New policy report just released: “Growing agrichemical ubiquity: New questions for environments and health” by Annie Shattuck, Marion Werner, Christian Berndt, Becky Mansfield, and Ryan Galt, available here.

Summary:
In the last 20 years, agrichemical use has increased significantly around the world. Dramatic changes in the global pesticide industry are restructuring trade patterns, driving down costs, and making agrichemicals more affordable across the global South. The result is a global pesticide complex that touches more people than ever, while its impacts become decreasingly legible on public health and the environment. The herbicide glyphosate, made famous under the brand name Roundup and increasingly sold as a generic, is a major force in this change. Marketed as a benign substance despite substantial evidence of human health harms (IARC 2017), glyphosate has become a pervasive agrichemical used on record-setting amounts of land. Overall, changes in the pesticide industry, underpinned by skyrocketing demand for glyphosate and other pesticides, is ushering in a new era of agrichemical ubiquity. Understanding these recent changes is crucial to forming an updated global environmental health research and policy agenda.