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New types of Roundup weed killing products marketed to US consumers contain chemicals that pose greater health risks to people than prior formulations suspected of causing cancer, according to an analysis by an environmental health advocacy group.

Friends of the Earth (FOE) reported Tuesday it found four chemicals have recently been added to Roundup products that have been scientifically shown to cause a variety of health problems, including reproductive defects, kidney and liver damage, cancer, and neurotoxicity.

The analysis comes after the agrochemical company Bayer pledged that it would remove glyphosate from its popular Roundup herbicide products sold for residential lawn and garden use starting in 2023.

Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018, made the change to try to curtail the filing of future litigation as it battles thousands of lawsuits filed against Monsanto by cancer patients who claim they developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma from using Monsanto’s Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides.

Citing a need to protect the unborn babies of pregnant women, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Tuesday banned a pesticide used to kill weeds on farms, golf courses and athletic fields.

The action comes after years of mounting scientific evidence of the dangers posed by exposure to the chemical dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate, also known as DCPA or Dacthal.

“With the final cancellation of DCPA, we’re taking a definitive step to protect pregnant women and their unborn babies,” Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for the EPA Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, said in a press release. “The science showing the potential for irreversible harm to unborn babies’ developing brains, in addition to other lifelong consequences from exposure, demands decisive action to remove this dangerous chemical from the marketplace.”

A federal court this week dealt a blow to calls for new regulations on pesticide-coated seeds used in farming, ruling that US regulators were not acting improperly in exempting the seeds from registration review.

The US District Court for the Northern District of California on Wednesday granted a summary judgment in favor of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and agrochemical industry lobbyist CropLife America, turning back arguments by the Center for Food Safety and other environmental advocates who have spent years warning of a range of “devastating effects” they say result from widespread use of the specialty seeds.

The concerns addressed in the case focus on seeds that are coated in insecticides before they are planted. Three specific types of insecticides that are part of a class of chemicals known as neonicotinoids present particular threats to beneficial birds and insects such as butterflies, and can contaminate the air, soil and water with toxins, according to critics. The court case ruled on this week focused on three types of neonics – imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, and clothianidin.

“Neonicotinoid treated seeds are used on at least half of all croplands in the US but pose an extreme danger to birds, bees, and other pollinators,” the Center for Food Safety said in a statement issued Thursday following the ruling. “With the future of agriculture and entire food webs on the line, it is irresponsible and unlawful that these pesticides will continue to be exempted from registration.” 

More than 50 US lawmakers are calling on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to join dozens of other countries in banning a widely used weedkiller linked to Parkinson’s disease and other health dangers.

In a 31 October letter to the agency, seven US senators said that paraquat, a weedkiller commonly applied on US farms, was a “highly toxic pesticide whose continued use cannot be justified given its harms to farmworkers and rural communities”. The call for a ban from the senators came after 47 members of the US House of Representatives sent a similar letter to the EPA calling for a ban earlier in October.

The lawmakers cite scientific links between paraquat use and development of Parkinson’s and other “life threatening diseases” as well as “grave impacts on the environment”. “Health risks include a higher risk of Parkinson’s disease, with some studies finding a 64% increase in the likelihood of developing Parkinson’s, non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, thyroid cancer, and other thyroid issues,” they wrote.

In 2017, two United Nations experts called for a treaty to strictly regulate dangerous pesticides, which they said were a “global human rights concern”, citing scientific research showing pesticides can cause cancers, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, and other health problems.  

Publicly, the industry’s lead trade association dubbed the recommendations “unfounded and sensational assertions”.  In private, industry advocates have gone further.

Derogatory profiles of the two UN experts, Hilal Elver and Baskut Tuncak, are hosted on an online private “social network” portal for pesticide company employees and a range of influential allies.

Members of the network can access a wide range of personal information about hundreds of individuals from around the world deemed a threat to industry interests, including US food writers Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman, the Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva and the Nigerian activist Nnimmo Bassey. Many profiles include personal details such as the names of family members, phone numbers, home addresses and even house values.

The profiling is part of a broad campaign – that was financed partly with US taxpayers dollars – to downplay pesticide dangers, discredit opponents, and undermine international policymaking harmful to the pesticide industry, according to court records, emails and other documents obtained by the non-profit newsroom Lighthouse Reports in an investigative reporting collaboration with The New Lede, the Guardian, and other international media partners. 

The efforts were spearheaded by a “reputation management” firm in Missouri called v-Fluence.  The company, founded by former Monsanto executive Jay Byrne, provides self-described services that include “intelligence gathering”, “proprietary data mining” and “risk communications”.

The revelations demonstrate how industry advocates established a “private social network” to counter resistance to pesticides and genetically modified (GM) crops  in Africa, Europe and other parts of the world, while also denigrating organic and other alternative farming methods. More than 30 current government officials are on the membership list of the private network, most of whom are from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Elver, who is now a university research professor and a member of a United Nations food security committee, said public money would have been better spent on scientific research into the health impacts of pesticides than on profiling people such as herself.

“Instead of understanding the scientific reality, they try and shoot the messenger. It is really hard to believe,” she said.

Author Michael Pollan’s profile portrays him as an “ardent opponent” of industrial agriculture and (GM) crops and a proponent of organic farming. His profile includes a long list of criticisms and details such as the names of his siblings, parents, son and brother-in-law. 

“It’s one thing to have an industry come after you after publishing a critical article. This happens all the time in journalism,” Pollan said. “But to have your own government pay for it is outrageous. These are my tax dollars at work.”

Efforts by some California lawmakers to ban the controversial weed killing chemical paraquat ended this week with passage of a law that keeps the chemical in use but requires a reevaluation by regulators within the next five years.

Backers of a ban cited scientific evidence linking paraquat to a range of health problems, including the incurable brain disease known as Parkinson’s, as a key reason to outlaw paraquat use in the state.

The California State Assembly earlier this year had approved what was referred to as a “moratorium” on paraquat that would have taken effect in January 2026 and provided for a process that have would have given state regulators an opportunity to reevaluate paraquat and potentially reapprove the chemical with or without new restrictions.

But state Senate amendments killed any moratorium or restriction on use. The bill, as passed, now only requires state pesticide regulators to complete a reevaluation of paraquat by January 2029.

California Assemblymember Laura Friedman said the fact that the legislature passed requirements for a regulatory reevaluation is still a win.

“With the mounting medical evidence indicating that paraquat is simply too toxic to remain in wide use, I am very confident that [state regulators] will not only do a thorough re-evaluation of paraquat, but either ban it outright or place greater restrictions on its use,” Friedman said in a statement.

A new scientific report lends weight to consumer concerns about pesticide residues on food, presenting fresh evidence that washing fruit before eating it does not remove various toxic chemicals commonly used in agriculture.

 The paper, authored by Chinese researchers and published Wednesday in the American Chemical Society’s journal Nano Letters, comes amid ongoing debate over the extent of pesticide contamination of food, and the potential health risks associated with a steady diet that includes residues of weed killing chemicals, insecticides and other farm chemicals.

In May, Consumer Reports said it had determined that 20% of 59 different fruit and vegetable categories carried pesticide residues at levels that posed “significant risks” to consumers, based on an analysis of data gathered by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The central point of the new paper is primarily to share the technical details of a process the authors developed allowing for enhanced trace detection of pesticides in foods. But the underlying finding about the ineffectiveness of washing fruit is important for consumers who may be relying on food safety practices that are insufficient, the authors said.

Traditional “fruit-cleaning operations cannot wholly remove pesticides,” the paper states.  

When using the technique to examine an apple, for instance, the researchers said the “imaging results prove that the pesticides penetrate the peel layer into the pulp layer.”

Using the technology they developed, the authors said they found the pesticide contamination diminished when the apple peel was removed along with some of the pulp layer.

On a sweltering summer day in central Kansas, farm fields shimmer in the heat as Clint Brauer watches a team of bright yellow robots churn up and down the rows, tirelessly slicing away any weeds that stand in their way while avoiding the growing crops.

The battery-powered machines, 4ft (1.2 metres) long and 2ft (0.6 metres) wide, pick their way through the fields with precision, without any human hand to guide them.

Brauer, a former California-based tech executive who moved back to his family farm in central Kansas after his father developed Parkinson’s disease, sees the robots as critical tools to help farmers reduce their reliance on chemicals and be more protective of their health and the environment.

His Greenfield agricultural technology company now builds and programs its robots in a shed behind an old farmhouse where his grandmother once lived. Twenty farmers are signed up for the robotic services this season, and the company hopes to weed 5,000 acres (2,023 hectares) this year.

“The answer is here,” he said. “This solves a lot of problems for farmers.”

Farmers have been fighting weeds in their fields – pulling, cutting and killing them off with an array of tools – for centuries. Weeds compete with crops for soil moisture and nutrients and can block out sunlight needed for crop growth, cutting into final yields. Over the last 50-plus years, chemical eradication has been the method of choice. It is common for farmers to spray or otherwise apply several weedkilling chemicals on to their fields in a single season.

But as chemical use has expanded, so has scientific evidence that exposure to the toxic substances in weedkillers can cause disease. In addition to glyphosate’s link to cancer, the weedkilling chemical paraquat has been linked to Parkinson’s disease. Another common farm herbicide, atrazine, can be harmful to reproductive health and is linked to several other health problems.

Weedkilling chemicals have also been found to be harmful to the environment, with negative impacts on soil health and on pollinators and other important species. The widespread use of herbicides in farming has fueled weed resistance, leaving many farmers struggling to control weeds in their fields even with repeated applications of herbicides.

Pregnant women living near farm fields show “significantly” increased concentrations of glyphosate weed killer in their urine during seasonal periods when farmers are spraying their fields with the pesticide, according to a new scientific paper published Wednesday.

The research team said the findings were concerning, given recent studies that have associated gestational exposure to glyphosate with reduced fetal growth and other fetal problems.

“If the developing fetus is especially vulnerable to glyphosate, it is critical to understand the magnitude and sources of exposure during this critical developmental period,” the new paper states. The authors include researchers from the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Washington; King’s College London; Boise State University; and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The results were also considered somewhat surprising because none of the women studied worked with glyphosate or other pesticides or had a household member who worked with pesticides, said Cynthia Curl, associate professor at Boise State and lead author on the paper.

Decades of secret Syngenta documents revealed by The New Lede were the focus of an ABC News Nightline segment this week, highlighting how the company has worked to hide the risks of its paraquat herbicide.

The New Lede, in a co-publishing arrangement with The Guardian, first revealed a trove of internal Syngenta documents in October 2022 and followed up in subsequent stories, exposing years of corporate efforts to cover up evidence that paraquat can cause Parkinson’s disease.

The documents obtained by The New Lede additionally showed evidence of efforts to manipulate and influence the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and published scientific literature. The documents also show how the company worked to mislead the public about paraquat dangers.