Is AMPA more dangerous than glyphosate itself?

Not according to the toxicological data reviewed by EFSA in 2023: AMPA and its own metabolite N-acetyl AMPA were found to share a similar qualitative and quantitative toxicological profile to glyphosate, and EFSA applied glyphosate's toxicological reference values to AMPA. What differs is persistence, not toxicity per dose — AMPA lasts substantially longer in soil (average half-life around 151 days, versus days to a few weeks for glyphosate), so it accumulates and is detected more often and at higher frequency than glyphosate itself in some sampling. 'More persistent' and 'more toxic' are not the same claim, and the evidence supports the first, not clearly the second.

Is AMPA in my bedroom?

Possibly, in trace amounts, as house dust. A 2024 U.S. study found glyphosate and AMPA in all 99 indoor dust samples collected from urban homes across sixteen states, at geometric mean concentrations of 193 ng/g and 30.8 ng/g respectively. But the estimated dose from dust ingestion was more than two orders of magnitude below the acceptable daily intake — a low-level, low-confidence pathway rather than a primary source of exposure. AMPA does not off-gas from mattress materials; it is not a VOC and has no direct connection to bedding construction.

Why does the Atlas have a separate entry for AMPA if it just comes from glyphosate?

Because AMPA is not only a glyphosate breakdown product. Roughly 40-60% of urinary AMPA detected in biomonitoring studies does not track with an individual's own glyphosate levels, suggesting a meaningful share comes from direct environmental exposure — AMPA is also a degradation product of amino-polyphosphonates, industrial compounds used as detergent builders, anti-scaling agents, anticorrosives, and textile-processing agents, independent of any glyphosate use. AMPA has become a de facto biomonitoring marker for total glyphosate-family exposure, similar in role (though not toxicological profile) to how cotinine tracks nicotine exposure. It deserves its own honest treatment rather than being folded silently into the glyphosate page.

Does AMPA have its own cancer classification?

No. IARC has never issued a separate carcinogenicity classification for AMPA — its 2015 Group 2A classification (probably carcinogenic to humans) applies to glyphosate, not to AMPA. AMPA's genotoxicity data were reviewed within that same monograph and, separately, by EFSA in its 2023 glyphosate renewal assessment, which concluded that AMPA, N-methyl AMPA, and N-acetyl AMPA are unlikely to be genotoxic based on the available data. AMPA is not listed on California's Proposition 65 list; only its parent glyphosate is.

AMPA (Glyphosate's Metabolite) in the Bedroom

At a glance

Chemical family	Organophosphonate — primary environmental metabolite of glyphosate; also a degradation product of amino-polyphosphonate compounds
CAS number	1066-51-9
Classification	Not separately classified by IARC (glyphosate is Group 2A; AMPA's genotoxicity data were reviewed but AMPA itself has no independent IARC classification). Not listed on California Proposition 65.
Where you encounter it	Soil, surface water, and groundwater in agricultural areas; indoor house dust (detected in essentially all homes sampled in a 2024 U.S. study); human urine as a biomonitoring marker; not present in mattress off-gassing
Sleep micro-environment relevance	Low and indirect — a dust-borne trace contaminant, not a material emission. Estimated dust-ingestion dose is roughly two orders of magnitude below the acceptable daily intake
Activated carbon capture	Poor — like glyphosate, AMPA is small, highly polar, and water-soluble; it does not adsorb well to standard activated carbon

Regulatory & certification status

Where AMPA stands across the major regulatory systems and the certifications a bedroom product might carry. Each row links to the governing instrument; where a jurisdiction has no specific measure, that is stated plainly rather than left blank.

European Union	AMPA (CAS 1066-51-9) is the principal degradation product of the herbicide glyphosate and is assessed within the EU plant-protection-products regime rather than as a standalone industrial chemical under REACH. EFSA's 2023 peer review of the glyphosate renewal assessment concluded that the metabolites AMPA, N-methyl-AMPA and N-acetyl-AMPA are unlikely to be genotoxic on the available data, and that AMPA and N-acetyl AMPA share a similar qualitative and quantitative toxicological profile to glyphosate — meaning glyphosate's toxicological reference values were applied to AMPA rather than deriving separate ones. No AMPA-specific REACH SVHC Candidate List, Authorisation List (Annex XIV) or restriction (Annex XVII) entry, and no AMPA-specific harmonised CLP classification, was identified. Regulatory — EFSA 2023 · ECHA
United States	AMPA is a glyphosate degradation product addressed within the federal pesticide (FIFRA) framework rather than as a standalone industrial chemical, and it is not separately listed on the California Proposition 65 list. The parent compound glyphosate (CAS 1071-83-6) is listed under Proposition 65 as known to cause cancer, effective 7 July 2017, via the Labor Code listing mechanism (which incorporates IARC's classification). Enforcement of the consumer-product cancer-warning requirement for glyphosate was permanently enjoined by a federal district court on First Amendment (compelled-speech) grounds, and that injunction was affirmed by the Ninth Circuit on 7 November 2023 (No. 20-16758). There is no federal drinking-water standard specific to AMPA; EPA's glyphosate drinking-water standard (0.7 mg/L Maximum Contaminant Level) does not separately regulate AMPA. Regulatory — OEHHA
Canada	AMPA is addressed by Health Canada's PMRA as a glyphosate metabolite under the Pest Control Products Act rather than as a standalone industrial chemical under CEPA. PMRA's glyphosate re-evaluation decision RVD2017-01 (a final decision, not a proposal) expressly included AMPA as a transformation product in the assessment and granted continued registration of glyphosate products. No CEPA Schedule 1 listing or AMPA-specific Chemicals Management Plan restriction was identified. Regulatory — Government of Canada
Australia	As a glyphosate metabolite, AMPA is addressed under the agvet-chemicals regime of the APVMA rather than as a standalone industrial chemical. The APVMA's final regulatory position on glyphosate concluded there were no scientific grounds to place glyphosate under formal reconsideration and that the weight of evidence indicates glyphosate does not pose a carcinogenic or genotoxic risk to humans; AMPA features in that assessment. No AMPA-specific AICIS or IChEMS restriction was identified. Regulatory — APVMA
United Kingdom	Post-Brexit, AMPA is handled as a glyphosate metabolite under the GB plant-protection regime administered by HSE, with GB CLP also operated by HSE. Glyphosate remains an approved active substance in Great Britain, with its approval extended pending HSE's renewal review. No GB CLP harmonised classification or UK REACH restriction specific to AMPA itself was identified. (The current GB/EU harmonised classification of the parent glyphosate does not include a carcinogenicity or mutagenicity classification.) Regulatory — HSE
International	No international treaty or global determination targets AMPA itself: it is not a Stockholm Convention persistent organic pollutant, and IARC has not issued a separate cancer classification for AMPA. IARC classified glyphosate as Group 2A (probably carcinogenic to humans) in 2015 (Monographs Volume 112); AMPA's genotoxicity data were reviewed in that monograph, but the 2A classification is for glyphosate, not AMPA. WHO's 2022 drinking-water fact sheet concludes glyphosate and AMPA "have similar toxicological profiles" and are both low-toxicity, deriving a combined group health-based value of 0.9 mg/L for AMPA alone or in combination with glyphosate — well above concentrations normally found in water — and states that a formal guideline value is not necessary because typical exposure is orders of magnitude below that threshold. Regulatory — IARC · WHO 2022
Certifications	No published criteria of the common consumer-product certifications reviewed name AMPA as a screened analyte. CertiPUR-US governs polyurethane-foam content and emissions and is not framed around a pesticide metabolite; OEKO-TEX Standard 100 includes pesticide-residue parameters for textiles but does not call out AMPA by name; GREENGUARD / GREENGUARD Gold are low-VOC emissions certifications and would not capture a non-volatile compound like AMPA. AMPA is characterised as an environmental and dust contaminant rather than a target analyte of these bedding-material schemes. Industry — WHO
The 72-hour test window	Entirely missed. AMPA is a highly polar, water-soluble, essentially non-volatile phosphonic acid, so it does not off-gas and a short ~72-hour VOC emissions-chamber test does not capture it; detection requires targeted LC-MS/MS of dust, water, or urine rather than air sampling. Inferred — from the compound's volatility/emission profile versus the VOC focus of short chamber tests

What it is

AMPA — aminomethylphosphonic acid, CAS 1066-51-9, molecular formula CH₆NO₃P — is a small, highly polar organophosphonate. It is formed in two distinct ways, and this dual origin is the single most important fact about the compound. Peer-reviewed — Buekers et al. 2022, Toxics

First, and predominantly, AMPA is what remains after soil and water microorganisms break down glyphosate — the active ingredient in Roundup and hundreds of other herbicide formulations. Second, AMPA is also produced when amino-polyphosphonates degrade. These are a separate family of industrial compounds used as detergent builders, anti-scaling and anticorrosion agents in water treatment, and complexing agents in textile processing — uses that have nothing to do with weed control. Peer-reviewed — Buekers et al. 2022 That means a positive AMPA reading, whether in soil, water, or a person's urine, does not automatically mean glyphosate was present nearby.

On the toxicology, the honest answer as of the most recent authoritative reviews is: AMPA is treated as sharing glyphosate's toxicological profile, not as a materially more hazardous compound in its own right. EFSA's 2023 peer review of the glyphosate renewal assessment — the most current, most detailed regulatory look at AMPA specifically — concluded that AMPA, N-methyl AMPA, and N-acetyl AMPA are unlikely to be genotoxic based on the available data, and that AMPA and N-acetyl AMPA displayed "a similar qualitative and quantitative toxicological profile to glyphosate," such that glyphosate's toxicological reference values were judged applicable to AMPA rather than requiring separate derivation. Regulatory — EFSA 2023 WHO's 2022 drinking-water guidance reaches the same conclusion by a different route, describing glyphosate and AMPA as having "similar toxicological profiles" and both exhibiting low toxicity, sufficient that WHO sets a single combined group health-based value rather than two separate ones. Regulatory — WHO 2022

Where AMPA genuinely diverges from glyphosate is persistence, not potency. Glyphosate itself degrades relatively quickly in soil — commonly cited half-lives run from about 5 to 23 days under field conditions. AMPA lasts much longer: an average soil half-life around 151 days, ranging from roughly 76 to 240 days depending on conditions, has been reported in the environmental-fate literature. Peer-reviewed — soil persistence data cited in Domínguez et al. 2016, Scientific Reports That longer half-life is why AMPA tends to accumulate and be detected more frequently than glyphosate itself in some environmental and biomonitoring samples — it outlasts the parent compound even where no fresh glyphosate has been applied recently.

How it relates to the bedroom

An indirect, dust-borne trace contaminant — not a material emission

AMPA has no connection to mattress construction, foam chemistry, or off-gassing. It is not a VOC; its vapor pressure is negligible, and it will not appear in a short chamber emissions test the way formaldehyde or limonene would. Its bedroom pathway, to the extent one exists, is indirect: soil and water contamination in agricultural or lawn-treated areas produces dust that is tracked or drifts indoors and settles onto surfaces, including bedding and carpet, alongside every other constituent of house dust.

A 2024 study of 99 indoor dust samples collected from urban homes across sixteen U.S. states found glyphosate and AMPA in every single sample, at geometric mean concentrations of 193 ng/g and 30.8 ng/g respectively. Concentrations of both compounds correlated with county-level agricultural glyphosate use nearby, and glyphosate and AMPA levels correlated strongly with each other (r = 0.70), consistent with a shared upstream source in most homes. But the same study estimated that dust-ingestion exposure for glyphosate and AMPA combined was more than two orders of magnitude below the acceptable daily intake for glyphosate across all age groups tested, including children. Peer-reviewed — Li, Jeong & Kannan 2024, Environment International This is genuinely useful bedroom-relevant evidence — better and more direct than the older, more general dust-contamination literature this page previously leaned on — and it supports an honest "present, but at a low and probably minor dose" conclusion rather than either dismissing the pathway or overstating it.

Roughly half of urinary AMPA is not explained by a person's own glyphosate exposure

This is the finding that most complicates a simple "AMPA is just glyphosate's downstream marker" story. In the EU-wide HBM4EU biomonitoring study of children aged 6–11 across five countries, the average molar ratio of urinary AMPA to glyphosate was 2.2 — AMPA concentrations were, on average, more than double glyphosate concentrations in the same urine sample — and 194 of 263 participants had more AMPA than glyphosate. Humans are known to metabolize only a small fraction (well under 1%) of absorbed glyphosate into AMPA internally, so this excess implies direct, independent uptake of AMPA itself from food, water, or dust, separate from any glyphosate also absorbed. Peer-reviewed — Buekers et al. 2022, Toxics A parallel study of Irish farm and non-farm families found the same asymmetric pattern — AMPA quantifiable in roughly twice as many samples as glyphosate across every family-member subgroup (61% vs. 32%) — and, notably, farm-family membership did not significantly raise a household's AMPA or glyphosate levels compared to non-farm families, even though the farm fathers who had personally sprayed glyphosate the day before sampling showed the single highest individual readings. Peer-reviewed — Connolly et al. 2022, Toxics Both research teams point to the same explanation: amino-polyphosphonates in detergents, water treatment, and textile processing are an independent, non-glyphosate source of environmental AMPA. This is genuinely unresolved — neither study can cleanly partition how much of a given person's urinary AMPA came from each source — and it is the honest reason AMPA merits its own Atlas entry rather than a simple appendix to glyphosate.

The biomonitoring role — a two-way street, not a one-way marker

Because AMPA is co-measured in essentially every modern glyphosate biomonitoring study, it functions somewhat like how cotinine functions for nicotine exposure — a downstream signal researchers rely on to characterize total exposure to a chemical family. The comparison has a real limit: cotinine is pharmacologically inert and only ever comes from nicotine metabolism, whereas AMPA is not toxicologically inert (it shares glyphosate's own reference values, not a null profile) and, as shown above, does not exclusively originate from glyphosate. It is a biomarker with its own independent exposure sources — messier than the cotinine analogy, but the closest existing model in this Atlas for a metabolite that deserves its own page.

What the research says

Toxicological profile is treated as equivalent to glyphosate's, not worse, by the most current regulatory review. EFSA 2023 concluded AMPA and N-acetyl AMPA share glyphosate's toxicological reference values and are unlikely to be genotoxic. Regulatory — EFSA 2023
AMPA is substantially more persistent in soil than glyphosate — average half-life around 151 days versus days-to-weeks for the parent — the actual basis for "AMPA outlasts glyphosate," not a claim about higher potency. Peer-reviewed
Low chronic toxicity to aquatic organisms: a NOAEC of 12 mg/L for fathead minnow and a NOEC of 15 mg/L for Daphnia magna, with environmental surface-water concentrations typically 100–1000 times lower than those thresholds. Peer-reviewed — Levine et al. 2015
Sublethal effects on soil organisms at field-relevant concentrations, even without mortality: a 2016 earthworm study found reduced juvenile body mass at multiple AMPA concentrations despite no significant mortality. Peer-reviewed — Domínguez et al. 2016
Indoor house dust reliably contains AMPA, at low estimated exposure doses: detected in all 99 U.S. urban homes sampled in 2024; ingestion-route exposure well below the acceptable daily intake. Peer-reviewed — Li, Jeong & Kannan 2024

What helps reduce exposure

Tier 1 — most relevant. Because dietary intake and drinking water are the dominant exposure routes for AMPA (as for glyphosate), the same actions that reduce glyphosate exposure — described in more depth on the glyphosate page — are the highest-leverage moves: reducing conventional oats, wheat, and legume consumption where glyphosate is used as a pre-harvest desiccant, and being aware of local water-supply testing where agricultural runoff is a known issue.

Tier 2 — household dust control. Since AMPA (like glyphosate) enters the home mainly via dust rather than off-gassing, standard dust-reduction practices — regular vacuuming with a HEPA filter, wet-mopping hard floors, removing shoes at the door in households near treated lawns or fields — reduce the same dust reservoir that carries AMPA, along with many other trace contaminants covered elsewhere in this Atlas.

Tier 3 — awareness of non-herbicide sources. Because amino-polyphosphonates in detergents and water-treatment chemistry are an independent AMPA source, no household-level herbicide avoidance step will fully eliminate AMPA exposure. This is an honest limit, not a reason for alarm — the WHO and EFSA toxicological assessments treat the combined exposure as low-risk at real-world levels.

The Embr capture system, like the one described on the glyphosate page, is not well suited to AMPA specifically. AMPA is small, highly polar, and water-soluble — the same properties that make glyphosate a poor match for standard activated carbon apply here, arguably more so given AMPA's even smaller molecular size. This is an honest limitation, not a marketing claim: for households concerned about AMPA, source reduction (diet, water testing, dust control) is more impactful than any sleep-environment capture technology currently available.

What does NOT help

Air purifiers. AMPA does not exist in indoor air at meaningful gas-phase concentrations; it is dust- and water-borne, not airborne in a form air filtration addresses.
Assuming "natural" landscaping products are AMPA-free. Because AMPA also derives from non-herbicide amino-polyphosphonate sources (detergents, water-treatment chemistry), avoiding glyphosate-based lawn products does not guarantee zero AMPA exposure.
Treating AMPA and glyphosate as interchangeable for cancer-risk purposes. AMPA has never been separately classified by IARC; conflating its regulatory status with glyphosate's contested Group 2A classification overstates what is actually known about AMPA specifically.

Open research questions

The precise split between glyphosate-derived and directly-ingested AMPA in human urine has not been quantitatively resolved; current studies can only note the discrepancy, not partition it. Speculation re: resolution timeline
Food-level AMPA residue monitoring is far less developed than glyphosate monitoring in most jurisdictions, including the EU, limiting exposure-source modeling. Peer-reviewed — data gap noted in Buekers et al. 2022
No group Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) for combined glyphosate-plus-AMPA exposure has been formally adopted by EFSA, despite researchers and the Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR) recommending one; the current single-substance ADI framework may understate combined exposure. Peer-reviewed — Buekers et al. 2022
Sublethal soil-ecosystem effects of AMPA (such as the reduced earthworm juvenile mass observed in Domínguez et al. 2016) have not been mechanistically explained or connected to any effect at human-relevant, dust-borne exposure levels. Speculation

Citations

EFSA (2023). Peer review of the pesticide risk assessment of the active substance glyphosate. EFSA Journal 21(7):8164. AMPA, N-methyl AMPA and N-acetyl AMPA concluded unlikely to be genotoxic; AMPA/N-acetyl AMPA share glyphosate's toxicological reference values. DOI 10.2903/j.efsa.2023.8164 Regulatory
WHO (2022). Glyphosate and AMPA — Chemical Fact Sheet. Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality, 4th ed. incorporating 1st and 2nd addenda. WHO fact sheet PDF Regulatory
IARC (2017). IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans, Volume 112: Some Organophosphate Insecticides and Herbicides. Lyon: IARC (glyphosate Group 2A; AMPA genotoxicity data reviewed within the same monograph but not separately classified). Full monograph Regulatory
Buekers J, et al. (2022). Glyphosate and AMPA in Human Urine of HBM4EU Aligned Studies: Part A Children. Toxics 10(8):470. DOI 10.3390/toxics10080470 Peer-reviewed
Connolly A, et al. (2022). A Human Biomonitoring Study Assessing Glyphosate and Aminomethylphosphonic Acid (AMPA) Exposures among Farm and Non-Farm Families. Toxics 10(11):690. DOI 10.3390/toxics10110690 Peer-reviewed
Li ZM, Jeong H, Kannan K (2024). Widespread occurrence of glyphosate and aminomethylphosphonic acid in indoor dust from urban homes across the United States and its contribution to human exposure. Environment International 192:109005. DOI 10.1016/j.envint.2024.109005 Peer-reviewed
Levine SL, von Mérey G, Minderhout T, Manson P, Sutton P (2015). Aminomethylphosphonic acid has low chronic toxicity to Daphnia magna and Pimephales promelas. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 34(6):1382-9. DOI 10.1002/etc.2940 Peer-reviewed
Domínguez A, Brown GG, Sautter KD, de Oliveira CM, de Vasconcelos EC, Niva CC, Bartz MLC, Bedano JC (2016). Toxicity of AMPA to the earthworm Eisenia andrei Bouché, 1972 in tropical artificial soil. Scientific Reports 6:19731. DOI 10.1038/srep19731 Peer-reviewed

Frequently asked questions

Is AMPA more dangerous than glyphosate itself?
Not according to the toxicological data reviewed by EFSA in 2023: AMPA and its own metabolite N-acetyl AMPA were found to share a similar qualitative and quantitative toxicological profile to glyphosate, and EFSA applied glyphosate's toxicological reference values to AMPA. What differs is persistence, not toxicity per dose — AMPA lasts substantially longer in soil (average half-life around 151 days, versus days to a few weeks for glyphosate), so it accumulates and is detected more often than glyphosate itself in some sampling. "More persistent" and "more toxic" are not the same claim, and the evidence supports the first, not clearly the second.
Is AMPA in my bedroom?
Possibly, in trace amounts, as house dust. A 2024 U.S. study found glyphosate and AMPA in all 99 indoor dust samples collected from urban homes across sixteen states, at geometric mean concentrations of 193 ng/g and 30.8 ng/g respectively. But the estimated dose from dust ingestion was more than two orders of magnitude below the acceptable daily intake — a low-level, low-confidence pathway rather than a primary source of exposure. AMPA does not off-gas from mattress materials; it is not a VOC and has no direct connection to bedding construction.
Why does the Atlas have a separate entry for AMPA if it just comes from glyphosate?
Because AMPA is not only a glyphosate breakdown product. Roughly 40–60% of urinary AMPA detected in biomonitoring studies does not track with an individual's own glyphosate levels, suggesting a meaningful share comes from direct environmental exposure — AMPA is also a degradation product of amino-polyphosphonates, industrial compounds used as detergent builders, anti-scaling agents, anticorrosives, and textile-processing agents, independent of any glyphosate use. AMPA has become a de facto biomonitoring marker for total glyphosate-family exposure, similar in role (though not toxicological profile) to how cotinine tracks nicotine exposure. It deserves its own honest treatment rather than being folded silently into the glyphosate page.
Does AMPA have its own cancer classification?
No. IARC has never issued a separate carcinogenicity classification for AMPA — its 2015 Group 2A classification (probably carcinogenic to humans) applies to glyphosate, not to AMPA. AMPA's genotoxicity data were reviewed within that same monograph and, separately, by EFSA in its 2023 glyphosate renewal assessment, which concluded that AMPA, N-methyl AMPA, and N-acetyl AMPA are unlikely to be genotoxic based on the available data. AMPA is not listed on California's Proposition 65 list; only its parent glyphosate is.

Related compounds

This page describes documented chemistry and exposure pathways. It does not provide medical advice.

Last reviewed 2026-07-07. If you find a factual error, contact us.

AMPA in the bedroom