The Highwire with Del Bigtree - GLYPHOSATE LINKED TO CANCER IN ALARMING NEW STUDY

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

A groundbreaking study reveals glyphosate-based herbicides cause rare tumors, leukemia, and premature death in rats, even at doses EU regulators claim are “safe.” Could this toxic chemical be fueling America’s rising childhood cancer rates? Dive into the evidence.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

I want to go to the Maha report, and in many ways this was a transitional moment for the United States government. And the second section of that report looked at the cumulative load of chemicals in our environment specifically for children. So again, children are adults, and the US government acknowledged this, which is huge. And why? Because children, you see the list here. They have sensitive developmental windows.

They have developing immune systems. They have problems detoxifying like adults, not like adults. Accelerated brain development, endocrine disruption is an issue. So all of these things are now being considered by food manufacturers and by basically big ag. So big ag, we're talking about all the big food manufacturers, but also up the food chain. That's not so obvious like a pesticide manufacturer. So let's stick on this conversation because one of the moves that just happened, Kraft.

Kraft is following in line now with General Mills, with PepsiCo, huge, huge multinational corporation. Kraft Heinz removed synthetic dies from U.S. products, make American healthy, again, pressure. It says instead the company plans to replace them with natural alternatives, but that will alter the bright rainbow of colors. Shoppers have grown to love. Food scientists Brian Kwok Lee told the post, these natural dyes typically come from food source, giving them a slight taste using turmeric for yellow color and beetroot for red.

For example, can add an off flavor to products, Kwok Lee said. So they're kind of prepping you. I'd rather just, obviously, I think most people would have that, just get out of the food. We really care where it's coming from as long as it's like natural, turmeric beetroot great. We'll take an off flavor on top of that. No big deal. But there's a big opportunity for the U.S. government for HHS to really make a move in this conversation. And this is in the conversation of glyphosate.

So every month now, pretty much, you look into the media and you see headlines like this. This is the most recent headline. Missouri appeals court upholds $611 million judgment and a roundup liability case. This is cancer causing. Wow. Here's another one. Bear seeks a new roundup settlement while exploring Monsanto bankruptcy. They're getting clobbered and they have been in court. We've been reporting on this since way before COVID. And this is a new study that just came out to add to the conversation. So the conversation around glyphosate is politics and science. Here's the science. Carcinogenic effects of long-term exposure from prenatal life to glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicide.

So what's interesting about this, it's in rats, but they're not looking at not only looking at glyphosate in a vacuum. They're looking at the business end of what comes out of that nozzle that people are using on the yards, which is the glyphosate-based herbicides, the entire formulation. Some of that's still proprietary, especially the European Union, people don't even know what's being sprayed in that proprietary blend. But it says in this report, the conclusion, it says this report from the carcinogenicity arm of the global glyphosate study found that glyphosate in GBAH is basically glyphosate-based herbicides. That's the full formulation. At exposure levels, corresponding to the European Union's glyphosate ADI, the acceptable daily intake.

So the EU has this acceptable daily intake, which is lower than the U.S. They're very cautious. So it's great. These researchers use this acceptable daily intake, and they dose rats in their water with this. And the Noelle, which is the no observed adverse effect level. So that's basically you want to bring it all the way up to the edge until it starts to have adverse effects. So it starts to really show health issues. They back it off a little bit.

So you have this window. You have acceptable daily limit and there's no observed adverse effect level. And this is what they said. They said it caused statistically significant, dose-related, increased trends or increased incidences compared to RI and NTP historical controls of here we go. Multiple benign and malignant tumors of blood, skin, liver, thyroid, nervous system, ovary, mammary gland, adrenal gland, kidney urinary, bladder, bone, endocrine, pancreas, and circulatory system.

And that goes on to say most of these increases involve tumors that are in, that are rare in SD rats. It goes on to say, we also observed early onset and early mortality for a number of rare malignant tumors, including leukemia, liver, ovary, and nervous system tumors, notably approximately half the deaths from leukemia seen in the glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicide treatment groups occurred at less than one year of age. Wow. Our results indicated while glyphosate alone is capable of causing a number of benign and malignant

tumors, glyphosate-based herbicides coformulants may enhance the carcinogenicity of glyphosate particularly in the case of leukemia. Wow, that's horrifying. Wow. And you're saying it the acceptable, the acceptable daily intake doses, saying this is where we said it was acceptable, not even the, you know, where is it, you know, it's, I mean, it's a huge discovery because usually like, wow,

in the study they gave the rats so much of this stuff that obviously can cause cancer at high doses. It's all about dose. Well, now they're saying, well, the dose that was said to be safe is actually killing rats in the study and showing cancers like we've never seen? This is a really bombshell forward-looking study. And I want to show an image from this study as well. This is the leukemia deaths in the rats. And most of those, 40% of those deaths in the treated groups occurred in the first year time window, 52 weeks, basically. And the

ADA is the acceptable daily intake in the European Union. And then that no observed adverse effect level at Noelle at the end. But even in the middle there, the research is Let's go ADI times 10. Let's see what happens. And you see dose dependent. This is dose dependent effects. And I want to point people to the EPA's 2017 Children's Environmental Health Impact Report. And it says this, cancer is the second leading cause of death among children between ages 1 and 14 years old. Leukemia, cancer of the white blood cells is the most common childhood cancer. The number of children diagnosed with leukemia has increased by about 35 percent over the past 40 years, especially among Latino children as shown in recent studies.

in the U.S. So this is the conversation. This breaks barriers of race, of ethnicity. This brings everyone together under one hood to demand change. And this is really what we're doing here. The science is clear. And a lot of times industry will look at study by study in a vacuum and say, well, this study had this issue with it and this issue. And those researchers really can't be trusted because they've published things before in the past that have been not scientific. So let's really quickly run through because we're at an inflection point here where glyphosate, that herbicide, that pesticide can be removed. The science is speaking.

A 2025 published review happening just two weeks before this rat study I just presented. This was looking at 15 years of published studies and they found this. Here's the infographic they used and you can see they looked at glyphosate and the coformulants. That's the entire formulation. And look at this, look at all of these issues, the pathways it shows, and then the issues on the right side that kicks out. It says, based on published studies, common side effects following glyphosate-based herbicide applications include the disruption of the microbiome, neurotoxicity, cytotoxicity,

reproductive, oncogenic, and tetragenic effects. New modes of action and impacts at several trophic levels continue to be discovered. They're still discovering them, many driven by the sheer intensity of glyphosate-based herbicide use. Now let's keep going really quick. Just I want to nail this. 2023 and we go back every year we can see these. This is association with lifetime exposure of glyphosate showing liver inflammation, metabolic syndrome in young adults that's, you know, leading to diabetes, heart disease.

This is all the stuff Mahi is trying to stop. So this is the home run for them. 2022 toxic effects of glyphosate on the nervous system. You have an infographic here showing glyphosate and the formulations. It's showing neural transmission interrupts. behavioral impairment, neural inflammation. It says in their conclusions, the information summarized in the present review indicates that exposure of glyphosate AMPA, that's the co-formulant or glyphosate-based herbicides could reduce, could induce several toxic effects

on the nervous system of all species studied. Although there are important discrepancies between the findings analyzed in this review, it is unequivocal that exposure of glyphosate alone or in commercial formulations can produce important alterations in the structure and function the nervous system of humans, rodents, fish, and invertebrate animals. So what's happening right now? At the legal level, Bear is really seeking to change laws at state levels using lobbying. At the federal level and through courts, they're getting clobbered, really, and in the court of public opinion as well. And so North Carolina right now, a bill just passed the Senate. It's moved into the House. This is the North Carolina Farm Act of 2025 Senate Bill 639.

And you can see here, this was published by bear. This was a helped written by Bears lobbying company, Modern Ag Alliance. And you can see every time you see these bills in the state houses that are being passed. You see this section, limited liability for pesticide manufacturers. They're modeling us, modeling this after the 1986 vaccine injury compensation act. And they're trying to basically escape with this. because if something comes out from the federal level, banning this, then they're going to have to be a federal and a state level fight if they can get these bills passed.

So a lot of people are standing up against this. If you're in North Carolina and you believe this bill should not pass, this is the bill that you want to call your representative on if you have that belief. I mean, when we look at these skyrocketing, skyrocketing rates of leukemia in babies, you never, I mean, when we were kids, Jeffrey, babies didn't get cancer. And now babies are, you know, the numbers are astronauts. economical and now we see this direct link to glyphosate. And for everyone out there, I think you have to start taking this really seriously.

It's very easy to just go, well, I mean, I think no matter what we do, we think, well, it can't be that bad. It's being allowed. You know, what did they say? Over 80% of the crops in America are being, you know, sprayed with this stuff now. And so I think about the fact that, you know, Zen Honeycutt, who we've had on the show, moms across America has done such amazing work on this exact issue. Like trying to point out, she's done the studies. They've shown that it's in the breast milk.

So this baby from day one in this beautiful connection between mom and baby, the mother is probably trying to have a good balanced diet, eating vegetables. That glyphosate is pouring right into this brand new baby. It's literally the first chemicals that it is just saturating its body with. Then I imagine all the times that we were steaming vegetables for our children. children. We tend to buy organic. I hope, I hope that that means it's clear of the stuff, but how many people can't afford that and aren't but are steaming their vegetables and mashing them up and the little kids doing that. And the baby foods you're using that are vegetables.

You know, what is the process? You can't get glyphosate out. Remember, it cannot wash off your vegetables. It's in the vegetable. You know, you're using it in your lawns. Your dog is dragging that in. Your baby's petting your dog. Your dog was rolling around the grass. The stuff was all over. I mean, it's everywhere. It's everywhere. And this is such a critical issue. It's also, I'm going to give a shout out to Zen Honeycutt. Go to Moms Across America because she's really on top of this.

We're going to have her on the show again to discuss some of this stuff in the future. But it's really, it's really horrifying. Jeffrey. Honestly, Jeffrey, that may have been one of the more depressing Jeffrey Jackson series that we've had. But I appreciate it. We've got to know this stuff. Yeah, the best thing that's going to hope for, And we do this, Del as you know, to light a fire under people that will listen.

And we know that people listen all the way up into the highest levels of the government. And so we're here to point these things out. And it's such a flashing red light at this point. It's time to move on this issue. This has been an issue over a decade. People have the march for Monsanto is the biggest protest. And that was going on in the early and mid-2000s. So it's time.

It's time.