HHRA research partners Dr. Michael Antoniou and Robin Mesnage at King’s College London have over the last 6 years become world’s leaders in researching the toxicity of glyphosate herbicides. Dr. Antoniou and an international team of collaborators now report a new study on this topic with important implications for public health.
Archived HHRA News Posts
  • Spraying Pesticides HHRA Answers DPR’s Call for Comments on Its “Roadmap” for Transforming Pest Management

    In a January 26, 2023 press release, the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) released a provocative report entitled “Sustainable Pest Management: A Roadmap for California.” The Roadmap report sets “ambitious goals and actions to accelerate California’s systemwide transition to sustainable pest management and eliminate prioritized high-risk pesticides by 2050.” Also by 2050, the Roadmap report envisions that “Sustainable pest management has been adopted as the de facto pest management system in California.” The report captures the ideas and input of a diverse stakeholder group that met over two years to help DPR, Cal-EPA, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture develop a comprehensive plan sufficient to transform agriculture in the State from often heavily-pesticide dependent management systems to systems grounded in pest-prevention, biological control, and reduced-risk biopesticides. The Roadmap identifies and addresses most of the factors shaping pest management systems in the State and calls for dozens of new research, education, training, and regulatory initiatives. In order to guide the implementation process, DPR requested comments from the public that were due March 13, 2023. In crafting HHRA’s comments, Chuck Benbrook and Mark Lipson drew on their decades of experience tracking and advising DPR on pesticide use and regulatory issues.

  • HHRA Paper Analyzes Pesticide Dietary Risk in Individual Samples of Foods

    One of the main sources of pesticide exposure is through  the diet. It is critically important to understand pesticide residues in foods and how dietary risks have changed over time. Over the last 20 years HHRA’s Executive Director Charles Benbrook has developed an analytical database that quantifies the relative risk posed by residues in the diet. Known as the Dietary Risk Index (DRI), this  system was created to help researchers compare risk levels across foods and pesticides, track changes in dietary risk over time, and assess the impact of where food is grown on residues and risk levels, as well as how production systems influence residues and risks (conventional versus organic). The DRI combines the results of United States and United Kingdom pesticide residue testing programs with data on food serving sizes and each pesticide’s chronic Reference Dose or Acceptable Daily Intake. Chronic DRI values are a ratio: the amount of residue in a serving of food relative to the maximum amount allowed by regulators. DRI values are a ratio: the amount of residue in a serving of food relative to the maximum amount allowed by regulators. Data generated by the DRI helps guide HHRA’s policy and public health by highlighting which food-pesticide combinations account for the most worrisome risks in the food supply. The DRI system initially reported aggregate values for a given food/pesticide combination. These values are derived from multiple individual samples of a food collected by regulatory agencies.  For these DRI values, each individual number represents many servings of a given food. In 2022, HHRA added additional functionality the the DRI to report dietary risk in individual samples of a given food. The paper “Tracking pesticide residues and risk levels in individual samples—insights and applications,” which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Sciences Europe in July 2022, describes the methodology and data sources used to calculate these individual sample DRI values, and highlights some of the results and what they can tell us about residue levels in the global food supply. This is the first analytical system worldwide to provide this level of insight into residues in food. As the paper reports, “dietary risk levels are highly skewed. A large number of samples pose moderate, low, or very-low risks, and relatively few samples pose high or very-high risks.” Thus, regulators and researchers can use the DRI to pinpoint where pesticide dietary risks needs to be mitigated. Like all of HHRA’s peer-reviewed publications, this paper is open access and available free of charge. Click here to view the full text. Access DRI data here.

See all HHRA News posts

HHRA Research Partners Publish Groundbreaking Paper with New Insights on Glyphosate’s Impact to the Microbiome

Jan 26th, 2021
HHRA research partners Dr. Michael Antoniou and Robin Mesnage at King’s College London have over the last 6 years become world’s leaders in researching the toxicity of glyphosate herbicides. Dr. Antoniou and an international team of collaborators now report a new study on this topic with important implications for public health.

This new study — the first to compare the toxicity of glyphosate to the widely used European Union (EU) Roundup formulation MON 52276 at doses that regulators claim to be safe — was published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives on January 27, 2021. MON 52276 is the EU “representative” Roundup formulation upon which risk assessments are based. See the full paper in our bibliography.

The study, conducted by an international team of scientists based in London, France, Italy, and the Netherlands, and led by Dr. Michael Antoniou of King’s College London, is the first to describe a mechanism by which glyphosate and Roundup affect the function of the gut microbiome (bacterial populations and biochemical function) in rats, which is the standard surrogate system which regulators rely upon for assessing the human health risks of chemicals. The study found that glyphosate disrupts the rat gut microbiome by the same mechanism by which it acts as an herbicide: inhibition of the shikimate biochemical pathway (see this FAQ for why this matters to public health).

Moreover, by measuring molecular composition profiles in both blood and the gut, the new study also shows that Roundup MON 52276 (as Roundup BioFlow) is more disruptive than glyphosate alone. Rats consuming this Roundup formulation developed signs of oxidative (reactive oxygen) stress, which was not so evident with solely glyphosate. This is a concern as oxidative stress can not only cause damage to cells and organs, but also to DNA, which can lead to serious disease such as cancer.

“Our results highlight the importance of investigating the long-term toxicity, not just of glyphosate alone, as regulators worldwide currently require, but also the chemical mixtures that make up commercial Roundup formulations, to which people and the environment are exposed,” says lead author Michael Antoniou. “In addition, this study demonstrates the need for regulators to urgently adopt state-of-the-art molecular composition profiling methods (collectively called “omics” analyses) as part of their risk assessment procedures in order to assess more accurately the toxicity of chemical pollutants and thus better protect public health. Furthermore, the molecular composition profiles found in this study can serve as signatures to measure the effects of glyphosate and Roundup in human populations.”

For a closer look at the implications of the study, see guest blogs by co-author Dr. Mesnage and pediatrician and HHRA Science Advisory Board member Dr. Michelle Perro.  For research updates, sign up here.

Source:

Mesnage, R, Teixeira, M, Mandrioli, D., Falcioni, L., Ducarmon, QR, Zwittink, RD, Mazzacuva, F, Caldwell, A, Halket, J, Amiel, C., Panoff, J. , Belpoggi, F., & Antoniou, MN; “Use of shotgun metagenomics and metabolomics to evaluate the impact of glyphosate or Roundup MON 52276 on the gut microbiota and serum metabolome of Sprague-Dawley rats;” Environmental Health Perspectives, 2021 (in press); DOI: 10.1289/EHP6990.

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