Glyphosate detection: methods, needs and challenges

Glyphosate is considered toxicologically harmful and presents potential association with human carcinogenesis and other chronic diseases, including mental and reproductive behaviors. The challenges to analyse and demonstrate its toxicity are likely due to its metal-chelating properties, the interference of organic compounds in the environment, and similarity with its by-products. Whereas there is a link with serious health and environmental problems, there is an absence of public health policies, which is probably due to the difficulties in detecting glyphosate in the environment, further complicated by the undetectable hazard in occupational safety and health. The historical lenient use of glyphosate in transgenic-resistant crops, corroborated by the fact that it is not easily detected, creates the “Glyphosate paradox”, by which it is the most widely used herbicide and one of the most hardly determined. In this review, we revisited all available technologies for detection and quantification of glyphosate, including their drawbacks and advantages, and we further discuss the needs and challenges. Briefly, most of the technologies require high-end equipments and resources in low throughput, and none of them are adequate for real-time field tests, which may explain the lack of studies on occupational health associated with the chemical hazard. The real-time detection is an urgent and highly demanded need to improve public policies.