Report Casts Doubt on Safety of New Roundup Products | Civil Eats

Report Casts Doubt on Safety of New Roundup Products

In this week’s Field Report, what you need to know about the shift away from glyphosate in Roundup’s garden weedkillers, the Harris-Walz plan for rural America, and more.

By Lisa Held

October 22, 2024

Old and new Roundup products at a Lowe’s in Maryland. (Photo credit: Lisa Held)

Last week, an aisle display in the Garden Center at a Maryland Lowe’s featured three tiers of the most widely used weedkiller ever created: Roundup. From afar, the white bottles with bright red caps looked identical.

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Upon closer inspection, however, despite having the same name, there were two distinct products intermingled on the shelves. One contained glyphosate, the chemical that’s become synonymous with the brand name—like tissue is to Kleenex. The other contained three completely different herbicides most people have never heard of.

The display was one manifestation of a promise that agrichemical giant Bayer made in 2021 to stop selling glyphosate for use on lawns and gardens starting in 2023.

Roundup is ubiquitous across agriculture. But Bayer decided to pull the chemical from home retailers because the costly lawsuits claiming the product has caused cancers came primarily from people fighting weeds in lawns, garden beds, and sidewalk cracks. Many outlets reported then that the company would stop selling Roundup for residential use.

Now that glyphosate is being phased out, however, Roundup remains—as an updated line of multiple weedkillers for home gardeners.

And today, environmental nonprofit Friends of the Earth (FOE) released a report calling into question the company’s new ingredients, claiming the reformulated products are even more toxic than the old. “It’s outrageous that in a moment when it’s so clear that Roundup has taken such a toll on people’s health, Bayer has made Roundup more toxic,” said Kendra Klein, deputy director of science at FOE and the lead author of the report.

In response to a question about the findings on toxicity, a Bayer spokesperson noted that the ingredients replacing glyphosate have “been used successfully by homeowners and others in a variety of different weed-control products for decades. All Roundup weed-control products in the U.S., including our new Roundup Lawn and Garden products, have been thoroughly reviewed and approved by independent experts at the EPA to ensure the products can be used safely with the label instructions.” Bayer also released an statement today that callled the report “deeply flawed” and pointed to the authors’ methodology as “inconsistent with how leading regulatory and health experts measure risk.”

All four of the new chemical ingredients have been associated with kidney or liver damage in animal studies.

In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans,” and juries have now decided against Bayer multiple times based on the strength of the scientific evidence linking glyphosate to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not come to the same conclusions.

The new formulations use different combinations of four herbicides—diquat, triclopyr, fluazifop, and imazapic. None of the chemicals are classified as carcinogens by IARC or the EPA, meaning they are not associated with a known cancer risk.

FOE’s analysis looked at scores the EPA gives chemicals on their overall human toxicity for both acute exposure (which refers to immediate risks, like burns) and chronic exposure (harm that may occur from repeated exposures over time). FOE scored all four as more acutely and chronically toxic compared to glyphosate. Diquat and triclopyr, in particular, had much higher toxicity scores. (The World Health Organization characterizes diquat and triclopyr as “moderately hazardous,” while glyphosate is ranked as “slightly hazardous.”)

Bill Jordan, a consultant and volunteer with the Environmental Protection Network who worked at the EPA for 40 years and was the former deputy director of the agency’s pesticide office, said the human health risks any pesticide poses depend on both the toxicity of the ingredients and the amount of exposure a person experiences when they use it. Since the toxicity scores alone don’t take into account the second half of that equation, it’s hard to know, then, what the real risks might be.

Jordan added, “the registration of the new Roundup formulations clearly suggests that the agency thinks the product, with its new composition and labeling, does not pose unreasonable risks.”

While Klein admits the toxicity scores come with plenty of limitations (which are outlined in the report), given the fact that the EPA still maintains Roundup is safe, she and others doubt the agency’s processes provide effective protection from risks.

“Ideally, we would have as rich a set of data on all the active ingredients we’re looking at—and product formulations—as we have on glyphosate, and would have a way to compare the toxicity of chronic exposure by all routes (e.g., oral, dermal, inhalation). But this simply is not the case,” she said. “A thorough assessment of the different health risks stemming from exposures to glyphosate versus diquat or triclopyr, or any of the glyphosate alternatives, would be an enormous undertaking constrained by the lack of publicly accessible data.”

“There’s likely to be confusion, since it has the same product name and people are likely to use it in the same manner as they have for years.”

All four of the new chemical ingredients have been associated with kidney or liver damage in animal studies, for example. Diquat, fluazifop, and triclopyr are all associated with reproductive effects in animals. But much more research would be needed to isolate their individual impacts on humans over time. The report also includes data showing the four chemicals are associated with negative impacts on birds, bees, aquatic organisms, and earthworms.

But the EPA also still allows pesticides known to be more hazardous to human health and ecosystems to be sold for home use: On the shelf next to the Roundup was a product that included 2,4-D—which the IARC also classifies as possibly carcinogenic and is linked to endocrine disruption—plus other products that contained the same chemicals that are in the new Roundup.

One key to the risks that pesticides pose is how the products are used, and that’s another area Klein and others are worried about. Given the new chemical composition, the new Roundup products come with different label instructions intended to protect the people spraying them.

But Jonathan Oppenheimer, the government relations director for the Idaho Conservation League, said many people don’t read the fine print and may not even realize the product has changed and that multiple variations now exist. “There’s likely to be confusion, since it has the same product name and people are likely to use it in the same manner as they have for years,” he said.

For example, one Roundup product on the shelf at Home Depot last week contained all four of the chemicals FOE analyzed. On the back of the jug, it included illustrations explaining “where to use” it, but no information on restrictions. A buyer would have to break the seal on the label booklet and open to the bottom of the second page to get to the safety instructions that say, “Do not use for vegetable garden preparation or in and around fruits and vegetables.”

This poses real risks: Last year, groundskeepers in Ventura County, California killed 200 trees and damaged hundreds more after a push to move away from using glyphosate led them to select imazapyr as a replacement weedkiller. A subsequent investigation found the herbicide’s label was not clear enough about the product’s use restrictions; the groundskeepers were used to using glyphosate, which didn’t harm the trees.

Another Roundup product on the shelf labeled “for lawns” included four other herbicides that weren’t even included in FOE’s analysis (including the controversial, drift-prone dicamba), suggesting there are further variations for consumers to sort through.

Bayer’s spokesperson said all Roundup products for the consumer market are clearly labeled. “We follow the direction of the EPA, which reviews and approves these products. All new formulas are marked with a prominent, ‘Exclusive Formula’ banner and the list of active ingredients on the front label of the product,” he said. (While the glyphosate-based versions are still presently in the mix, Bayer confirmed to Civil Eats that the company is no longer manufacturing them and they expect them to be sold out by the end of the year.)

In the end, Jordan said he doubted consumers will discontinue using all weedkillers. “So, if FOE is correct that there are more toxic active ingredients in the herbicides that replace glyphosate, it would seem possible that moving away from glyphosate could increase the dangers for people and the environment.”

Farm Policies, Finally. So far, the election coverage of the presidential candidates’ positions on agriculture has primarily focused on the Trump and Biden-Harris administration’s past actions, since neither candidate had a plan for farmers in writing. That changed last Tuesday, when the Harris-Walz campaign released a detailed policy document on their plans for rural America. The document includes seven bullet points on how Harris intends “to invest in the future of America’s agricultural industry,” including increasing access to farmland and credit for beginning farmers and ranchers, increasing antitrust enforcement and boosting competition, supporting right-to-repair policies, and growing opportunities for small- and mid-size farms. The Harris campaign also hosted an event focused on food and health as a counterpoint to the “Make America Healthy Again” movement backing Trump for president. Trump’s policy platform does not include provisions related to food or agriculture, and he has tried to distance himself from Project 2025’s agenda, which includes cuts to popular farm programs.

School-Supported Agriculture. Famed chef, author, and advocate (and Civil Eats’ advisor) Alice Waters hosted a weekend of events in Washington, D.C. to promote a policy shift that would allow all public schools to serve “local, organic, regenerative” school meals through direct connections to farmers. Waters started The Edible Schoolyard Project nearly 30 years ago to bring gardens and cooking instruction into schools, and she’s releasing a cookbook filled with recipes that fit into school lunch nutrition (and schools’ financial restrictions) next year.

At a Saturday luncheon at the Smithsonian, influential individuals from across food, climate, and health—including author Michael Pollan, U.S. Surgeon General Vice Admiral Vivek H. Murphy, and former Vice President Al Gore—praised her vision. Gore emphasized the availability of climate solutions and how school meals represent one avenue toward leveraging those that have myriad positive impacts.

“We can make our soil healthier, our farms more resilient. Our children can have more nutritious meals. The local farmers in every area can be more economically stable and viable. We can have a healthier economy, a healthier population, and we can sequester much more carbon,” Gore said. “Connecting farms and schools is as good a first step as any.”

However, the brass tacks of moving “school-supported agriculture” forward, given the many challenges, were unclear, and any significant change in K–12 school procurement would have to come from Congress. Still, Biden’s USDA has made some small tweaks to meal policy that align with Waters’ goals. Last year, the agency changed a rule to allow more schools to serve free meals to all students. This year, USDA made it easier for schools to source local food and invested $500 million in farm-to-school grants.

Tomorrow, the White House is hosting a briefing that includes a review of the administration’s actions on healthy school meals and how they connect to farmers and rural economies. However, local (and especially organic) food is still a tiny portion of what ends up on students’ trays.

Aquaculture Impacts. In a new literature review published in the journal Science Advances, researchers concluded that more attention should be paid to what they call the “dewilding” impacts of aquaculture. Those include environmental impacts like farm infrastructure and pollution that alter ocean ecosystems. They also refer to downstream effects like the spread of pathogens and parasites that negatively impact ocean wildlife. “Similar to the utility and clarity of the term ‘deforestation’ to describe the clearing of forested lands for human purposes, dewilding identifies the repurposing of previously wild or semiwild spaces for human use,” the authors wrote. Dewilding, they argue, should be considered and accounted for in future plans for ocean farm expansion and intensification.

While large fish farms have historically have been located close to coastlines, the need to eliminate some of the environmental and health impacts of the systems has led to a push to take them further offshore, where many advocates say those impacts can be eliminated or minimized. But plans to rapidly scale up open ocean aquaculture are controversial. A court recently sided with environmental groups who sued over permitting for these larger open-ocean systems, claiming the farms failed to adequately account for potential harms to wild ocean ecosystems, local fisheries, and Indigenous communities.

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