What’s New?

December 15, 2022

New Urinary Glyphosate (N-(Phosphonomethyl)glycine) Data Published (NHANES 2015-2016)

CDC routinely updates summary measurements for its National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) biomonitoring data in its National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals (Report).

CDC is providing these urinary glyphosate (N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine) measurements (NHANES variable name: SSGLYP) as a standalone resource in advance of the next scheduled update to aid federal, state, and local public health agencies, and others, currently investigating glyphosate.

These tables add biomonitoring data gathered in NHANES 2015-2016 to the urinary glyphosate tables (NHANES 2013-2014) CDC published in July 2022. NHANES is designed to provide nationally representative information for the general U.S. population.

Glyphosate was measured in urine from all examined NHANES participants aged 3 to 5 years and a one-third sample of examined participants aged 6 years and older. The Environmental Health Laboratory in CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health used mass spectrometry to make these measurements.

The measurement of an environmental chemical in a person’s urine is an assessment of exposure; it does not by itself mean that the chemical causes disease or an adverse health effect. Research studies, separate from these data, are required to determine which urinary concentrations are safe and which ones could be associated with disease or an adverse health effect.

Please direct any questions about this information to CDC-INFO:

https://wwwn.cdc.gov/dcs/contactus/form

Notes and Additional Resources:

For more information about glyphosate, please see the following resources:

Glyphosate | Toxic Substances | Toxic Substance Portal | ATSDR (cdc.gov)

Statistics include geometric means and selected percentiles, with 95 percent confidence intervals around each estimated statistic. Percentiles describe the shape of the distribution. For all chemicals, the 50th, 75th, 90th, and 95th percentiles are presented.

The group “Mexican Americans” are a subgroup of the group “All Hispanics.” Non-Hispanic persons who reported other race or mixed race are included in total, age and sex estimates but are not shown separately. Therefore, the sum of the sample sizes for the mutually exclusive race and Hispanic origin subgroups will be less than the total sample size.

Biomonitoring is the assessment of human exposure to chemicals by measuring the chemicals, their metabolites, or adducts in human specimens such as blood, serum, or urine.