Bayer’s New Roundup Is 45 Times More Toxic

After acquiring Monsanto and facing tens of thousands of lawsuits, Bayer promised to remove cancer-linked glyphosate from its commercial Roundup weed killers by 2023.

Roundup was first commercially released by Monsanto 50 years ago, and since then, tens of thousands of people have claimed they developed Non-Hodgkin lymphoma after repeated use of the product and its active ingredient, glyphosate. I Photo: Mike Mozart Flickr

However, an analysis published by Friends of the Earth reveals that the replacement is even more dangerous, as reported by Olivia Rosane for Common Dreams.

The group found that many residential Roundup products still contain glyphosate, and those that don’t have replaced it with a chemical cocktail that is 45 times more toxic to human health following long-term exposure.

“With the new formulations of Roundup, Bayer had the opportunity to make us safer, but it did the opposite,” said Kendra Klein, deputy director of science for Friends of the Earth, in a statement.

“Bayer's willingness to deceive the public and disregard our health while continuing to profit from the Roundup brand name is outrageous. In short, the new Roundup is not the old Roundup—it's worse.”

Roundup was first commercially released by Monsanto 50 years ago, and since then, tens of thousands of people have claimed they developed Non-Hodgkin lymphoma after repeated use of the product and its active ingredient, glyphosate, which the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified as "probably carcinogenic to humans."

Despite the risk, glyphosate is still so widely used that it was detected in 80% of a test of U.S. urine samples.

Bayer has replaced glyphosate with a combination of four chemicals—fluazifop-P-butyl, triclopyr, diquat dibromide, and imazapic—the latter two of which are banned in the European Union.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), all four chemicals are, on average, more dangerous to health than glyphosate following chronic exposure.

They have been linked to kidney and liver damage, reproductive and developmental problems, as well as allergic reactions or irritation affecting the eyes, skin, and respiratory system.