The Dangers of Glyphosate and How to Protect Yourself from Toxicity

Recently, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) overturned the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2020 ruling that glyphosate is safe for humans and endangered species via the U.S. Court of Appeals. 

What does this mean? Essentially, the court, specifically the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, has now acknowledged that glyphosate is actually harmful, after decades of evidence that it is destroying our health. (And years after the World Health Organization classified it as a probable carcinogen in 2015.) EPA now has to redo its 2020 glyphosate analysis, including a new toxicity assessment. 

This is a small win in the fight for environmental health, but it does not impact farmers' ability to use glyphosate and other harmful pesticides in the U.S.

We wanted to take this chance to give an update on glyphosate and its extremely dangerous effects on human health and the health of our planet. It degrades our soil (even while some are fighting to protect and restore it via regenerative agriculture), and we are seeing more and more detrimental health effects from glyphosate use. 

It’s more important than ever to be aware of the dangers of glyphosate and how you can protect yourself and your family.

Table of Contents:

• What is Glyphosate?
• Glyphosate in Food, Water, and Everywhere in Between
• Glyphosate and Gut Health
• Glyphosate Causes Leaky Gut
• How Does Glyphosate Affect my Cellular Health?
• Alternatives to Pesticides and Glyphosate
• Protect Yourself From Glyphosate With PC
• Stay Up-to-Date on Glyphosate 

What Is Glyphosate? Is it Safe? 

Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum herbicide used in agriculture, forestry, and lawn management across the U.S. 

You know it best as the main ingredient in the weed killer, RoundUp. 

Since it was brought to market in the 70s by Monsanto, glyphosate has been sprayed by the ton across farmers’ fields throughout the U.S. It was originally marketed as a “less toxic” pesticide, the safer of many evils. We know now that this claim was completely false advertising, and we are feeling the effects. 

Among the consequences of glyphosate contamination are various types of cancer, infertility struggles, and a range of birth defects. But as an endocrine disruptor and toxin, there are likely dozens of other negative effects that we aren’t yet aware of, even at low levels.   

Glyphosate in Food, Water, and Everywhere in Between

Glyphosate has become ubiquitous in our food system, water, air, and pretty much everywhere you can think to look. Babies are born with it in their systems. It has infiltrated our soils, plant foods, and livestock. 

Even the most diligent organic-certified producers can’t avoid it, since they grow their crops with contaminated water and may be subject to glyphosate exposure just from being near conventional fields. 

Organic produce is still preferable, since they are not being directly sprayed with the herbicide. But we have a long way to go to get glyphosate out of our food system. 

Glyphosate and Gut Health

One of the worst effects of glyphosate may be its effect on our gut microbiome. 

Glyphosate disrupts a certain enzyme pathway in plants called the shikimate pathway, suppressing an enzyme that is supposed to produce metabolites like aromatic amino acids (AAA) and many other key biological molecules for health. 

Glyphosate’s supposed safety was based on the fact that human cells do not have this key enzyme pathway. But our gut bacteria do. 

And we now know that our gut bacteria are the ones who are producing many key nutrients for us (the host), including:

• Vitamins such as B vitamins
• Short-chain fatty acids
• Neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. 

Glyphosate severely restricts our microbiome’s ability to make these key nutrients for us, resulting in widespread damaging effects. 

Not only are our gut bacteria not producing these metabolites for us and making us sick, glyphosate is making them sick as well. Glyphosate particularly targets Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria, two of the most abundant types of good bacteria in the human gut. It’s not surprising that gut issues across our population have worsened dramatically over the last few decades alone. 

Glyphosate Causes Leaky Gut

Another severe side effect of glyphosate is that it causes leaky gut, the loosening of tight junctions between gut cells in the intestines. Your gut lining is just one cell thick, to allow passage of nutrients from your food into the bloodstream. But this layer is meant to keep much larger food particles, toxins, and even pathogens in the gut as well.

Glyphosate increases the expression of another enzyme called zonulin, which weakens the gut barrier, allowing these larger particles and pathogens into the bloodstream. This is a quick path to chronic inflammation and disease.