Another Common Herbicide Linked to Cancer

<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=143509768245718090000&searchterm=pesticides&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=226389340" target="_blank">Tom Grundy</a>/Shutterstock

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Less than three months after declaring that the ubiquitous herbicide glyphosate, marketed by Monsanto as Roundup, is “probably carcinogenic,” a working group of scientists convened by the World Health Organization has taken aim at another widely used herbicide, 2,4-D, which the WHO panel has found to be “possibly carcinogenic.”

These announcements can hardly be welcome news in the Midwest, whose farm fields are blanketed in corn and soybeans. Since the advent of crops genetically engineered to withstand glyphosate in the 1990s, farmers there have come to rely heavily on the herbicide that many weed varieties have evolved to resist, causing many headaches and a surge in herbicide use.

This past spring, Dow Chemical introduced new genetically modified corn and soybean products designed to solve that problem. They’re engineered to resist not just glyphosate, but also, you guessed it, 2,4-D. And Dow is selling farmers a proprietary herbicide known as Enlist Duo, a combo of glyphosate and 2,4-D, that farmers can apply directly to the crops grown from the new genetically modified corn and soybean seeds. As I’ve shown before, these double-herbicide-resistant crops will likely accelerate, not solve, the resistant-weed problem.

Even so, rather than filling their spray tanks solely with a “probable” carcinogen, corn and soybean farmers can now fill up with a mix of “possible” and “probable” carcinogens before spraying their fields. That may sound like a twisted form of progress, but it should be noted that there’s evidence that toxic chemicals do worse things to us when combined than they do solo. That such “synergistic” effects are little studied is hardly comforting.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate