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10th December 2025
Glyphosate "safety" seminal scientific paper retracted
A controversial scientific paper reporting that glyphosate does not pose a heath risk to humans has been redacted, 25 years after publication. Glyphosate, usually sold under the brand name of ‘Roundup’ is the world’s most widely used herbicide in agriculture and domestic use.
It’s was revealed during a court case in 2017 that some of the scientific paper’s ghost writers were in fact employees of Monsanto, the company who owned the Roundup brand at the time of its publication in 2000. The peer review paper found no evidence to support claims that glyphosate is carcinogenic and toxic to human health.
It has been cited more than 800 times since publication as the seminal, go-to scientific evidence paper on glyphosate safety, and more recently appeared in countless AI driven results about glyphosate use and its safely for human health. It has now been retracted by the publisher due to serious ethical concerns about the independence of its key authors. The redaction raises questions about the validity of the findings of the paper, and throws long held assumptions about the safe use of glyphosate back out into the scientific arena for wider research.
Bayer, the company who now own Roundup, have so far paid $10 billion in lawsuits related to Roundup’s potential carcinogenicity, and 67,000 cases are still to come. Glyphosate is classified by WHO as “probably carcinogenic to humans“. It is linked to increased risk of cancer, and probable endocrine disrupting properties.
Test your exposure to glyphosate
Our exposure to glyphosate in daily life is most likely to come from our diet as we ingest foods and drinks produced in settings where glyphosate is used. It’s a tough one to avoid completely, but making some swaps to organic produce grown without chemicals should help reduce your overall exposure to glyphosate and other pesticides. PAN UK have just published their annual ‘Dirty Dozen‘ list which is a useful resource to help people to reduce their overall exposure to pesticides in food.
To learn more about your exposure to chemicals, the new lastinghealth Everyday Chemicals Test (coming soon) can measure exposure to glyphosate and other widely used pesticides from a single urine sample. It will be available in early 2026.