Glyphosate: the cancer-causing Roundup chemical found in children’s cereal

Glyphosate is a toxic pesticide widely used on crops. The active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, it is sprayed on oats right before harvest to dry them out, so it ends up in many oat-based products, like cereals and breakfast bars.

Since there is no federal monitoring of glyphosate in oats, we wanted to know how much Roundup could be found in oat-based breakfast foods popular with children. So we commissioned independent labs to conduct three separate rounds of tests.

After an initial set of tests revealed troubling amounts of glyphosate in popular oat-based products marketed to children, we twice expanded our test to include even more products. Once again, almost all of the products had levels of glyphosate above 160 parts per billion, which is our health benchmark for glyphosate in oats.

We know it is possible to grow oats and other grains without spraying weedkiller right before the grain is harvested, which is what leads to these high levels of glyphosate. 

We will continue to put pressure on companies to work with suppliers to source oats that aren’t produced with glyphosate. Harmful pesticides don’t belong in kids’ breakfast foods.

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EWG Explains: Glyphosate

What’s the deal with all the news about glyphosate? It’s just a weed killer, right? How bad can it be?

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