When Kelvin McNickle discovered in his 30s he had non-Hodgkin lymphoma, he wondered whether it could be due to the Roundup he had used for more than a decade while clearing vegetation for councils.
Now living in Queensland, he has become the lead plaintiff in a major class action being brought by Maurice Blackburn in Australia against chemical giant, Monsanto.
Monsanto, which was taken over by Bayer in 2018, was the original maker of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and Zero, two of the most popular products used in agriculture and gardens in Australia.
More than 700 people have now signed up to the Australian class action, which mirrors similar legal challenges around the world. It is currently scheduled for hearing in 2023.
Concerns about glyphosate crystallised in 2015 after a review by the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), concluded that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans”.
This prompted the EU to renew its approval for use for five years instead of 15 in 2017. It is now under review again.
Some countries, like Vietnam, have opted to ban it. Germany is phasing it out by 2024.
In the US, the fate of glyphosate will probably be determined by the courts: more than 100,000 people have brought cases against Bayer alleging Roundup caused their cancer. So far Bayer has paid out more than $US10bn to settle cases, while insisting the product is safe.
With the science heavily contested, the debate about the health effects of glyphosate is raging almost everywhere. But not in Australia.
The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) has declined to formally reconsider the status of glyphosate.
A statement on the regulator’s website says: “In 2016, following the IARC assessment, the APVMA considered glyphosate and found no grounds to place it under formal reconsideration again. The APVMA completed a review of glyphosate in 1997, which set Australia’s health-based guidance values at a level that remains protective.”
The APVMA’s approach to glyphosate, which accounts for about one quarter of agvet chemicals sold in Australia, demonstrates Australia’s approach to pesticide regulation.
While the APVMA may be rigorous in its assessments of new products coming on to the market, it is extremely reluctant to review products already on the market, and when it does, the reviews can take decades.
The result is that more than 70 chemicals that are banned or no longer in use in Europe are still in use here, and many are in household products, such as snail pellets and tomato dust, sold at hardware and gardening stores across Australia..
Home gardeners more likely to over-spray
From termite treatments to well known systemic pesticides like Confidor, Australia takes a much more relaxed approach to household chemical use than Europe.
In fact, a first principles review of pesticide regulation handed to the Coalition government before the federal election in May recommended fast-tracking approvals for domestic pesticides and herbicides provided the active ingredient had been approved for use in agriculture.
The argument goes that pesticides used in home gardens are used at much weaker concentrations and in smaller amounts compared with agriculture, so the risks are lower, and if a chemical has been deemed safe for agriculture it should be allowed.
But critics say this ignores the risk of home gardeners over-spraying, not using the product according to the instructions and the proximity to environments already under pressure from urbanisation.
Although the pesticide regulator has tightened up on the domestic sale of some of the most dangerous active ingredients, the length of time it takes to complete reviews – in some cases decades – means that some are still on supermarket shelves.
This stands in contrast with Europe where concerns about the effects of pesticides on beneficial insects, waterways and human health has led to increasingly tight controls on household insecticides and herbicides.
For example, France has banned pesticide and herbicide use in household gardens entirely, as a way of combatting precipitous falls in bee numbers and concerns about runoff into waterways. The ban was further extended on 1 July to other public spaces, such as parks and cemeteries, although golf courses and some sporting fields are exempt.
By 2025, France plans to cut the use of pesticides in agriculture and home gardens by 50%. So far it has missed the first target, but there are renewed efforts to reduce their use.
Australia appears to be heading in precisely the other direction.
These are some of the active ingredients banned or withdrawn in Europe that are available in Australian household products:
Neonicotinoids
This family of chemicals has been blamed for falling bee numbers in Europe and banned for both household and agricultural use there since 2019. They are the active ingredient in Confidor and other garden products and have been used in Australia since 1994. The Australian regulator has had them under review since 2019.
Prof Andrew Barron, from Macquarie University’s School of Natural Science and an expert on neuroscience, says that while data on bees is not as comprehensive in Australia, we appear to have escaped the dramatic declines in bee populations seen in Europe and the US, which now lose about 30% of their hives each year.
“We have phenomenal areas of bushland that are used by bee keepers as recovery and rescue areas for bees,” he said. But the arrival of the varroa mite could pose a new threat which in combination with neonicotinoids might make populations more susceptible to colony collapse, he said.
The APVMA is expected to rule on the use of neonicitonoids later this year or early next. Meanwhile, the market appears to be moving faster than the regulator. After a consumer led campaign, Bunnings withdrew products containing neonicotinoids from its shelves in 2018.
Yates, the main manufacturer of Confidor, has quietly discontinued the household product, although Bayer-produced Confidor tablets and sprays are still widely available on the internet. Bug Killa Granular, a product containing a neonicotinoid and made by the Western Australian-based RichGro, is still on sale.
A spokesperson for Richgro said that as a small family company it was reliant on the advice of APVMA and closely adhered to it. It had moved to a granular form of Bug Killa because of concerns about over spraying.
Mancozeb
In 2020 EU member states voted not to renew the approval of Mancozeb, a fungicide that is known to be an endocrine disruptor and toxic to reproduction. Use of the chemical ended in the EU in January 2021.
Mancozeb and sulphur are the active ingredients in Richgro Fungicide sold in most hardware stores.
Carbaryl
Richgro Bug Killa For Control of Caterpillars, Grasshoppers and Millipedes, a granular garden insecticide, contains Carbaryl as its active ingredient.
Carbaryl, also known as Sevin, is a cholinesterase inhibitor and is classified as a likely human carcinogen by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. In Europe it is heavily restricted and must carry a warning.
Metaldehyde
Australians can pick up a packet of snail and slug pellets containing metaldehyde, which after a long debate and court challenges, has been banned in the UK. It is still permitted in 20 countries in Europe.
The reason for the UK ban was concern for wildlife, such as hedgehogs, coming in contact with the pellets as well as concerns by water authorities over drinking water quality as the chemical is difficult to remove through treatment.
Spinetoram and beta cyfluthrin
Yates Tomato Dust and Yates Success contain spinetoram, an antibiotic insecticide that is being phased out in the EU by June 2024 because of the effect on insectivorous birds.
Beta cyfluthrin is the active ingredient in Baythroid Advanced, also sold by Yates in Australia. Approval for the use of beta-cyfluthrin was not renewed by the EU in 2020.
Corporate affairs manager for Dulux, Yates’ parent company, Lisa Walters, said: “Ingredients such as Spinetoram are highly effective against target pests. However we know that they can also be highly toxic to non-target species, for example bees. Yates continually invests in R&D to look for alternative ingredients that are safer to use while still achieving the results that home gardeners seek – this is an ongoing priority.
“At the same time, we ensure that our labels identify the risks and instruct consumers on safe use, for example, Yates Success is labelled as ‘highly toxic to bees and not to be sprayed when bees are feeding on flowering plants’. We also work with our retail partners to ensure that they have the correct information in-store,” she said.
Both Yates and RichGro stressed that they relied on the advice of the APVMA and that they were fully compliant with their requirements.
“The ingredients you mention that are active ingredients in Yates products – Glyphosate, Spinetoram and Beta-cyfluthrin – are each approved by the Australian Pest & Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) as safe for home gardening use when used according to label instructions,” Walters said.
But she also noted that home gardeners are increasingly looking for more organic, less toxic solutions to weed and pest control and this was a major area of research and development for Yates.
“While we still have some way to go, we are increasing our range of organics, for example Yates has a range of alternative solutions available for weed control that do not include glyphosate.”
The glyphosate debate continues
Glyphosate remains the single biggest issue in pesticide regulation because of the sheer volume being used.
Later this year, the European Commission will likely give the green light to continue sales in Europe, after a subcommittee of its assessment agency said it supported continued use.
In the US, Bayer has had some recent wins in appeal courts, which have rejected a linkage between cancer cases and use of the chemical. It is waiting to see whether the US supreme court will take up an appeal involving one settlement.
On the other hand, in June, the Ninth Circuit ordered the US Environmental Protection Agency to re-review glyphosate after it found the EPA previously used flawed reasoning and failed to follow its own scientific guidelines in determining that glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer.
New studies are also emerging. In June the US Centres for Disease Control released a study showing that more than 80% of 2310 urine samples drawn from children and adults in a US health study contained detectable traces of glyphosate, which the researchers described as “disturbing”.
But the report made no observation about what the detected levels mean in terms of human health.
A similar study of Australian and New Zealand populations now at pre-publication stage has found detectable glyphosate in the urine of 8% of the population, while 96% of the farmers sampled had traces of the herbicide.
There are no signs of a formal review in Australia.
