'Most of Us Have Glyphosate in Our Urine'

"People of all ages should be concerned, but I’m particularly concerned for children." So says one scientist interviewed by the Guardian in reaction to a new CDC study that found glyphosate in 80% of US urine samples. The study used 2,310 samples from what was meant to be a group representative of the US population, nearly a third of them children. Detectable amounts of the weedkilling chemical, the active ingredient in herbicides including Roundup, was found in 1,885 of them. Glyphosate has been linked to cancer. "I expect that the realization that most of us have glyphosate in our urine will be disturbing to many people," says another scientist.

Children are primarily exposed via the food they eat; glyphosate has been found in many popular food items, including baby food, made using crops that have been sprayed with the herbicide. Roundup maker Monsanto and Bayer, the company that bought it in 2018, maintain that the weedkiller is safe, but a unit of the WHO declared glyphosate a probable human carcinogen in 2015 and many researchers have warned against it. In the US, the EPA claims it's not likely to cause cancer, but last month a federal appeals court ordered the agency to take a closer look at the risks to humans (and other creatures) and the environment, Reuters reports. The CDC has just recently begun investigating how common human exposure to glyphosate is in the US. (More glyphosate stories.)