Forty Years with Glyphosate
By Andras Szekacs, B. Darvas. 2012
136 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Indeed, the two boasted pesticides show certain similarities in their history of discovery and fate. Both were synthesised first several decades prior to the discovery of their pesticide action. DDT and glyphosate were first described as chemical compounds 65 and 21 years before their discovery as pesticides, respectively. Both fulfilled extensive market need, therefore, both burst into mass application right after the discovery of their insecticide/herbicide activity. They both were, to some extent, connected to wars: a great part of the use of DDT was (and remains to be) hygienic, particularly after Word War II, but also the Vietnam War; while glyphosate plays an eminent role in the “drug war” (Plan Colombia) as a defoliant of marijuana fields in Mexico and South America. And last, not least, ecologically unfavourable characteristics of both was applauded as advantageous: the persistence of DDT had been seen initially as a benefit of long lasting activity, and the zwitterionic structure and consequent outstanding water solubility of glyphosate, unusual among pesticides, also used to be praised, before the environmental or ecotoxicological disadvantages of these characteristics were understood.
Subfields: Plant Science, Pollution
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/78b3754a684c6307141930f1c222ccd8e2479cfb
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In Pollution
Citations in the corpus
- Concerns over use of glyphosate-based herbicides and risks associated with exposures: a consensus statement (2016, background): “In field studies, the half-life of glyphosate in soil ranged between a few days to several months, or even a year, depending on soil composition [56].”
- No scientific consensus on GMO safety (2015, unknown): “Some reviews and individual studies have associated them with increased herbicide use [45,46], the rapid spread of herbicide-resistant weeds [47], and adverse health effects in human and animal populations exposed to Roundup, the herbicide used on the majority of GM crops [48-50].”