WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The Environmental Working Group stated that cancer-causing contents were found in children's cereals and other snack products widely used in the United States.
Major food companies like General Mills and Quaker still sell popular children's breakfast cereals and other foods that contain troubling levels of glyphosate, the cancer-causing ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, the non-profit activist group said based on a round of laboratory testing it commissioned.
The weedkiller, produced by Bayer-Monsanto, was detected in samples of all 21 oat-based cereal and snack products that were subjected to testing, the group said in a statement.
All but four products contained levels of glyphosate higher than what scientists consider safe for children's health, according to the report.
The new tests confirm results from two tests that the group conducted last year, which saw levels of glyphosate consistently above EWG's children's health benchmark. The two highest levels of glyphosate were found in Honey Nut Cheerios Medley Crunch, with 833 parts per billion, or ppb, and Cheerios, with 729 ppb. The EWG children's health benchmark is 160 ppb.
EWG has published the glyphosate levels of all the 21 products that were tested.
In 2017, glyphosate was classified as a known carcinogen by California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.
Since last August, three California juries have imposed more than $2.2 billion in fine in three separate verdicts against Bayer-Monsanto over claims that Roundup caused cancer and that Monsanto knew about the risks for decades and went to extraordinary lengths to cover it up.
Glyphosate is used mostly as a weedkiller on genetically modified corn and soybeans. But it is also sprayed on oats just before harvest as a drying agent.
EWG and 19 food companies recently petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to significantly limit glyphosate residues allowed on oats and prohibit its use as a pre-harvest drying agent.
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