The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

86 the world according to monsantolish comparisons among different herbicides,” this is something like a snakeswallowing its tail. Governmental authorities do not encourage laboratoriesto conduct studies of the toxic effects of suspect molecules, so there is infact little experimental evidence, and when it exists it is challenged; thismakes it possible to conclude that there’s no problem.Colombia’s Agent OrangeIn the meantime, thanks to the unwavering collusion between politicians,the giants of the chemical industry, and the international scientific community,the use of pesticides is increasing almost everywhere in the world. It isestimated that 2.5 million tons of phytosanitary products are sprayed everyyear on the planet’s crops and that only “0.3 percent make contact with thetarget organisms, which means that 99.7 percent of the substances dischargedgo ‘elsewhere,’ into the environment, into the soil and water,” saysJulie Marc. 31 Hence, the contamination of rivers and water sources by themost widely used herbicide in the world might be behind the collapse of frogpopulations, as revealed by a 2005 study by Rick Relyea, a researcher at theUniversity of Pittsburgh. 32 He observed the effects of two insecticides(Sevin and Malathion) and two herbicides (Roundup and 2,4-D) on a populationof twenty-five animal species from a pond (snails, tadpoles, crustaceans,and insects), that were placed in four tanks containing water fromtheir pond. In each tank, he added a dose of pesticide, following the concentrationsrecommended by the manufacturer. The results were spectacular:“We added Roundup, and the next day we looked in the tanks and therewere dead tadpoles all over the bottom,” said Relyea. “The most shockinginsight coming out of this was that Roundup, something designed to killplants, was extremely lethal to amphibians.” 33 It should be noted that 2,4-Dand the two insecticides produced no negative effects on tadpoles.But animals are not the only ones to suffer from the consequences of pollutiondue to phytosanitary products. “The number of accidental poisoningsby pesticides is estimated at more than a million per year around the world,20,000 of which are fatal,” according to Marc. “If one adds cases of suicide,the figure of 3 million poisonings is reached, 220,000 of which are fatal.”In this dark picture, Roundup holds a choice position, because it is the favoriteherbicide of would-be suicides by poisoning. According to a study