Host: The Japanese Society of Toxicology
Name : The 47th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Toxicology
Date : 2020 -
Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world including Japan. Its safety for humans has been believed, because its herbicidal action is the inhibition of the shikimate pathway absent in animals but critical to the plants. In 2015, IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) decided to classify the glyphosate as Category 2A (probably carcinogenic to humans), but its carcinogenicity have been controversial. Recently, various adverse health effects of glyphosate have been reported. Glyphosate and its-based formulations induced microbiome disruption, endocrine disruption, excitatory action to NMDA receptors, metal chelating activities, and DNA methylation etc. To consider the glyphosate’s potential as a human carcinogen and adverse health effects, it must be to focus on studies suggesting mechanisms that would go largely undetected in traditional toxicology studies, such as microbiome and endocrine disruptions, DNA methylation.
In addition, glyphosate-based formulations frequently showed higher toxicity than active gradient glyphosate, because the additives, such as surfactant, surprisingly increase their toxicity. In several reports, the glyphosate formulations showed about a hundred times higher toxicity than glyphosate. The safety standard of pesticides, ADI (Acceptable Daily Intake), is calculated from NOAEL (No Observed Adverse Effect Level) of the active gradient, such as glyphosate. But, human exposures of pesticides are derived from the pesticide-based formulations, not the active gradient. The calculation method of ADI includes a fundamental contradiction.
