By Patricia Callahan – Chicago Tribune, 8 December 2015
When Monsanto genetically engineered corn and soybeans to make them immune to its best-selling weedkiller, the company pitched the technology as a way to reduce overall use of herbicides and usher in an environmentally friendly era of farming.
Instead of relying on older, more harmful chemicals, farmers could douse their fields with Roundup, a product that Monsanto once advertised as less toxic than table salt.
Two decades later, overuse of Roundup has spawned weeds that can survive spraying to grow 8 feet tall with stems as thick as baseball bats. To kill those so-called superweeds, chemical giants are giving the next wave of genetically modified crops immunity to the weedkillers of generations past.
The technology that was supposed to make those older herbicides obsolete soon could make it possible for farmers to use a lot more.
For use on its new genetically engineered corn and soybeans, Dow Chemical Co. is reviving 2,4-D, a World War II-era chemical linked to cancer and other health problems.
If these crops are widely adopted, the government’s maximum-exposure projections show that U.S. children ages 1 to 12 could consume levels of 2,4-D that the World Health Organization, Russia, Australia, South Korea, Canada, Brazil and China consider unsafe.
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