Premier ready to ban glyphosate if link found to mystery brain illness

Premier Susan Holt says her government would be willing to ban the herbicide glyphosate if a new investigation finds a link to the purported mystery brain illness that a Moncton neurologist says he is tracking.

The province has launched a new investigation into the hundreds of cases, saying the symptoms have sparked fear among many New Brunswickers that needs to be addressed.

"New Brunswickers are afraid about what glyphosate might do, and the mysterious neurological illness has given them reason to be more afraid," Holt said in a year-end interview with CBC News.

"So we have to make sure that we know exactly what that chemical is doing, and where and when."

If a link is found, "then we need to eliminate that exposure for New Brunswickers." 

But Holt emphasized the idea was hypothetical because "we don't have good science to tell us that that is what's making New Brunswickers sick."

Glyphosate is used in agriculture and in industrial forestry operations.

Major logging companies use it to thin some forms of forest vegetation near the ground so young trees get more sun and rain and have a better chance to grow.

Its impact on human health has been debated in New Brunswick for more than a decade, and Holt noted activists have focused their lobbying on the forest sector.

"There's a curious distinction that's being made from folks who accept it in agriculture but don't accept it in forestry," she said.

A 2023 study by the Canadian Forest Service collected 296 samples in watersheds where glyphosate had been applied and detected the herbicide in only one of them.

That single sample was measured at 17 parts per billion — far below the threshold for safe drinking water of 280 parts per billion.

Even that threshold would require someone to drink water with that amount of glyphosate "every day for their entire life" for there to be a risk to their health, said Chris Edge, the lead research scientist on the study.

"What I think the body of work that we've done now has shown is that glyphosate is present in the environment, but is present at concentrations that are lower than where we'd expect adverse effects to occur," he said.