons for large fish mortality rates: those algae consume the oxygen fish need to live”, he added, commenting what we reported in our February issue through the article “How oceans are affected by climate change”.

Lapolla believes Monsanto representatives lie when they say glyphosate doesn’t move once it’s on the soil, thus supposedly not contaminating groundwater. “It starts decomposing with rain, because it’s dissolved and transformed into a liquid solution. That’s how Argentina’s Guarani aquifer (the country’s largest fresh water source) was contaminated, as well as the whole Rio de la Plata basin, destroying their macroflora and macrofauna.

―Is this problem already affecting human beings? ―Opinión Sur Joven asked.
―Yes. By drinking water from rivers such as Luján (which runs across Argentina’s humid pampas region) I’m drinking all its agrotoxic substances, which could be carcinogenic. We all know cancer infection rates in our country have doubled over the last ten years. Those of us who live in Buenos Aires are affected by glyphosate through soil, water, air and food.

Notwithstanding opposite and neutral opinions on this matter, scientists show a reality that deserves to be seen and heard, and that is supported by the unequivocalness of facts in contrast with the suspicious silence of mass media and the State. The proof is in the pudding: Carrasco regrets that, to date, no real epidemiological studies have been conducted to find out what’s happening in the places where health problems derived from herbicides have been detected. “No one is doing anything about it”, he complains.

In the second part of this special report, we will analyze the economic reasons that have led to this excessive use of glyphosate, and both the political problems and the media pressure hiding behind this multimillion-generating soybean business, with unpredictable consequences.

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