There’s Still Weed-Killer in Your Breakfast Cereal
Chemicals are widely used to treat crops in the United States. They're starting to show up in the products made from those crops - including breakfast cereal.
In a new sets of tests from the Environmental Research Group, twenty-one oat-based cereals and snacks contained traces of glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in the popular weed-killer RoundUp.
"Glyphosate is sprayed on oats to dry out the crop, making it easier to harvest, the EWG said. The group said the practice increases the chances the chemical will end up in children's cereal," according to CBS News.
The new tests confirm tests conducted by EWG in July and October of last year, with the two highest levels of glyphosate were found in Honey Nut Cheerios Medley Crunch, with 833 parts per billion, or ppb, and Cheerios, with 729 ppb. The EWG children’s health benchmark is 160 ppb. The US EPA has a far higher threshold for glyphosate content, ranging from 0.1 to 310 parts per million, rather than ppb.
According to the EWG report, "since 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a part of the World Health Organization, has classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” In 2017, glyphosate was classified as a known carcinogen by California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.
Since last August, three California juries have awarded more than $2.2 billion total in three separate verdicts against Bayer-Monsanto over claims that Roundup caused cancer and that Monsanto knew about the risks for decades and went to extraordinary lengths to cover it up.
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