http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/22563-sri-lanka-bans-monsanto-herbicide-citing-potential-link-to-deadly-kidney-disease
Sri Lanka Bans Monsanto Herbicide Citing Potential Link to Deadly Kidney
Disease
Wednesday, 19 March 2014 12:29
By Sasha Chavkin, The Center for Public Integrity | Report
Concerned the chemical may be linked to a kidney disease killing
agricultural workers, Sri Lanka this week ordered a ban on glyphosate,
the active ingredient in Monsanto’s top-selling herbicide Roundup.
The move comes weeks after publication of a new study in Sri Lanka
suggesting glyphosate as the leading culprit for the illness. The paper
did not provide new scientific evidence, but laid out a detailed theory
that the use of glyphosate in areas with heavy metals in the drinking
water is causing the chronic kidney disease. Roundup is the top selling
herbicide in the world, and Monsanto said the newest study is built upon
untested theory rather than hard data.
“Glyphosate acts as a carrier or a vector of these heavy metals to the
kidney,” said Dr. Channa Jayasumana, the study’s principal author.
For more than two years, the International Consortium of Investigative
Journalists has examined a mysterious form of kidney disease that has
killed tens of thousands of agricultural workers in Central America, Sri
Lanka and India. The malady is suspected by scientists to be caused by a
combination of factors including chronic dehydration from hard labor in
tropical heat and exposure to toxins such as pesticides, but its origins
have yet to be fully uncovered.
Wednesday’s announcement by Sri Lanka was the most dramatic measure
taken to date to combat the illness. The legislature in El Salvador
approved a ban on dozens of agrochemicals including glyphosate last
September, but the proposal has so far not been signed into law.
“An investigation carried out by medical specialists and scientists has
revealed that kidney disease was mainly caused by glyphosate,” Special
Projects Minister S.M Chandrasena told reporters in Sri Lanka.
“President Mahinda Rajapaksa has ordered the immediate removal of
glyphosate from the local market soon after he was told of the contents
of the report.”
Roundup is used all over the world, including in countless areas that do
not suffer from this distinct form of kidney disease.
“There are no epidemiologic studies suggesting that exposures to
glyphosate-based products are associated with renal disorders either in
Sri Lanka or elsewhere,” said Monsanto spokesman Thomas Helscher. “The
paper presents a theory, the theory has not been tested, and there are a
significant number of publications supported by data that make the
Jayasumana hypothesis quite unlikely to be correct.”
Sri Lanka’s ban represents a triumph for Jayasumana, a researcher who
has long insisted that pesticides and the heavy metals arsenic and
cadmium are responsible for the disease.
While he has transformed in Sri Lanka from a resented outsider — a
government official once denounced his theories as “arsenic terrorism” —
to a respected voice in official policy, some scientists question the
evidence behind the pesticide theories, considering them plausible but
largely unproven.
Jayasumana’s study does not include laboratory or field tests, and
appeared in a little-known “open access” journal in which publishing
fees are paid by the authors.
Banning of pesticides is to be supported under the precautionary
principle, since they may be potentially related to CKD, said Dr.
Catharina Wesseling of the Program on Work, Environment and Health in
Central America (SALTRA). However, although beneficial for worker's
health, we should not expect that this will solve the epidemic in
Central America.
Jayasumana’s article contends that glyphosate, which forms powerful
chemical bonds with heavy metals, enters into compounds that persist in
drinking water until they break down in people’s kidneys. It is the
combination of heavy water and Roundup or other glyphosate products, he
argued, that places the population at risk.
“I think we can explain the geographical distribution as well as the
time problem with our hypothesis,” Jayasumana said, in reference to the
epidemic’s unusual geography and its surge in all of the affected
regions during the 1990s.
Jayasumana contends Monsanto failed in its obligations to warn the
public of the health risks posed by glyphosate when used in areas with
heavy water. Glyphosate was originally patented as a chelating agent — a
substance useful for its ability to form strong chemical bonds with
metals — so Monsanto was aware of these properties, Jayasumana said.
“I don’t see any warnings on the bottle or on the label,” he said. “I
feel it’s a fault by Monsanto.”
Official studies in Sri Lanka have found heavy metals and pesticides
including glyphosate in the environment of affected areas and in urine
samples of kidney patients. One study
