Talk:Glyphosate-based herbicides

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Plagiarism in the Acute Toxicity: Humans section

Hi. I was going through this page looking for things that I could add and I was reading through the Bradberry article, which is cited repeatedly in the Acute Toxicity section. The Human portion of this section contains numerous direct quotations from Bradberry's article. Although cited, direct quotations without quotation marks is plagiarism. Someone should delete or reword this section, seeing as it is heavily plagiarized. Skezmoh (talk) 20:26, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out (and welcome to Wikipedia!). I've tagged the content and notified an administrator who deals with these things. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:02, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Bradberry (https://link.springer.com/article/10.2165/00139709-200423030-00003) was first cited by Seraphim System in 2018. Diff of Glyphosate-based herbicides. However some subsequent content was cited to Bradberry in subsequent edits. I have listed the article at WP:CP. Interested editors will have a week or so to undertake a rewrite of the section, or it will likely be removed in its entirety. If you wish to undertake the rewrite you may do so at this temporary page. — Diannaa (talk) 22:44, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. Seraphim System has long since been indeffed. It would be best if the rewrite would be based on access to the entire Bradberry article, rather than just to the online abstract. I'll ping KoA, who probably has access to the article. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:15, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

This link: (takes a bit of time to load), which I found from the template on the page, looks like a good place to start in finding what was copied. (And yes, there are verbatim copyvios, although it looks like fortunately they are fairly confined.) --Tryptofish (talk) 23:24, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

It also occurs to me that SS might have copied from other sources cited on the page, which should probably also be checked for. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:29, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

I've started the temp page, where the corrections should first be made: Talk:Glyphosate-based herbicides/Temp. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:08, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

I've edited the temp page, and I'm reasonably confident that I deleted everything that was copied from the Bradberry abstract. I deleted it, and left everything else. In my opinion, that probably is enough for the present problem. @Skezmoh and KoA: please check if you agree with me. If we feel that the temp version is clean, I can notify the admins that they can move the new version back onto the page. If something else needs to be done to the temp version, only for the purpose of removing copied material and not for adding new stuff, please feel free to edit it directly. Once the admins approve it, then, afterwards, Skezmoh should feel free to make new edits based on the Bradberry source. (PS: See . ) --Tryptofish (talk) 18:42, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Tryptofish, I'll have to check on this mid-week when I'm back from holiday. I do seem to recall this was a difficult subject at the time opposed by many now indeffed editors, which in part resulted in the many quotes. I do remember it being worth a paraphrase, but that just wasn't doable in the atmosphere at the time. KoA (talk) 02:06, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

I added a little bit back in with appropriate language changes to include inhalation and eye exposure, though I don't feel strongly about it aside from some additional completeness. I was remembering Bradberry was a focus of previous disputes, but the text in question isn't at issue at all, so it should be good to go. KoA (talk) 19:01, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, I tweaked it a bit more, and it looks good to me. @Diannaa: Editors here agree that the repaired version on the temp page is good to go. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:30, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Okay I will load it into the article now. Thanks to all who participated.— Diannaa (talk) 21:32, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Toxicology

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 10 August 2022 and 8 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Thisisaaronfox (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Chazzidy Harper (talk) 18:02, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Abbreviation for millilitre

On 14 May I edited the article to change the abbreviation for millilitre from ml to mL in three places. See my diff

Shortly afterwards, my edit was reverted with an edit summary saying “It's standard to abbreviate as ml, not mL.” See the diff. Tryptofish

I disagree that ml is the standard abbreviation for millilitre. Wikipedia’s Manual of Style addresses the topic. In this Table the MOS says:

litre “The symbol l (lowercase "el") in isolation (i.e. outside forms as ml) is easily mistaken for the digit 1 or the capital letter I ("eye") and should not be used.”

Clearly, Wikipedia’s MOS specifies that the unit called the litre should not be abbreviated with the lower case letter l (“el”).

On the matter of the millilitre, the above Table in the MOS is not so prescriptive. It says:

millilitre “Derivative units of the litre may use l (lowercase "el").”

Clearly, the MOS specifies that the lowercase l should not be used for the litre but it may be used for the millilitre. Wikipedia has an article on the litre. See Litre#Symbol in which Wikipedia says the following:

The United States National Institute of Standards and Technology now recommends the use of the uppercase letter L, a practice that is also widely followed in Canada and Australia. In these countries, the symbol L is also used with prefixes, as in mL and μL, instead of the traditional ml and μl used in Europe.

It should now be clear that the lowercase l should NOT be used for the litre. However, while the lowercase ml is not the standard abbreviation for the millilitre, it may be used in Wikipedia. This introduces the prospect of edit wars in which two or more Users flip between ml and mL on the grounds that both are acceptable. Such a war is unnecessary and unwarranted. Wikipedia offers a good reason for l and ml to be changed to L and mL, but there is no similarly good reason for L and mL to be changed back to l and ml.

If anyone is motivated to challenge the above interpretation they should propose a suitable change to the Manual of Style. See this Table.

I will restore my edit in which I changed ml to mL. Dolphin (t) 01:42, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

The MOS is clear Derivative units of the litre may use l (lowercase "el")., so there is no reason to remove that a second time. Also keep in mind the article is under WP:1RR, and restoring your edit would violate that. KoA (talk) 02:20, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for taking this to talk. For me this is a minor formatting issue, and certainly not one that I would want to conduct a prolonged dispute over. As KoA correctly points out, MOS (which I did check) only makes the requirement for uppercase for liter/litre, and not for the derivative units. I was interested to see your link to Litre#Symbol, where it summarizes a variety of sources, and not just the single one that you quoted from, and indicates that there are differences of opinion about the correct formatting. In particular, it notes there that Canada and Australia have typically used uppercase, whereas the UK and Europe have generally used lowercase. I see from your userpage that you live in Australia, whereas I (and, I think, KoA) are in the US. So I think we should consider WP:ENGVAR here, because MOS actually allows doing it either way. As an American with many years of reading peer-reviewed scientific articles where it has always been "ml", I find the capitalized variant very unusual. Per ENGVAR, we should consider that the page subject (compounds originally developed by Monsanto, a US company) would default to using US usage. I do note that you pointed out that the article cites the US NIST. As cited, it is this: , and the full PDF of the publication is this: . The publication date is 2019, which is after when I retired professionally, so I wanted to see if things had changed recently. You are correct that it shows the term as mL, which can be seen in Section 8.2 (page 23) of the PDF. However, where the Wikipedia page says that the agency "now recommends the use of the uppercase letter L", the actual source material does not say that this is a recommendation to the public at large. Rather, the entire source describes itself as a style guideline for publications from that government agency. So, bottom line – while I don't think that it would be strictly wrong either way, I tend to think that ENGVAR (and MOS:RETAIN) is the controlling guideline here, and I think it indicates that the original "ml" formatting probably should not be changed without talk page consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:00, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

The issue we are facing here is not unique to this article on Glyphosate-based herbicides. Wikipedia has many articles that contain volumes in litres and millilitres, and other units of measurement that contain the litre and its derivatives. The outcome we reach on this Talk page is likely to have much broader applicability than just this one article.

Tryptofish, in his recent post, mentioned WP:ENGVAR so I have studied it carefully. It led me to the objective of Consistency, and the following advice:

Within a given article the conventions of one particular variety of English should be followed consistently.

There is a considerable amount of advice available about the objective of consistency. At Wikipedia:Consistency there is advice about achieving consistency more broadly than national variations of English language. There is advice on consistency in titles of articles, consistency within country abbreviations, consistency in date formats, and consistency in citation formats. Wikipedia values consistency within any given article.

The Manual of Style also places emphasis on consistency, using the word 14 times. The lead section contains the following advice:

1. This page guides the presentation of numbers, dates, times, measurements, currencies, coordinates, and similar items in articles. The aim is to promote clarity, cohesion, and consistency, …
2. Where this manual gives options, maintain consistency within an article unless there is a good reason to do otherwise. The Arbitration Committee has ruled that editors should not change an article from one guideline-defined style to another without a substantial reason unrelated to mere choice of style; edit-warring over optional styles is unacceptable.

In our article on Glyphosate-based herbicides, in the section titled Environmental impact, there are presently six instances of concentration levels specified in units such as mg/L and ng/L. In all six instances the abbreviation for litre is uppercase L.

When I made my edit on 14 May to change three instances of ml to mL I achieved consistency within the article so that all nine instances of the litre used the uppercase L.

When Tryptofish reverted my edit on 14 May he degraded the level of consistency within the article so that it again has three instances of the lowercase l and six instances of uppercase L. This is clearly unsatisfactory in view of the high importance Wikipedia places on consistency within any given article.

Many Wikipedia articles contain both volumes in litres and volumes in millilitres. The MOS makes it clear that litres should be abbreviated with the uppercase L, and the MOS also makes it clear that consistency within articles is paramount. It is only an accident of history that our article doesn't contain a volume in litres, but it would only take one edit to change that. With a volume described in litres and abbreviated with the uppercase L, the objective of consistency could only be achieved by using the uppercase L throughout, including mL, mg/L etc. In resolving this issue we don't want to arrive at one solution for articles that contain a volume in litres abbreviated with the uppercase L; and a different solution for articles that do not (yet) contain a volume in litres abbreviated with the uppercase L. Dolphin (t) 13:25, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I degraded the level of consistency? As I said above, I don't care. Whatever. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:03, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Williams et al 2000 paper

We know that the paper "Safety evaluation and risk assessment of the herbicide Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, for humans" was funded and ghostwritten by Monsanto per the Monsanto Papers. Yet this paper is still being cited in this article for medical safety information. That seems like a serious problem. Either a better source should be found for that safety information or the sentence should be removed from the article, IMO. Nosferattus (talk) 15:27, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

I found a more up-to-date source and fixed the sentence accordingly. Nosferattus (talk) 15:32, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

The removed of the paper "Safety evaluation and risk assessment of the herbicide Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, for humans" (Williams et al. 2000), which is mentioned above, is justified as it has been retracted, as discussed in:

Kaurov, A.A. and Oreskes, N., 2025. The afterlife of a ghost-written paper: How corporate authorship shaped two decades of glyphosate safety discourse. Environmental Science & Policy, 171, p.104160.

The retraction notice is:

Williams, G.M., Kroes, R. and Munro, I.C., 2025. Retraction notice to “Safety evaluation and risk assessment of the herbicide roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, for humans” [Regul. Toxicol. Pharm. 31 (2000) 117–165]. Available online 5 December 2025, 106006.

The citation to the retracted paper is:

Williams, G.M., Kroes, R. and Munro, I.C., 2000. Safety evaluation and risk assessment of the herbicide Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, for humans. Regulatory toxicology and pharmacology, 31(2), pp.117-165.

Articles discussing Williams et al. (2000) are:

1. Science journal retracts study on safety of Monsanto’s Roundup: ‘serious ethical concerns’ Paper published in 2000 found glyphosate was not harmful, while internal emails later revealed company’s influence. by Cary Gillam, The Guardian, December 5, 2025 Paul H. (talk) 18:58, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

2. Glyphosate safety article retracted eight years after Monsanto ghostwriting revealed in court, Retraction Watch.

3. Oreskes, N., 2025. Cleaning the scientific house: Rebuilding trust in science requires confronting the harms of ghostwriting. Science, 390(6772), p.eaec4187. Paul H. (talk) 20:07, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

Gulf Cooperation Council ban?

Some low-quality sources mention that the Gulf Cooperation Council countries have banned glyphosate since 2016. I found a "Muscat Daily" titled "Oman already glyphosate free even as issue is hotly contested in EU" by Zain al Tauqi 12 Oct 2017, but this still isn't an ideal source. Has anyone seen more solid coverage of this restriction/ban? Dialectric (talk) 14:20, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

At least when I search "glyphosate Arab states banned", it looks pretty sparse. My general rule of thumb in these topics is if there's so few reliable sources that Sustainable Pulse or similar advocacy groups are the first result like in that case, it's either a sign it's not WP:DUE or more likely in this case we'll be scraping the bottom of the barrel to get even a basic one sentence statement. This review (Table 2) did show up later in the search though. I only had a chance to glance through it, but it looks like it doesn't have issues that would preclude it (though overkill for that kind of statement). KoA (talk) 14:35, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Taking a closer look at it, it looks like the review has some issues outside of this subject like confusing glyphosate for organophosphate insecticides (glyphosate is not an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor) or saying that the WHO banned glyphosate (can't find any record of that). I guess I'm a little more cautious now after I was initially going to add the info in, especially since the part I mentioned in table 2 is uncited.

If the supposed ban happened in 2016, a lot can happen in that time. I'm finding some sources (also borderline) as market reports showing that glyphosate is still sold in some of those countries. Maybe the bans didn't last long, or they were much more specific than portrayed and not a blanket ban. Hard to say, so it's probably better to get a much more recent source really focused on the regulatory subject for at least one county before adding anything. KoA (talk) 16:04, 4 May 2026 (UTC)