How Widespread Is Roundup®? Is It In Your Urine?

By Catherine J. Frompovich

According to urine tests taken in the European Union rather recently, 48 members of the EU Parliament volunteered to have their urine tested and ALL tests came back positive! [1]

According to the article titled “We are pissed off” [1],

The Biocheck lab in Leipzig that carried out the ‘Elisa test’ concluded: “All participants excreted glyphosate by urine. This means that glyphosate could be also a health problem of EU-parliament members.”  [….}

On average, the MEPs had 1.7 micrograms/litre of glyphosate in their urine, 17 times higher than the European drinking water norm (0.1 microgram/litre). This means that everyone we tested was way above the limit for residues of pesticides in drinking water.

Additionally, No less than 99.6% of all citizens who took part in this survey had higher residue levels. This means that virtually all citizens are contaminated with glyphosate. [….]

Its use around the world keeps increasing, especially due to its link to genetically engineered glyphosate-tolerant crops. Since the introduction of “Roundup Ready” in 1996, glyphosate use has increased 15-fold. In 2014, global use was 825,000 tonnes of which 76% was for agricultural use and 24% non-agricultural uses (e.g. public gardens, railways, private gardens).

What’s happening elsewhere, like in California, USA?

According to urine samples tested at the University of California San Francisco, 93 percent of those tests came back positive for glyphosate residues! [2]

Furthermore, The Detox Project claims,

Glyphosate has never been studied by regulators or the chemical industry at levels that the human population in the U.S. is being exposed to (under 3 mg/kg body weight/day). This is a huge hole in the global risk assessment of glyphosate, as there is evidence suggesting that low levels of the chemical may hack hormones even more than at mid and high levels, according to independent science – a higher dose does not necessarily make a more toxic, hormone disruptive effect.

Glyphosate is a hormone disruptor! 

Here is a 23-page report titled “When the dose doesn’t make the poison: low dose effects & endocrine disrupting chemicals” authored by Laura N Vandenberg, PhD, of Tufts University.  The charts and graphics in that report ought to impress upon everyone the absolute importance of eating organically-grown food and discontinuing using herbicides and other toxic sprays that pollute the air and water too.

Nothing zeros in on the toxic effects of glyphosate, the main active in Monsanto’s Roundup®, than the paper by Samsel and Seneff titled “Glyphosate’s Suppression of Cytochrome  P450 Enzymes and Amino Acid Biosynthesis by the Gut Microbiome: Pathways to Modern Disease.” [3]   One of the roles the enzyme P450 performs in the body is to detoxify xenobiotics!  If glyphosate suppresses that, what can we expect?  Certainly not vibrant health!

Incidentally, Dr. Stephanie Seneff, PhD, vetted the chapter on GMOs in my new book, Eat to Beat Disease, Foods Medicinal Qualities, which I called “GMOs: Genetically modified organisms called ‘phood’”.

According to Samsel and Seneff’s paper,

The incidence of inflammatory bowel diseases such as juvenile onset Crohn’s disease has increased substantially in the last decade in Western Europe and the United States. It is reasonable to suspect that glyphosate’s impact on gut bacteria may be contributing to these diseases and conditions.

In my new book, I also discuss how the microbiome is affected and how to get it back on track.  One chapter, “Probiotics and Prebiotics: Do you know the difference?” explains what eaters can do to bring the gut back to homeostasis.  Glyphosate, all the toxic chemicals in processed foods, fluoride and chemicals in drinking water, plus the role that sugar plays in damaging the microbiome needs to be understood by everyone, since the gut is where most of the immune system resides in the human body.

Probably nothing is more telling about the gut and microbiome than what your bowel movements have “to say” about your eating habits that program the microbiome’s condition.  The chapter “What Goes In Must Come Out: A necessary discussion about poop” ought to impress the underestimated importance of the varied aspects of proper nutrition: how food is grown; prepared and cooked; digested; assimilated and eliminated!  Those are the keys to maintaining vibrant health and beating disease.

Samsel and Seneff authored another paper, “Glyphosate, pathways to modern diseases III: Manganese, neurological diseases, and associated pathologies” [4] that explains how manganese physiology in human nutrition is interrupted because “Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup^®, has also been shown to severely deplete Mn levels in plants.”   In Eat to Beat Disease, Foods Medicinal Qualities, I provide numerous food sources for all the various nutrients needed by the body, including delicious recipes too.

Children on the Autism Spectrum really should not be eating any chemicalized foods, but only an organically-grown diet since it’s become a known medical fact that 46 to 85 percent suffer terrible gastrointestinal problems. [5]

The Detox Project’s “Glyphosate Testing: Testing Yourself” will restart their testing services with a larger lab who can handle the demands for testing sometime in summer 2016.  Here’s their Sample Collection Protocol that tells about testing urine, water and breast milk.  And here’s the Sample Collection Protocol.

In addition to testing to find out the glyphosate burden in your body, I think it would be wise to investigate a healthcare practitioner who can advise you about a detoxification program.

Remember, glyphosate is an endocrine disruptor!  It’s hard on the kidneys too.

References:

[1] http://www.greens-efa.eu/we-are-pissed-off-15542.html
[2] http://detoxproject.org/1321-2/
[3] http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416/htm
[4] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4392553/
[5] http://treatautism.ca/biomedical-treatment/digestion-and-inflammation/

Image: Modified by Naturalblaze, Esparta via Visual Hunt / CC BY

Catherine J Frompovich (website) is a retired natural nutritionist who earned advanced degrees in Nutrition and Holistic Health Sciences, Certification in Orthomolecular Theory and Practice plus Paralegal Studies. Her work has been published in national and airline magazines since the early 1980s. Catherine authored numerous books on health issues along with co-authoring papers and monographs with physicians, nurses, and holistic healthcare professionals. She has been a consumer healthcare researcher 35 years and counting.

Catherine’s latest book, published October 4, 2013, is Vaccination Voodoo, What YOU Don’t Know About Vaccines, available on Amazon.com.

Her 2012 book A Cancer Answer, Holistic BREAST Cancer Management, A Guide to Effective & Non-Toxic Treatments, is available on Amazon.com and as a Kindle eBook.

Two of Catherine’s more recent books on Amazon.com are Our Chemical Lives And The Hijacking Of Our DNA, A Probe Into What’s Probably Making Us Sick (2009) and Lord, How Can I Make It Through Grieving My Loss, An Inspirational Guide Through the Grieving Process (2008)

Catherine’s NEW book: Eat To Beat Disease, Foods Medicinal Qualities ©2016 Catherine J Frompovich is now available