HEALTH IMPLICATIONS OF GLYPHOSATE AND PESTICIDE DOMINATED AGRICULTURE: MEDICAL ASPECTS

ANDRÉS CARRASCO.

Madrid

Conferencia; Congress on risks for public health & the environment; 2012

ENSSER

A recent study using a commercial formulation of GBH showed that treatments with a 1/5000 dilution (430 µM of glyphosate) were sufficient to induce reproducible malformations in embryos of the South African clawed frog Xenopus laevis, a widely used vertebrate model for embryological studies (3). The phenotypes observed include shortening of the trunk, cephalic reduction, microphthalmy, cyclopia, reduction of the neural crest territory at neurula stages and craniofacial malformations at tadpole stages. In addition GBH inhibits the anterior expression domain of the morphogen Sonic Hedgehog (shh) and reduces the domain of the cephalic marker otx2, prevents the subdivision of the eye field and impairs craniofacial development. Moreover, in recent experiments with another commercial formulation of GBH, the malformations observed before were reproduced in a dose-dependent manner, even at dilutions of 1/500000, which produced developmental abnormalities in 17% of the embryos, without lethality