Article ID: CBB143927227

Roundup from the Ground Up: A Supply-Side Story of the World's Most Widely Used Herbicide (2019)

unapi

Digging deep into the history of phosphate mining, this article engages contemporary debates about the environmental sustainability of using Roundup to produce our food by focusing on the front end rather than the back end of the product's life cycle. Though many people may not know it, the critical raw material Monsanto uses to make Roundup an effective herbicide is elemental phosphorus, which comes from a processing plant in southeast Idaho that remains an operating Superfund site to this day. In the years ahead, scholars may well demonstrate a clear and irrefutable link between Monsanto's herbicide and carcinogenesis. But if we look to history, we see that there are some troubling realities about producing Roundup in the first place. Documenting the supply-side ecological costs of Roundup manufacture, this article questions the efficacy of a decentralized EPA remediation strategy, honed in the 1990s, that allowed an operating facility to continue releasing pollutants into the environment more than a quarter century after it had achieved national priority listing under the Superfund program.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB143927227/

Similar Citations

Book Duffin, Andrew P.; (2007)
Plowed Under: Agriculture and Environment in the Palouse (/isis/citation/CBB000950152/)

Book Allen, Barbara L.; (2003)
Uneasy Alchemy: Citizens and Experts in Louisiana's Chemical Corridor Disputes (/isis/citation/CBB000650444/)

Book Paul S. Sutter; (2015)
Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies: Providence Canyon and the Soils of the South (/isis/citation/CBB244055781/)

Book Monica R. Gisolfi; Paul S. Sutter; (2017)
The Takeover: Chicken Farming and the Roots of American Agribusiness (/isis/citation/CBB623079555/)

Book Curtis, Kent A; (2013)
Gambling on Ore: The Nature of Metal Mining in the United States, 1860--1910 (/isis/citation/CBB001420380/)

Book Michelle Mart; (2015)
Pesticides, A Love Story: America's Enduring Embrace of Dangerous Chemicals (/isis/citation/CBB036580158/)

Book Clark C. Spence; (2016)
A history of gold dredging in Idaho (/isis/citation/CBB878190248/)

Article Anderson, J. L.; (2005)
War on Weeds: Iowa Farmers and Growth-Regulator Herbicides (/isis/citation/CBB000830417/)

Book Amy Marie Hay; (2021)
The Defoliation of America: Agent Orange Chemicals, Citizens, and Protests (/isis/citation/CBB039979128/)

Article Hay, Amy M.; (2012)
Dispelling the “Bitter Fog”: Fighting Chemical Defoliation in the American West (/isis/citation/CBB001251552/)

Article Rahul Mukherjee; (September 2016)
Toxic Lunch in Bhopal and Chemical Publics (/isis/citation/CBB753030836/)

Book Bradley D. Snow; (2017)
Living with Lead: An Environmental History of Idaho's Coeur D'Alenes, 1885-2011 (/isis/citation/CBB918352393/)

Book Michael C. Mix; (2016)
Leaded: The Poisoning of Idaho's Silver Valley (/isis/citation/CBB800367020/)

Book Alvin L. Young; (2022)
Agent Orange: The Failure of Science, Policy and Common Sense (/isis/citation/CBB579236627/)

Authors & Contributors
Sutter, Paul S.
Mix, Michael C.
Mart, Michelle
Bradley D. Snow
Gisolfi, Monica R.
Mukherjee, Rahul
Concepts
Agriculture
Herbicides
Environmental degradation
Chemical industry
Vietnam War
Protest movements
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
21st century
19th century
20th century, early
Places
United States
Idaho (U.S.)
Vietnam
Bhopal, India
Kansas (U.S.)
Georgia (U.S.)
Institutions
Disaster Management Institute (Bhopal India)
Monsanto Corporation
United States. National Park Service
United States. Forest Service
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment