Around 20 years ago in northern Mozambique, a medical student, Hiplito Nzwalo, saw an entire family that could only walk with the help of walking sticks. Their legs were stiff and rigid, moving like a pair of scissors opening and closing, instead of bending at the knee.

They had a neurological disease known as "konzo," which translates to "tied legs." The struggle to walk is irreversible, said Nzwalo, now a neurologist and professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences of Algarve in Portugal. It can also lead to sudden paralysis.

Konzo is brought on by exposure to high amounts of a toxin from a starchy root vegetable, cassavaone of the staple foods in the diet of more than 500 million people who live in Africa.

With proper preparation, the toxin, hydrogen cyanide, can be flushed out with water. But in the face of agricultural crisis, drought, and poverty, people are forced to choose between going hungry and adhering to these preparations. A lack of rain can also increase the concentration of hydrogen cyanide in cassava, making the plant even more dangerous to eat. All these factors, and especially drought, are predicted to get worse with climate change and increase the risk of konzo.

Konzo is just one example of how the climate crisis is going to fundamentally change the availability and safety of the foods we eat. In 2019, researchers found that climate change and higher CO2 levels could reduce certain vitamins in foods, like zinc, iron, and protein. But there might be even more dramatic impacts: Instead of just making plants less nutritious, they could also become toxic, like cassava when faced with drought.

This could happen in several ways: Indirectly, through extreme weather, poverty, and hunger pushing communities to eat and rely on underripe or un-prepared food, and creating a scarcity of other options. Or, in more common foodsincluding barley, millet, flax, maize, sorghum, cherries, and applesthere is the potential for an accumulation of toxins due to loss of water and erratic weather events. Over-exposure to any of these toxins could lead to dramatic effects on health and disorders of the nervous system.

During the food shortages in the Spanish civil war, people had to rely more heavily on grass pea, a hardy legume known for being a "famine food." Grass pea can cause a neurological disease called lathyrism from ingesting too much of two toxic amino acids it contains. The symptoms are similar to konzomuscular weakness, an inability to walk, paralysis, or tremors. Eating too much grass pea led to an epidemic from 1941 to 1943 of what the Spanish called Azan's Disease, after one of the villages it afflicted.

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In India, people safely eat small amounts of grass pea as part of their normal diet. But during a drought or extreme weather, if other food crops die off, people might need to consume more of it, on account of it being available and plentiful. Now you can see the links with climate change, Peter Spencer, a neurologist at Oregon Health and Science University said.

Many of the plants we eat have toxins in them, but since we eat them at such low levels it doesnt affect our health. One of the basic tenets of toxicology is that for something to be harmful, it depends on the amount. As the adage goes: the dose makes the poison.

People are more at risk for these nutritional neurotoxic disorders when faced with poverty, hunger, a lack of water, and other food options being limited. These pressures will only get worse with climate change, Spencer said, because it will cause water and food insecurity.

In a study from 2019 in the journal Environmental Neurology, Spencer and his colleagues described several other foods that have toxins that can make people sicklike the fruit of the ackee tree, eaten in West Africa and Jamaica, and lychee fruit from South Asia.

Every year, children in India go to the hospital for fever, convulsions, and seizures. One suggested cause is that they are being sickened from toxic chemicals in unripe lychees, which can cause dramatic drops in blood sugar and encephalopathy, or damage from swelling of the brain, Padmini Srikantiah of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention office in India told CNN. The effect increases if a person who eats them is malnourished; those eating unripe lychees out of hunger or desperationwhich could increase with climate changewould be more affected. The children who ate lychees on an empty stomach were found to get more sick. (It's still somewhat of a mystery, though, as recent cases have indicated there might be another factor at play.)

Nzwalo said that theres no speculation needed about what a changing climate will do to the numbers of people with konzo, because past droughts have already shown it will get worse. In the Kahemba district of Bandundu, almost 2,000 children were crippled during one dry seasona span of a few months from June to September of 2009.

Changing climates can also cause people to migrate to other areas, in search of food or waterand could lead to introduction of bitter cassava in areas where historically cassava processing methods are not used, exposing locals to the toxicity," Nzwalo said.

If your diet doesn't regularly include foods like lychee or cassava, a 2004 report from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) found that some more familiar foods are also at risk for becoming more toxic.

Plants try to protect themselves in the face of a changing climate too, and the ways they do can be harmful to humans. They use a compound called nitrate to grow, and convert it into other molecules like amino acids and proteins. When crops like barley, maize or millet are faced with drought, they slow down or stop this conversion, which leads to a nitrate buildup.

In an interview with German media organization Deutsche Welle, Jacqueline McGlade, chief scientist and director of the Division of Early Warning and Assessment at UNEP, called the result a poison chalice." If a human eats large amounts of nitrate, it can stop red blood cells from transporting oxygen in the human body, Yale360 reported.

In the opposite direction, heavy rains can lead to a toxic buildup of hydrogen cyanide or prussic acid in foods like flax, maize, sorghum, arrow grass, cherries and apples. Hydrogen cyanide is the same ingredient that can be found in some types of chemical warfare, Reuters pointed out. With flooding, there can be an increase in fungal growth and mycotoxins on crops.

All these toxins cause disorders of the nervous system. They can really make it difficult for people to breatheit's like asphyxiation [suffocation], McGlade said in the interview. If animals or human beings are pregnant, that can cause miscarriage.

As with many other issues regarding climate, the most vulnerable people are being affected first: subsistence farmers and people in rural areas without access to diverse foods. Around 4.5 billion people in developing countries are already exposed to toxins in their food, the report found.

We can look at a map of the world of drought conditions and you can pretty much guarantee that somewhere in those areas you are going to find it, McGlade told Deutsche Welle. So in sub-Saharan Africa, but increasingly in northern and southern parts of Africa. We see definite trends in Latin America and Brazil. Really, all over the world now.

If CO2 levels aren't dramatically reduced, in the future we'll need to develop drought-resistant crops that dont create buildups of those toxins, or crops that are resistant to fungal toxins. As we look forward and see the effects of climate change, we can really start to see the upper end of this: 70 percent of agriculture production is going to be affected by either too much rain or too little rain, McGlade said. So we need to be aware: this exposes potentially billions to toxins.

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Climate Change Will Turn These Common Foods Toxic - VICE

Organic products aren't necessarily healthier for you, and GMOs aren't harmful.

Cracking your knuckles causes arthritis. Eating eggs gives you heart disease. Coffee stunts your growth. No, no and no again -- for decades, health myths like these have influenced consumer decisions, originating from obscure studies or the opinion of a then-influential doctor. Science has debunked much of this conventional wisdom that percolates as fact -- here are 18 of the most persistent health myths that everyone needs to stop believing right now.

Feel free to work out at night if that's your jam.

The truth: Not for everyone.

The advice of late-1900s exercise professionals would have you believe that exercising too late in the evening keeps you up at night. It's just not true for everyone: Researchers have found that nighttime exercise may have no impact whatsoever on your sleep quality, and for some people, exercising before bed can even result in better ZZZs.

Go ahead and eat your omelet.

The truth: Eggs have almost no effect on your blood cholesterol.

You, among millions of others influenced by the 1968 recommendation that adults should eat no more than three whole eggs per week, may have needlessly avoided eggs for the last 50 years. Scientists have since debunked the idea that eggs increase your blood cholesterol and heighten your risk for heart disease, and Harvard University's analysis of two 2018 studies even suggests that eating eggs can improve your heart health.

The truth: Everyone has different hydration needs.

Everyone knows the eight-by-eight rule: Drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water each day. This water intake recommendation stems from a very outdated -- in this case, centuries-old -- ideal. While based on accurate observations (water keeps you healthy), the notion that everyone needs exactly 64 ounces or two liters of water each day is wrong. Everyone has different hydration needs and should adjust their water intake accordingly based on their activity level and signs of dehydration.

The truth: It's just not.

Walking is fantastic exercise; it really is. But walking 10,000 steps a day is not enough to get healthy for most people. Exercise isn't one-size-fits-all, so it just doesn't make sense to blanket the general public with a step recommendation.

I don't even get close to 10,000 steps per day (my average is about 4,000), but all my vital signs are healthy and I'm free of disease -- perhaps because I generally eat a healthy diet and meet the recommendations in the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans.

Work your core, but focus on strength over aesthetic.

The truth: Six-packs are a scam.

Having six-pack abs does not make you the fittest person on earth, although it's totally valid to feel that way if you do have them. Forging twelve little divets into your stomach certainly requires hard work in the gym and mindfulness about your diet, but abs are more of a genetic quality than anything else.

I, for one, could eat McDonald's once a day and maintain a toned stomach as long as I keep up with my workout schedule -- and I recognize that it's not that easy for everyone.

Six-pack abs aren't something you should strive for, anyway, if your body type just doesn't support the goal: For some people, a six-pack means their diet is too restrictive or they're not taking in enough calories overall. Aiming for a strong core over a visible core is a better goal.

The truth: There are more factors to consider.

Medical literature still contains much controversy about saturated fat and its relationship to cardiovascular diseases. For decades, public health agencies warned consumers about the dangers of saturated fat, and things really got turned upside-down when a groundbreaking 2017 study boldly proclaimed that saturated fat does not, in fact, clog the arteries. The study also stated that the risk of "bad" (LDL) cholesterol has been overstated.

Since then, the scientific consensus has dissipated, and research about dietary fat and heart health is ongoing. The FDA still recommends limiting (but not completely avoiding) saturated fat intake in the updated Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and to be safe, it's a good idea to follow their advice.

The truth: Evidence is extremely limited.

To date, there is just not enough valid scientific evidence that supports organic produce as superior to conventionally farmed produce. Studies have concluded that "there is some evidence for potential benefits of organic food consumption" but "considerable uncertainty/controversy remains on whether or to what extent these composition differences affect human health."

Organic produce is subject to different farming practices and tighter regulations than conventional produce (like no synthetic pesticides), but so far, that doesn't mean it's actually more nutritious.

Many consumers also believe organic food to be healthier because it isn't produced with synthetic pesticides, but research isn't clear on that, either: One study concluded that "Organic foods convey lower pesticide residue exposure than do conventionally produced foods, but the impact of this on human health is not clear."

Another study stated that analyses of human specimens (such as urine) after eating conventional and organic produce showed that there is a possibility that organic foods lower the risk of pesticide exposure, although the clinical implications are unclear.

All sugar, just in different colors and forms.

The truth: Sugar is sugar.

Coconut sugar, agave nectar, "raw" sugar, palm sugar, evaporated cane juice -- these are all sugar. They just sound healthier because they have fancy names. And hate to break it to you, but molasses and honey are just as bad as sucrose, or table sugar, when they're added to foods (and they still count toward your daily added sugar intake).

Your body processes all simple sugars, like those above, the same way. There is one differentiation worth making, though: Sugar in fruit comes along with fiber, vitamins, antioxidants and minerals, which makes it more nutritious than sugar-laden snacks or candy.

The truth: Genetics determine your height.

For reasons unknown, this is a wildly common belief. According to Harvard University, "There is no scientifically valid evidence to suggest that coffee can stunt a person's growth." As for any other health risks you believe about coffee, those probably aren't true either: Coffee isn't linked to any medical conditions except for a slight, temporary increase in blood pressure.

GMOs aren't as scary as you might think.

The truth: No, they don't.

Genetically modified crops are just not as scary as they're made out to be -- plain and simple. The wellness world might have you believe otherwise, but there is no scientific evidence that GMOs cause cancer (or any other health problems). A meta-analysis of long-term studies on GMOs concluded that "GM plants are nutritionally equivalent to their non-GM counterparts and can be safely used in food [for people] and feed [for animals]."

Plus, they can help farmers decrease pesticide use and increase crop yields and increase food security in developing countries. Science is good.

The truth: Nope.

Microwaves heat your food: nothing more, nothing less. They do emit electromagnetic radiation, a form of non-ionizing radiation similar to the radiofrequency waves that come from your cell phone (which also won't give you cancer, by the way), but non-ionizing radiation isn't known to cause cancer in humans because it isn't strong enough to alter the structure of cells.

Plus, the radiation in microwave ovens is contained within the walls of the appliance, as long as yours is working properly. But even if yours does leak, the Food and Drug Administration imposes a maximum leak requirement on microwave oven manufacturers that is far lower than what would harm people.

Putting on deodorant is (hopefully) something we all do everyday.

The truth: No again.

Are we noticing the cancer thing yet? Apparently, everything causes cancer. This myth started coming about in the early 2000s, when studies like this one reported that applying deodorant to cells in a petri dish caused individual cell damage, and aluminum got called out as a potential culprit. But humans apply deodorant to the very outer layer of skin, not to individual exposed kidney cells.

A review of studies later determined that aluminum in various forms is not known to cause cancer in humans. The American Cancer Society has also made its statement on antiperspirants and breast cancer: "There are no strong epidemiologic studies in the medical literature that link breast cancer risk and antiperspirant use, and very little scientific evidence to support this claim."

Also, the International Agency for Research on Cancer has a handy list of carcinogens classified by level of evidence that a substance can cause cancer, and aluminum is not on the list. Aluminum production is listed, but don't confuse the production of a metal with what is in your deodorant.

Eat breakfast, or don't -- whichever you prefer.

The truth: It's fine to skip breakfast.

The world will not end if you skip breakfast. Actually, the science behind intermittent fasting actually suggests that skipping breakfast could benefit you more than eating it. If skipping breakfast suits your lifestyle and your health needs, go for it: Just soothe your hunger before it turns into hanger.

The truth: Weather alone cannot make you sick.

Ah, a classic case of correlation without causation. Yes, more people get sick when temperatures drop, but cold weather doesn't directly make you sick. Possible explanations include: People spend more time indoors when it's cold out, and viruses spread more easily in close quarters; viruses spread more easily through dry air; and cold weather can temporarily impair your immune system.

The truth: Everyone is different.

Eight is the magic number: Get eight hours of sleep and you'll wake up feeling like a magical forest fairy with boundless energy. For me, this is a big fat myth. I don't wake up feeling ready to leap out of bed unless I snoozed for a solid 10 hours. It's quite annoying, honestly -- I wish I was one of those superheroes who thrived on just six or seven hours of sleep.

The point is: Everyone has a unique circadian rhythm that determines how much sleep is optimal for them. While seven to nine hours is still the standard recommendation for adults, you should treat sleep like hydration and exercise: Get enough so that you feel your best and keep your body healthy, but not so much that it starts affecting you negatively. You can always have too much of a good thing, even sleep.

The truth: They both emit UV rays that cause skin cancer.

Tanning in the sun and in a tanning bed do the same thing: expose your skin to ultraviolet rays that cause premature aging and are known to cause skin cancer. There are arguments both ways -- the sun is safer, tanning beds are safer, but the American Academy of Dermatology knocks both sides down. Neither is good for your skin.

The truth: It's just the release of gases.

Your joints may creak, crack and pop, but those noises typically have nothing to do with your risk of arthritis -- usually, it's just the harmless release of gases from synovial fluid, the fluid that lubricates your joints.

If you have pain while cracking any joints though (or joint pain in general), it's worth getting checked out by a doctor, because you could have arthritis or another condition, such as tendinitis.

The truth: Your body cleanses itself.

Despite the popularity of juice cleanses to detoxify your body, your liver, kidneys and skin will get the job done on their own. Your body also eliminates waste and impurities through your digestive tract (poop, hello), your lungs and your lymphatic system. In other words, your body is basically one big filter for icky stuff.

You can support your body's natural detoxing efforts by eating a healthy diet with minimal processed foods, exercising and working up a sweat, and drinking enough water. Juice cleanses or water fasts can do more harm than good, though: You just deprive your body of essential nutrients, both micro and macro.

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

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18 health myths that are outdated and wrong - CNET

Minhyuk and Jungshin will not return for duty in the military (Picture: Instagram)

CNBLUE singers Kang Minhyuk and Lee Jungshin are set to be discharged from the Korean military this month due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The K-pop stars have been enlisted in the military since 2018 but it emerged this week that they will be released from duty in line with health and safety policy.

In a statement, Minhyuk and Jungshins agency FNC Entertainment said: Kang Min Hyuk and Lee Jung Shin will be discharged on March 19 without returning [to their bases] from their ETS leaves according to the Ministry of National Defenses policy.

According to Soompi, the Ministry of National Defense have made sweeping changes in an attempt to combat the coronavirus strain Covid-19, which originated in China but has since spread worldwide.

This has included regulating and restricting leave and visits for military personnel, adjustments to holiday dates to ensure that those on approaching their final vacation dates will be discharged without returning to their bases.

Minhyuk and Jungshin will follow suit of 2PM singer Wooyoung, who was also reportedly discharged from the Korean military last month.

Its reported that Minhyuk and Jungshin stuck to their scheduled respective leave dates of 3 and 4 March and are not required to return.

The singers announced they were enlisting in the Korean military to fulfill their mandatory duties as citizens in July 2018.

Ill be going now, Minhyuk wrote on Instagram at the time.

He also posted a photo with his gym trainer, saying: Im worried because Im leaving without working out. After leaving you, Im going to become so lean again. Ill miss you.

Jungshin also uploaded a photo of him getting a haircut, posting: A clean cut.

The pair enlisted at the same time but different locations which were not disclosed by FNC Entertainment to allow Minhyuk and Jungshin to enter the military camp quietly and without any fanfare.

CNBLUE member Lee Jonghyun also enlisted into the military that summer.

At the time, Jonghyun told fans: Im receiving so many gifts saying for me to return safely from the military. I will eat them well! I gained weight, so I should take care of my diet a bit before entering.

However, he quit the group last year after being accused of sending inappropriate messages to women.

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If youve got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the Metro.co.uk entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@metro.co.uk, calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page wed love to hear from you.

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CNBLUEs Minhyuk and Jungshin discharged from military over coronavirus - Metro.co.uk

A movement born without a face tends to acquire one. Since August 2018, when 15-year-old Greta Thunberg began a solo school strike for the climate, the teenager has become the unlikely face of climate activism. Our House Is On Fire is, among many other things, the story of how and why Greta came to be sitting on the pavement outside the Swedish parliament with a home-made placard. The book is co-authored by Greta, her mother Malena Ernman (the primary narrator), her father Svante and her sister Beata. It is an urgent, lucid, courageous account.

The personal is political was a rallying cry for 1960s demonstrators, and the slogan applies neatly here. The first quarter of Our House Is On Fire describes events in 2011, when Greta sank into depression and the familys expectations went off-script for good. She was slowly disappearing into some kind of darkness and little by little, bit by bit, she seemed to stop functioning. She stopped playing the piano. She stopped laughing. She stopped talking She stopped eating.

The book wastes no time in dispelling any notion that Sweden is a utopia of public services. The description of getting help and a diagnosis out of the adolescent psychiatric services Where everyone is burned out from struggling with a constantly growing workload and where much of the time is spent putting out fires will have parents across the world groaning with grim recognition. Not a lot better is mainstream education, where all pupils must function in exactly the same way and where overworked teachers on a conveyor belt end up hitting the wall. Greta was bullied, her school was indifferent, she lost 10kg in two months and reached the brink of hospitalisation before she was, eventually, diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, selective mutism and Asperger syndrome. Her sister, in time, was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. To live with these conditions is very tough: to care for children living with them and to keep your marriage afloat is also very tough, and behind the books matter-of-fact prose, Gretas parents emerge as involuntary superheroes and recipients of no awards but hard-won wisdom: Perhaps we will never be fine, but we can always get a little bit better, and there is strength in that. There is hope in that.

The middle quarters of the book stay in touch with the up-and-down progress of Gretas family, but focus on the climate crisis and its effects on politics, feminism, economics, ecology, psychology and sociology. Dont be put off by these ologies: the book is a highly readable sequence of shortish scenes written in the direct language Greta uses in her speeches. The life-vest of humour inflates more often than youd expect, and the text is studded with subversive, persuasive maxims: Carbon offsetting is like paying poor people to diet for us; The truth is just another of those things that can be bought with money; When youre used to privilege, equality feels like oppression. I wrote down several pages of quotations for this review until it got ridiculous: I was copying out half the book.

While many readers will be familiar with much of the science and the contradictions of all you can eat consumerism, the book also explores the less obvious circuitry that connects apparently disparate things. One impactful passage links our winners take all culture with the explosion of mental illness suffered by the losers (as defined by the winners) who are disproportionately female, neuro-diverse and/or socially maladroit people not unlike Greta Thunberg. Autistic people, as Greta noted in her 2018 Ted Talk, tend not to be good liars, either to others or to themselves. Gretas initial depression was triggered by her lack of the neurotypical talent to compartmentalise fact A We know we are destroying our planet with orgiastic overconsumption (my words) safely away from fact B We carry on regardless. This talent lets us neurotypicals function as inconvenient truths pile up but it also prevents us from making the systemic changes needed to avert ecological collapse. Famously, Greta has described her Aspergers as a superpower and the point is well-made. Single-mindedness and immunity to flattery and abuse are crucial qualities for activism. (Writing as the dad of an autistic young man, I view Greta Thunberg as a default autism advocate as well as a climate activist.) In some quarters, however, this way of thinking is a red flag to a bull. Greta provokes, observes her mother. In certain cases to such an extent that normally respectful people lose their composure. Not only does she say that everything has to change, she has autism too. And she has the gall to brag about it. Thats not how things are supposed to work.

Gretas parents emerge as involuntary superheroes and recipients of no awards but hardwon wisdom

To engage with the climate crisis is to engage with climate crisis denial. A revolution in how we live is needed, and no revolution can succeed without broad support: otherwise, its a doomed putsch. Our House Is on Fire makes this engagement with acuity drawn from a deep well of hard-won experience. Our future ecological state has been reduced to a political game where its word against word, and the most popular wins. And guess which climate and sustainability story sells the best? The one that demands changes or the one that says we can continue shopping and flying for all eternity?

Piety these days rebranded as virtue signalling is notable in the book by its absence: They say that climate change deniers are idiots. But everyone is a climate change denier. Every single one of us. The trolls of Greta Thunberg (whose prestigious ranks include Presidents Trump, Bolsonaro and Putin) are considered with an emotional intelligence that is rarely, if ever, reciprocated. The message that business as usual is the enemy is not a welcome one for those of us conducting business as usual. Far comfier to dismiss the messenger as a mentally ill brat, or the stooge of eco-fascist lizard people hellbent on establishing their own World State, than to admit culpability in ecocide. Far easier to dismiss the science as biased, as false, as not settled. The problem is that with every swath of Australia or California burned, every never-before flooded city flooded, every hurricane of record-breaking destruction, and every Floridasized ice-shelf splitting off from Antarctica, the same message gets affirmed: that business as usual will roast us, drown us or starve us.

The final quarter of the book describes the tension-filled days leading up to Gretas Skolstrejk fr klimatet outside the Swedish parliament. There are reasons some things go viral and some things dont. There is an ancient power in symbol and narrative. There is a powerful magnetism in the defiance of the powerless. These are glimpsed in a scene during a meeting with climatologists and family friends in Uppsala: There is a pause. These thoughts take over the room that the almost invisible little girl on the chair by the window is planning to put herself at the very centre of the spotlight, and, all alone, in her own thoughts and words, question the foundation of the prevailing world order. Gretas parents anxieties about exposing their 15-year-old daughter to incoming flak from any ill-disposed passerby in Stockholm are matched by Gretas resolve to stage her strike no matter what, and by a growing sense that activism is a strange kind of cure. What happened next on that pavement in Stockholm is well-documented elsewhere but everyone with an interest in the future of the planet should read this book. It is a clear-headed diagnosis. It is a glimpse of a saner world. It is fertile with hope.

David Mitchells novels include Cloud Atlas. He translated, with Keiko Yoshida, Naoki Higashidas The Reason I Jump: One Boys Voice from the Silence of Autism. Our House Is on Fire by Malena Ernman, Svante Thunberg et al is published by Penguin (16.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p on all online orders over 15.

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Our House Is on Fire by Greta Thunberg et al review a family and planet in crisis - The Guardian

A growing assault against glyphosate in the U.S. and Europe is threatening the future of the widely used weed killer in Africa due to the perceived concerns that it causes cancer.

The onslaught, which started with lawsuits in the U.S. before mutating to bans in Europe, is slowly gaining momentum, with regulatory authorities across the globe monitoring the unfolding events before deciding on the next course of action.

In Africa, a continent that largely gets precedent from the West, regulators have adopted a cautious approach while keenly following the events surrounding the controversial herbicide. This is despite pressure from civil society organizations to ban the weed killer developed by Monsanto.

German giant Bayer acquired Monsanto in a deal worth U.S. $62.5 billion in 2018 and is feeling the pressure of defending the product from mounting lawsuits, which currently number about 42,000 in the U.S. alone.

We are monitoring the debate going on globally, but as far as we are concerned, glyphosate will continue to be available for use by farmers in Kenya because there is no scientific proof it causes cancer, Peter Opiyo, Kenyas Pest Control Products Board (PCPB) Managing Director, says.

Malawi is the only country in Africa that early last year temporarily suspended the importation of glyphosate before rescinding the decision.

Although glyphosate remains in use in Africa, the African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) is running a campaign to push governments on the continent to ban the product. It is imperative that African leaders heed the precautionary principle now and take urgent steps toward protecting their people and the environments of which they are custodians against any further damage, ACB stated in a petition.

Despite the growing attacks, Bayer maintains that Africa should desist from looking at events in other parts of the world but look at their own interests, bearing in mind the benefits of the herbicide in the continents agricultural sector and the fact there are not many viable alternatives.

In Africa glyphosate is the basis of a number of agriculture systems, particularly the conservation tillage, a technique in which farmers stop plowing and plant immediately after the previous harvest. The technique helps to preserve the soil structure, reduce erosion, and save fuel.

Banning of glyphosate may happen. I cannot say that it cannot happen, but in case a country takes that decision, it will not be science based; it will be a political and emotive decision, Eric Bureau, Bayer East Africa Managing Director, says.

In Europe and the U.S., politics and emotions have been the common denominator pushing the glyphosate ban, following a 2015 International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) study that classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans.

Numerous scientists have contested the study, including a joint Food and Agriculture Organization and World Health Organization review on the risks associated with glyphosate that concluded the herbicide is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans through diet.

Also giving Roundup a clean bill of health have been the European Food Safety Authority, U.S. EPA, Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, Canadas Pest Management Regulatory Agency, Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency, and New Zealands Environmental Protection Authority.

This has not stopped Austria, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, and many other countries from banning or imposing partial bans on the use of glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides. France and Germany have also embarked on the process of banning the popular weed killer, both announcing plans to stop its use in 2021 and 2023, respectively.

In the U.S., Bayer/Monsanto was ordered to pay $2 billion in damages to a man whose cancer was alleged to have partly been caused by Roundup herbicide, a ruling that opened a floodgate of lawsuits. The $2 billion was later reduced and is under appeal.

Despite its ban in some countries, and others lining up to halt its use, glyphosate is approved for use in more than 160 countries globally. It is important to distinguish the position of science and regulatory authorities and the position of emotions in the public around the potential risks of cancer. What is clear is that science has demonstrated that Roundup is not carcinogenic and can be safely used, Bureau says.

This is the position propagated by the Agrochemicals Association of Kenya (AAK), which reckons that, based on current scientific evidence, glyphosate-based products pose no undue health risks, including cancer, to the public. There is overwhelming evidence from extensive scientific research involving more than 800 studies on the safety of glyphosate, which has led to the conclusions of regulators worldwide that glyphosate is not carcinogenic, says Eric Kimunguyi, AAK Chief Executive Officer.

South Africa, which accounts for 2% of global pesticide use, is the largest consumer of pesticides in Africa, mainly because the country has adopted genetically modified organisms. The country has 96 glyphosate formulation-registered products.

In Kenya there are over 70 products registered containing glyphosate out of 1,540 pest control products approved for various uses in crop production. Forty-two of the 300 chemicals in the Uganda market are glyphosate-based. Based on the import permits and data the last two years, about 2.6 million kilograms of glyphosate-based products are imported in Kenya annually.

Statistics show the market value of glyphosate worldwide is forecast to increase from $8 billion currently to $10 billion by 2022.

John Njiraini is a Kenyan-based freelance writer with 10-plus years of experience covering the East Africa region. He can be reached at [emailprotected] See all author stories here.

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The Tenuous Future of Glyphosate in Africa - Agribusiness Global