[HN Gopher] Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of...
___________________________________________________________________
Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine
samples
Author : mindracer
Score : 355 points
Date : 2022-07-09 14:43 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| crikeyjoe wrote:
| They didn't check mine.
| kache_ wrote:
| "tied to cancer" Bullshit. I've looked this up and researched it
| extensively as I was looking at different chemicals to use for
| weed control
|
| The science isn't settled, this is just more news media garbage
| fear mongering
| csr86 wrote:
| Maybe one day we can skip plants and weedkillers by using
| artificial process to make food. Photosynthesis is not very
| efficient either. Less land for farms and more forests.
| 240P_Climate wrote:
| Eat meat like our ancestors did perhaps? Fat is only dangerous
| if it can stick to sugar. Sugar molecules are like little
| daggers that attach to arteries.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| Maybe if it's lab meat. Otherwise it seems inefficient to
| grow food for animals instead of just growing food for humans
| triyambakam wrote:
| Processed sugar. And it could be better said the other way
| around: processed sugar is more dangerous coupled with high
| fat intake.
|
| Sugars bound in fiber are fine. No one got heart disease or
| diabetes from eating too many apples with a diet of otherwise
| moderate fat intake.
| nemo44x wrote:
| This is bad journalism. Glyphosate is not "linked" to cancer.
| Sone groups think it is "probably" a carcinogen but most every
| governing body around the world says it is not as there's no
| proof of the link at all.
|
| This is probably not journalism but rather propaganda designed to
| rally public support around glyphosate bans which we have seen in
| Germany and now the Netherlands. Farmers can still use it of
| course, but the ban is for home use. Even though it is safe to
| use when following the label.
| contravariant wrote:
| If we're counting red flags toss "found in X% of Y" onto the
| heap as well.
|
| Any report about 'detecting' something without mentioning safe
| levels or how amazingly sensitive some types of detection are
| should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| A home ban seems backwards. I'm more worried about ingesting
| glyphosate from corn products than spraying it on weeds. I
| don't eat weeds.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The risk is larger for home usage because those
| concentrations are more carcinogenic.
| bsedlm wrote:
| just to generalized bad health and possibly celiac disease
|
| I'd say that part of the problem is that this chemical makes
| the gut flora sick, not the human... but given as the gut
| bacteria are symbiotic with us, we also suffer negative
| consequces which are harder to explain with strictly
| reductionist biomechanics
|
| also I keep in mind the economic incentives and the sorry state
| of academic funding
| moneywoes wrote:
| Is having celiac correlated with this?
| macondo wrote:
| This is bad thinking. Glyphosate has seen billions of USD in
| settlements and is tied to decreased liver function.
|
| "Most every governing body says..." what is this poor appeal to
| authority?
|
| Like the other commenter says, even if it is not directly
| effecting on humans, if it affects our gut flora then it ends
| up affecting. The reductionist approach does not work much in
| biology, one has to consider the whole system.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Glyphosate has seen billions of USD in settlements
|
| In my country some scientists have been found guilty of "not
| predicting an earthquake"[1], so I would be careful to
| believe to what a court can prove or disprove and the
| scientific value of their decisions...
|
| [1] https://blog.ucsusa.org/michael-halpern/italian-
| scientists-j....
| sudden_dystopia wrote:
| Yet another reason to avoid grains, soy, and processed foods.
|
| I would love to see some meat tested to see if it's still
| detected in the meat after the animals eat the tainted corn.
| gitastrophie wrote:
| There are a few references that say glyphosate doesn't
| bioaccumulate well due to the chemical's "ionized state, its
| low octanol-water partition coefficient"[1]. However there are
| others that suggest glyphosate may bioaccumulate in biofilm
| consuming invertebrates, where biofilms concentrate glyphosate
| and prevent the chemical from being retained in surrounding
| water[2].
|
| Personally, these concepts are newer to me and I'm not sure
| what to make of it all yet.
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6827263/ [2]
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.03.234856v1....
| nverno wrote:
| Is there some indication it is more prevalent in processed
| foods? That wasn't indicated in the article afaict. Also, they
| mention it's used across a wider range of crops than just soy
| and grains sadly.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Glyphosate is sprayed on some grain crops prior to harvest to
| force a whole field into senescence at the same time.
| kmbfjr wrote:
| Which species of crops? Because I have never seen that with
| winter wheat, common oats, #2 dent corn, soybeans or
| sorghum.
|
| They grow all of that within 300' of my home.
|
| It may be that the farms near me are worked by smaller
| operators and they are not paying professional harvesting
| to bring in the crops in on a schedule. But not letting the
| grain mature on its own seems like a good way to take less
| money when sold at the elevator.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Sounds like you are much closer to production than me.
| Pre-harvest spraying is only something I have read about.
| Around here we talk about grades of seafood not crops.
| Here are a few sources I found recommending pre-harvest
| spraying and one talking about ending the practice in
| Canada.
|
| US:
|
| https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/glyphosate-use-
| as-...
|
| https://extension.umn.edu/small-grains-harvest-and-
| storage/m...
|
| UK:
|
| https://ahdb.org.uk/knowledge-library/pre-harvest-
| glyphosate...
|
| Australia:
|
| https://grdc.com.au/resources-and-publications/all-
| publicati...
|
| Canada:
|
| https://non-gmoreport.com/articles/days-are-numbered-for-
| pre...
| goodpoint wrote:
| meat is a known carcinogenic in itself.
|
| EDIT: spare the stupid downvotes. Here:
| https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/can...
| progre wrote:
| Hot water is a known carcinogenic.
|
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2.
| ..
|
| It's there, in the statistics. The thing is, the risks of
| eating meat or drinking hot espressos are like national
| lottery kind of probabilities. Not like asbestos or carbon
| particles, wich have more like rock paper scissor kind of
| probabilities.
| goodpoint wrote:
| You are trying to make a strawman by phrasing it as an
| exaggerated risk.
|
| You can instead go check the probabilities or read
| scientific documentation and you'll find that both fluid
| intake at very high temperature and meat consumption have
| been reported as significant carcinogenics in many papers
| on publications with high impact factors.
|
| You can search on Scholar or ask your GP. No need to be
| dishonest on HN.
| juanani wrote:
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| GMO skepticism is pretty much the same as anti-vax. Lots of talk
| about big corporations and a fetish for "natural" as well as a
| litany of vague syndromes without a clearly elucidated biological
| mechanism.
| mandmandam wrote:
| Your confidence in big Agri and big Pharma would be hilarious,
| if it wasn't so dangerous.
|
| Do you have _any idea_ what all the chemicals we 're pumping
| into the lakes and rivers and earth and ocean are doing to the
| biosphere?
|
| Seriously! How many species above the background rate are going
| extinct every year?! The blame for that lies _squarely and
| undeniably_ at the industries you have such blind confidence
| in.
|
| "Man is quite insane. He wouldn't know how to create a maggot,
| and he creates Gods by the dozen." --Michel de Montaigne
| swayvil wrote:
| This previous HN post, which refers to Monsanto's astroturfing
| efforts, relates.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17043836
| wslh wrote:
| The world react very slow. I posted a similar news 6 years ago
| about te same issues in Argentina
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11544254
|
| It doesn't really require a deep study when you see values
| outside the normal range.
| sschueller wrote:
| I always thought GMO was used to make plants resistant to
| diseases and pests but in reality these plants are resistant to
| one thing only. Monsanto's chemicals.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| GMO is also used for improving yields, drought tolerance, and
| temperature tolerance, among other things.
| atwood22 wrote:
| Some genetic modification does make plants pest resistant. For
| instance, Bt corn is pest resistant without the need of
| additional pesticides.
| ramphastidae wrote:
| Society loves to make fun of those who choose organic produce,
| but avoiding glysophate is the main reason I do so, and it works:
|
| > Organic diet intervention significantly reduces urinary
| glyphosate levels in U.S. children and adults >
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001393512...
| JamesBarney wrote:
| But what does it do to the levels of organic pesticides?
| duncancarroll wrote:
| This is a valid point; just because something is naturally-
| derived, doesn't make it safe. For example, permethrin is
| approved for organic use but it's also a neurotoxin:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5598406/
|
| Obviously the dosages are low in foods treated with it, but
| you're still ingesting a neurotoxin, yet the food can be
| legally labelled organic.
|
| My solution is to list the pesticides on the packaging like
| they do the nutritional content.
|
| Additional info here:
| https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-
| sushi/httpblogs...
| tbrock wrote:
| There's no question it would be better if it were true but how
| sure can we be that it's not just the same food with different
| labels?
| kybishop wrote:
| Because the FDA exists?? Because that would be fraud to claim
| otherwise, and fruit/veg sources are easily traceable back to
| their source, particularly at quantity?
| classichasclass wrote:
| USDA regulates that, at least for products with its seal.
|
| https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-
| regulations/organic/organic-s...
| tbrock wrote:
| The FDA does not regulate the use of the term "organic" on
| food labels.
|
| Further, if something isn't 100% organic how do you know
| which part isn't?
| harles wrote:
| I think organic is great. I just wish we didn't put non-GMO in
| the same bucket. Give me GMO foods without pesticides.
| Pakdef wrote:
| I wish they would look at flavor, texture and other things
| that matter when doing GMOs...
| brokenodometer wrote:
| That would be counterproductive. GMO crops have a lower yield
| than non-GMOs without the application of pesticides.
|
| https://geneticliteracyproject.org/gmo-faq/can-genetic-
| engin...
| unclenoriega wrote:
| The linked article says that GMO crops produce higher
| yields and use less pesticides than non-GMO crops.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Isn't part of the benefit of GMO foods that you can make them
| tolerant to various pesticides? There are other ways to use
| GMO to make more productive crops, but my understanding was
| that one of the big reasons is that you can make crops that
| ignore pesticides that wipe out existing pests.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| I'm not sure the relevance of this fact to the GP's
| request?
| [deleted]
| mattwest wrote:
| You're right, but I think what they are saying is that they
| would like to see new GMO crops developed for consumer
| benefit instead of herbicide resistance.
| hammock wrote:
| Doesn't sound too profitable
| djbusby wrote:
| Focused on the wrong target.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| ... to pesticide manufacturers, no. But say, a GM
| tomato[1] that had added nutrients seems like it could
| make someone rich? I'd be happy to throw a few in my
| salad.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_tom
| ato#Im...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| There's a lot of reasons. That is one large one, but you
| can also integrate natural pesticides into the genome of
| the plant, ie. Bt corn.
| tomp wrote:
| Which could be equally dangerous as external pesticides
| like glyphosate.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Isn't part of the benefit of GMO foods that you can make
| them tolerant to various pesticides?
|
| and diseases and parasites and weather etc etc
| tomp wrote:
| um... how do you think plants become tolerant to diseases
| and parasites? _pesticides_
| ouid wrote:
| the pesticides used in organic farming are about as bad for you
| as the pesticides used in non organic farming, and used in
| higher quantities, since they are worse at being pesticides.
| EnKopVand wrote:
| This is just blatantly false on every account. Especially the
| part where things like non-organic wheat are sprayed with
| weed-killer in the days before it's harvested because it
| increases the yield and protein as the wheat goes into turbo-
| mode because it knows it's dying.
| Proven wrote:
| checker wrote:
| How far off are we from having drones that mechanically remove
| weeds at a reasonable cost? It's ridiculous that we put up with
| spraying sketchy chemicals on our food. We can build loyal
| wingman drones to kill enemy aircraft but we can't kill weeds??
|
| Edit: I'm talking about farming, not lawns. RTFA
| ciconia wrote:
| Weeds are largely a symptom of monoculture, an algricultural
| practice that's ecologically destructive. Besides, there are
| diverse solutions to controlling weeds: mulching, association
| planting, green cover...
|
| > It's ridiculous that we put up with spraying sketchy
| chemicals on our food.
|
| Yes, but it's also ridiculous to treat the symptom instead of
| the disease.
| sschueller wrote:
| I thought weed and bugs are the least of the problems. It's
| more disease and the fact that you are farming the same
| monoculture extremely dense on the same plot over and over
| again.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Likely very far off. Mechanical removal would be very hard to
| pull off, especially given how reliably and quickly it'll have
| to work for a large farm.
| jiggywiggy wrote:
| There are many ways that don't require that much more effort.
| For instance plastic covering the field will clean up a field.
| But that's a tiny bit more work then just spraying and
| poisoning everything. Of course the GMO crops that are bred to
| be glysophate resistant are even more convenient
| elif wrote:
| In Japan I was surprised to see that for large fruit like
| apples etc. they actually put a bag over the fruit when it is
| young, so the fruit stays protected from all manner of pests
| for its entire lifetime, up until retail purchase in cases.
| voakbasda wrote:
| That's not a tiny amount of work. We are talking about
| hundreds and thousands of acres. That is not feasible for
| covering with plastic.
| jiggywiggy wrote:
| There is no healthy way to long-term grow thousands and
| thousands of acres with a monocrop. You have to chemically
| spray everything to death and chemically try to uplift the
| soil, but it's just not sustainable over a few decades. And
| completely unhealthy both for the farmers and consumers.
| The bottom line is only better off if you ignore all the
| societal and long-term costs.
| hammock wrote:
| Covering with plastic is exactly what happens in strawberry
| fields every season. There is no other commercially
| feasible way to grow them.
| pockethook wrote:
| Tensorfield Agriculture make robots that kill weeds with hot
| canola oil: https://tensorfield.ag/
| pstuart wrote:
| Steam looks promising too: https://www.weedtechnics.com/does-
| steam-weed-control-actuall...
| 41b696ef1113 wrote:
| That is amazing. I do not know anything about plants - is
| this approach generically applicable for all crops or are
| there limitations on what kinds of weeds are likely to grow
| in a field? For example: weeds in wheat fields are too
| visually similar/closely spaced/different life cycle than the
| cash crop for this to work?
| jxramos wrote:
| The further you let them grow the more differentiated they
| become. So time could be leaned on as a predictor. But even
| at the very young cotlydon phase you can differentiate
| between certain species, even at the level of seeds. It
| depends how closely related things are of course but with
| time every plant identifies itself pretty much.
| convolvatron wrote:
| carbon robotics makes a diesel powered rig that identifies
| leaf shapes with ML and burns the non-crops with a laser.
| serpix wrote:
| Why do you need to kill weeds? Adapt and stop having lawns.
| 535188B17C93743 wrote:
| Lawns are awful for the environment, and lawn care is a large
| part of this. Why we still have golf courses in any area that
| is regularly in drought is beyond me.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Swimming pools are worse. Let's ban those first.
| wyre wrote:
| Please show some sources or math that swimming pools are
| worse than gold courses
| dahfizz wrote:
| What's wrong with swimming pools? Or do you mean just in
| drought areas?
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| Most swimming pools (in ground) are filled once with
| water and rarely need additional water added. They use
| much less water than the average sprinkler system. They
| do require energy (pump and filter systems) and chemicals
| to keep things balanced but it designed as a closed loop
| system other than unusual circumstances.
| 8note wrote:
| Indoor or outdoor?
| parineum wrote:
| A lot of golf courses use grey water.
| checker wrote:
| Farm weeds steal nutrients and sunlight from the crops.
| chabes wrote:
| I believe the conversation is more about agriculture than
| landscaping
| bergenty wrote:
| Lawns are less important. We would have no agricultural
| output if we didn't weed.
| Retric wrote:
| Farming existed before weed killing. It's _extremely_
| useful but output doesn 't drop to zero without it.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > Farming existed before weed killing.
|
| Weed killing has been integral to farming since it's
| inception.^1 Chemical herbicides were popularized in the
| 19th century, which necessarily coincided with the modern
| population explosion.
|
| ^1 https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnu
| m=1759....
| [deleted]
| Retric wrote:
| "The earliest evidence of small-scale cultivation of
| edible grasses is from around 21,000 BC with the Ohalo II
| people on the shores of the Sea of Galilee."
|
| "The earliest known weed control technology in 8000 BCE
| was the plow and hand-weeding (which includes hand-
| pulling, cutting with a knife, hoes and mattocks)."
|
| That's a very long gap till 8,000 BC.
| Supermancho wrote:
| It's implied that @21000BC, they were pulling weeds by
| hand. Weed killing is part of cultivation. No offense,
| but you seem completely out of touch with reality, on
| this topic. I'm not sure you can make a compelling
| argument without experiencing the simple world of
| gardening.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/Bly85h8 - these are 2 weeds that have
| taken over and killed a simple flowering plant from our
| yard. You can see there are 2 plots that we have spliced
| from our healthy flowers, where we have been testing weed
| control methodology, since the neighbors have let these
| weeds become their lawn. The simple solution seems to be
| wait until the weed is big enough to have a solid
| rootball and pull it up manually. This is both the common
| way for small gardens to be managed AND the only solution
| for certain invasive species like the Himalayan
| blackberry which can regrow from stalks or leaves after
| being mulched and buried - they are resilient to pretty
| much every pesticide, but they aren't our problem after
| moving out of WA.
|
| In farmland, you can go over every inch of your acreage
| and try to spot treat (which won't stop proliferation) or
| you can uniformly treat, as modern farming currently
| does.
| Retric wrote:
| That's a logical assumption without direct archaeological
| support.
|
| Remember we started with wild plants so a significant
| energy investments beyond throwing seeds may simply have
| been wasted effort because it's less needed and has lower
| rewards. Further removing competitors is a non obvious
| behavor.
|
| The benefits of a possible harvest increased after
| destination so the time lag between just tossing seeds
| and active farming could have been a very long period.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > That's a logical assumption without direct
| archaeological support.
|
| It's what people do without any training. It's not
| necessary to have archaeological support for instinctive
| behavior. There's no archaeological support people
| swatted at flies during that time period. Again, this is
| rather pointless when you're arguing that early man was
| less capable than a child. GL with whatever.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Farming existed before weed killing
|
| Farming existed before _pesticide_.
| Retric wrote:
| Farming existed before _people._
|
| Humanity has gotten very good at it and weedkilling is a
| big part of it. But, wild plants propagate quite well on
| their own, spending seeds of things you want more of
| results in more of that species. Preparing the
| environment and selecting seeds ca push that much further
| but the absolute minimum threshold is very low. Toss
| eaten apples into your yard, and eventually you get apple
| trees.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think your definition of farming might be a wee bit
| broad.
| Retric wrote:
| What in your mind is the clear cut separation between
| ants cultivating fungus, people tossing specific seeds on
| the ground 20,000 years ago, and whatever you think of as
| farming?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Okay I was wondering if you were going to bring ants up
| because I think that is a good point.
|
| > people tossing specific seeds on the ground 20,000
| years ago
|
| This seems irrelevant to whether farming occurred before
| people.
|
| I don't think the line is very clear cut at all, but it
| does involve intentional intervention by a species not
| the plant.
| Retric wrote:
| > > people tossing specific seeds on the ground 20,000
| years ago
|
| > This seems irrelevant to whether farming occurred
| before people.
|
| It gets to if for example squirrels storing seeds
| underground is possibly farming or not. It's an
| intentional activity, but takes too long for a specific
| squirrel to see much benefit from it. IMO, it's kind of a
| mind bender when you really dig into it.
|
| I think a reassemble argument is squirrels as a species
| farm though individuals don't.
| parineum wrote:
| Farming without pesticides existed before we needed to
| feed 9 billion people.
| goodpoint wrote:
| The world is vastly overproducing food and the industry
| is optimized for profit, not number of people being fed.
|
| Additionally, billions face food uncertainty. Not because
| the food is not enough.
| chasil wrote:
| That is not the major use of glyphosate.
|
| "More than 200 million pounds of glyphosate are used annually
| by US farmers on their fields. The weedkiller is sprayed
| directly over genetically engineered crops such as corn and
| soybeans, and also over non-genetically engineered crops such
| as wheat and oats as a desiccant to dry crops out prior to
| harvest. Many farmers also use it on fields before the
| growing season, including spinach growers and almond
| producers. It is considered the most widely used herbicide in
| history."
| klyrs wrote:
| A yard full of Japanese Knotweed is not lawn, but it is a big
| problem. Sadly, glyphosphate is one of the more effective
| treatments, but even it won't get rid of the stuff alone.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > Why do you need to kill weeds? Adapt and stop having lawns.
|
| If people spray glophysate on their lawns, that is what will
| happen. Their lawns will die. It's very easy to test, and
| many people have done this by accident.
| kube-system wrote:
| If you put glyphosate on your lawn, you will stop having a
| lawn. Glyphosate kills grass. Nobody uses it on lawns.
| dboreham wrote:
| Can confirm, after spilling some on my lawn while mixing a
| sprayer batch.
| jader201 wrote:
| No, but many use it (selectively) on mulch beds. I'm
| assuming that's what that means by using it on lawns (vs.
| farms).
| moneywoes wrote:
| Are weeds so bad they warrant this cancer risk?
| triyambakam wrote:
| It's about profits, so for the greedy it's definitely worth
| the cancer risk. Weeds take resources from the crop yield.
| Conventional farming is not designed to handle weeds, or the
| way they do handle them is nearly exclusively through
| spraying. In contrast more whole system approaches like
| permaculture employ ways of purposefully planting good weeds,
| as one simple example, and a variety of other integrated
| approaches.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| The consequence of weeds and the consequence of using roundup
| accrue to different parties.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Depends on the weed, really. Nuke Toxicodendron from orbit.
| Pokepokalypse wrote:
| Oncosiphon piluliferum as well.
| jhurliman wrote:
| Verdant Robotics (https://www.verdantrobotics.com/) does
| targeted herbicide applications using weed detection and a two-
| axis turret, with a laser-based variant in the works.
| d0mine wrote:
| Bees won't survive until it (if ever) happens. We are likely
| too.
|
| It is like relying on aliens to bring peace on Earth.
|
| Outlawing glyphosate would fix it (people did agriculture
| before 1974 (without drones)). Though it is almost as unlikely
| as aliens.
| i_am_jl wrote:
| >people did agriculture before 1974 (without drones)
|
| We've added about 3.8 billion people to the planet since
| then.
|
| I'm not saying that we can't feed the world without
| glyphosate, but "Let's just do it like we did in '74!"
| doesn't account for the fact that we need _a lot_ more food
| today.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| All the chemical inputs to farms make them unprofitable.
| Each year takes more input to make the farm work. We broke
| the ecosystem, nitrogen cycle and phosphate cycle by
| tilling, monocropping, and chemical input. The way we farm
| kills the soil.
|
| We can support the population without chemical inputs if we
| manage the land differently. It takes about 3 years to
| transition to a regenerative management style. That is how
| long it takes to bring the soil back to life. After the
| transition period inputs are minimal and yields are similar
| to chemical farming.
| kurthr wrote:
| Tell that to Sri Lanka. There is massive unrest, because
| people will starve. The farmers were not the ones saying,
| "don't use chemical fertilizer", the ex-government was.
| sofixa wrote:
| That's extremely misleading. The (still current, power is
| mainly in the president who is refusing to leave)
| government banned chemical fertilizers on an extremely
| short notice, with no planning. That's just incredibly
| stupid.
|
| Had it been planned, with subsidies, education, multi-
| year transition, it probably wouldn't have ended in a
| disaster as it did. But anyways, that's not the only
| reason for Sri Lanka's demise (lots of stupid money
| wasting in useless infrastructure, lots of corruption,
| and Covid). It was just lots of incompetence from very
| stupid people.
| triyambakam wrote:
| That's not a fault of regenerative farming but rather
| green washing - reduce chemical inputs but have no plan
| to implement anything else
| thatcat wrote:
| You have to have an alternative management plan in place,
| obviously.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| The transition can't be forced. It is a paradigm shift in
| land management and an entirely different skill set. You
| can't just tell all farmers they cant use fertilizer
| anymore without teaching how to do without. That is how
| you get famine.
|
| Regenerative management is more profitable for farmers so
| it is going to happen regardless of what governments
| want. You just can't force it.
| [deleted]
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Child labor was allowed back then too, which solved both
| child obesity AND weeds
| hammock wrote:
| We do have lasers that shoot and kill weeds using computer
| vision.
| stevenicr wrote:
| I was shocked to learn that many farms are using the chemical
| to spray the entire field in order to not just kill weeds, but
| also to increase bud yield / weight.
|
| Similar to the rohip whatever chemical is given to some beef
| when it close to slaughter to magically make it gain weight.
|
| Apparently when you spray this stuff on the plants a couple
| days before harvest, they know they are being killed / dieing -
| so they put all their energy in to the buds to give the seeds /
| fruits a better chance at living - so the sell weight is
| higher.
|
| So it's not just being used to kill weeds, it's actually being
| used to cover the food a short time before it's cut and sold.
| checker wrote:
| Wow that's incredibly depressing. Yeah glyphosate kills weeds
| by inducing unsustainable growth and forcing the plant to
| overextend itself and die as a result. So it makes sense that
| if you apply it to a crop you're going to harvest anyway
| you'll get a bit more yield out of it.
|
| I guess tech+ban is the only way to go, unless we're okay
| forcing ourselves to play the cancer lottery with worse odds.
| maxerickson wrote:
| 2,4-D is the widely used growth accelerator.
|
| Glyphosate blocks the action of an enzyme that is necessary
| for plants to grow.
|
| Crops are frequently sprayed with desiccants to speed
| harvest once they are mature. Glyphosate is used that way.
| checker wrote:
| I got them mixed up, thanks for the correction.
| smarcellus wrote:
| https://carbonrobotics.com/ identifies weeds and kills them
| with lasers - so no chemicals at all.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| I just had to see this in action.
|
| Pretty cool demo here: https://youtu.be/lLaV15vpSJM
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| Robotic weed-zapping lasers.[1] Can't make this stuff up.
|
| [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/11/02/self-
| dr...
| toufka wrote:
| Deere bought the startup Blue River for $300M. Drones to
| identify and specifically spray just them. Not quite mechanical
| removal, but closer than spraying the whole field:
|
| https://medium.com/@dcvc/john-deere-acquires-blue-river-tech...
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Blue River doesn't use drones.
|
| There were so many layers to that medium post. It's like an
| incestuous orgy in a glyphosate teacup.
|
| First..There once was a company called Climate corp..that
| sold a neat little box called Fieldview that was slapped
| under a tractor. When the farmer harvested corn, Fieldview
| harvested data. All kinds of data. Useless data that the
| farmer didn't need and know that he had. Climate was amassing
| crap ton of data from thousands of acres of American fields.
|
| This caught the eye of John Deere. They wanted Climate. But
| what Climate had was nothing short of a treasure chest.
| Monsanto wanted that too. At the end, Monsanto got the prize.
| They purchased Climate.
|
| Climate under Monsanto went on to create Precision Planting
| and they were going to sell that arm to John Deere. But due
| to anti trust concerns, the courts put several road blocks.
| As if Monsanto and John Deere already don't control American
| Ag..
|
| So finally Bayer purchased Monsanto but not all parts of it.
| Climate was spun off and Monsanto's investment arm Monsanto
| Growth Ventures was shut down and the portfolio went on to
| populate DCVC.
|
| Blue River Tech was a small company that came up with a 'See
| and Spray' tech to identify weeds in the lettuce fields of
| California with AI and sprayed it with an organic fertilizer
| high N concentration that burnt emerging thread stage weeds.
| DCVC was investor in Blue River.
|
| John Deere bought out Blue River because they gave up on
| buying Climate from Monsanto for $305 million. Blue River
| tech that was using its See and Spray AI in organic lettuce
| fields now uses the tech for GM cotton etc and is part of
| JD's Agtech offerings as AI full stack.
|
| And yes, they use glyphosate. I will tell the fairytale of
| how Monsanto used to sell seeds, fertilizer, herbicides.
| Sterile GMO seeds that can only grow with Monsanto inputs and
| need their magic sauce with glyphosate.
|
| But for now..Blue River doesn't use drones.
| microSnowball wrote:
| Not knowing anything about glyphosate, I went to the article
| before reading the comments. I'll just put this here because it
| was clear the researchers wanted to be sure people see it. From
| the first paragraph of the article-->
|
| > In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer
| determined that glyphosate is a "probable human carcinogen"
| (IARC, 2015). However, the European Food Safety Authority and the
| Joint Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/World Health
| Organization (WHO) Meeting on Pesticide Residues (EFSA 2015,
| FAO/WHO 2015) determined that glyphosate is unlikely to be a
| carcinogen. The US EPA concluded that "available data and weight-
| of-evidence clearly do not support the descriptors "carcinogenic
| to humans," "likely to be carcinogenic to humans," or "inadequate
| information to assess carcinogenic potential" (US EPA 2017a).
| Controversy and concern that the rising use of glyphosate may
| have adverse human-health effects exist (Myers et. al., 2016).
| nemo44x wrote:
| This article a carefully crafted piece of propaganda disguising
| itself as journalism. This is part (banning herbicides and
| pesticides) of the green movement. Of course, they forget why
| we use them in the first place.
| krolden wrote:
| "We" use them in the first place because agribusiness wants
| to grow as much crops as cheaply as possible and consequences
| be damned as long as it cuts down on their expenses.
|
| Monsanto also pushed the sterile lawn image in american
| culture. Cover your lawn in our herbicides and fertilizers
| and you can be a proud american lawn mower. Who cares if that
| means carcinogenic runoff into your lakes and rivers.
| diordiderot wrote:
| Here's the right wing response
|
| R: If we didn't people would starve!
|
| L: people are starving right now anyways, less would starve
| if we raised taxes on meat
|
| R: I don't care if they starve
| dodgerdan wrote:
| Monsanto settled a batch of civil cases regarding Roundup for
| $10bn. No one settle's for that sum unless they're guilty.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/business/roundup-settleme...
| IncRnd wrote:
| While Monsanto was guilty, many companies and people settle
| for large amounts of money even when not guilty. Settling is
| often about cost not guilt. A company settles to reduce
| future risks and to stop unbounded lawsuit costs.
| dodgerdan wrote:
| Show me an example of that where the payment was over $1bn.
| IncRnd wrote:
| It took me less than 10 seconds to find.
|
| "Companies Finalize $26 Billion Deal With States and
| Cities to End Opioid Lawsuits" [1]
|
| "Judge approves $1 billion settlement for victims of
| deadly Florida condo collapse" [2]
|
| "39 State Attorneys General Announce $1.85 Billion
| Settlement with Student Loan Servicer Navient" [3]
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/health/opioids-
| settlement...
|
| [2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/judge-
| approves-1-billion...
|
| [3] https://www.navientagsettlement.com/Home/portalid/0
| dodgerdan wrote:
| In each case you've listed the companies are clearly
| guilty. You're proving my point for me.
| newguynewphone wrote:
| wait are you suggesting this companies were not guilty?
| are we reading the same settlements?
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Not quoting any of these articles, but "settled with no
| admission of guilt"
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The claim was about companies that are actually not
| guilty, and while sometimes that's ambiguous it's up to
| IncRnd to cite an example where it actually _is_
| ambiguous or better for the company, with a payment of a
| billion or more.
| [deleted]
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The civil plaintiffs wouldn't have settled for that sum
| unless they felt they couldn't prove their case in court.
|
| Settlement goes both ways, so I don't think your argument is
| sound.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| That's not how lawsuits work. At all.
| zardo wrote:
| You do have to have a dim outlook on your prospects of
| winning to agree to pay out 10 billion.
| thfuran wrote:
| What if you're sure that there are going to be quite a
| lot of plaintiffs and expect to win a mere 99% of the
| time?
| [deleted]
| happyopossum wrote:
| Winning or losing a lawsuit of this type is not
| necessarily proof of guilt, or proof that roundup causes
| cancer. what it proves is that a jury was convinced that
| it does.
| dodgerdan wrote:
| Funny we execute people based on that standard, but yet
| it's somehow lesser here...
| Thorrez wrote:
| In the US, criminal trials have a higher bar (beyond a
| reasonable doubt) than civil trials (preponderance of the
| evidence).
|
| For executions there are additional things as well beyond
| the regular criminal trial.
| bitbang wrote:
| No we don't. In criminal law the burden of proof is
| "beyond reasonable doubt". The bar is set much lower in
| civil law with the plaintiff only needing to demonstrate
| a "preponderance of evidence".
| aperson_hello wrote:
| And we get guilt wrong in criminal trials all the time
| (see the number of people the Innocence Project has
| gotten off of death row because the person didn't do it).
| A jury saying one thing doesn't make it objective truth.
| User23 wrote:
| The overwhelming majority of convicted criminals really
| did the deed. The existence of black swans doesn't mean
| most aren't white.
| aperson_hello wrote:
| Roughly 90% accuracy. And the burden of proof is lower in
| civil cases.
|
| Which isn't to say that a civil trial verdict isn't
| accurate to some extent - it just isn't absolute proof.
| There's some evidence in scientific literature about
| roundup's carcinogenicity at high doses (like what a
| farmer or landscaper would commonly encounter) and other
| various health issues at high dose. The big question is
| what happens at low doses and if it's impactful. The
| science is still out on that (and the alternative of
| lower agricultural output per unit of land area isn't
| really palatable from both a starvation risk perspective
| and a climate perspective).
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Evidently they had internal communications coaching employees
| on how to communicate about glyphosate, knowing that it's
| dangerous and that they can't claim that it's safe.
|
| That's just one damning factor, but there are more. For
| example, in multiple cases juries agreed that Monsanto has
| manipulated writing and data from studies of their products.
| Essentially Ghost writing studies to suit their needs.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| Behind a paywall so I can't see the details, but note that
| nowadays when you buy Roundup it has a lot more then
| glyphosate in it, and I trust that "a lot more" _far_ less
| than if it was just glyphosate.
| jwilk wrote:
| Archived copy: https://archive.today/qfCEV
| tyrfing wrote:
| Not really, 10B just isn't very much. 95,000 cases are being
| settled for $25-250k a person, where individual cases are 9
| digit awards and only require convincing a jury. 100, max
| 1000, out of those 95,000 people getting awards at jury
| trials is enough to make that cheaper. It'll be interesting
| to see what/if 3M settles earplug liability for. Talc powder
| liability has already cost JNJ over 5 billion, and that's
| with the Texas two-step.
|
| Also, there's this:
|
| > Part of the $1.25 billion will be used to establish an
| independent expert panel to resolve two critical questions
| about glyphosate: Does it cause cancer, and if so, what is
| the minimum dosage or exposure level that is dangerous?
|
| > If the panel concludes that glyphosate is a carcinogen,
| Bayer will not be able to argue otherwise in future cases --
| and if the experts reach the opposite conclusion, the class
| action's lawyers will be similarly bound.
| mushbino wrote:
| I believe they mean it's a lot of money to the company, not
| the plaintiffs. $10B is a lot of money to any company. You
| should see what Chevron has been doing to Steven Donziger
| for winning the $9.5B case against them for massively
| polluting the Amazon.
| tyrfing wrote:
| > The tribunal unanimously held that a $9.5 billion
| pollution judgment by Ecuador's Supreme Court against
| Chevron "was procured through fraud, bribery and
| corruption and was based on claims that had been already
| settled and released by the Republic of Ecuador years
| earlier."
|
| That case?
|
| Bayer settled the class action for 3 orders of magnitude
| less than some jury awards. They don't have to believe it
| causes cancer, just that a low percentage of juries can
| be convinced that making Bayer pay up is a good idea.
| Straightforward math. They still have 10s of thousands of
| other court cases to deal with, too.
| lettergram wrote:
| It's actually a bit different. It's more expected value:
|
| Cost of settling is X
|
| Potential cost of losing is Y
|
| Risk of losing is Z
|
| If X < Z*Y, then you settle; often a trial continues until Z
| and Y are sufficiently known, then X is offered to the
| opposing party.
|
| In this case, Y could have bankrupted the company (hundreds
| of billions in real damages). So, even if risk (Z) was
| 10-20%, $10B is a deal.
| mushbino wrote:
| This writing looks like the child of a million different high
| paid corporate attorneys.
| hammock wrote:
| > the European Food Safety Authority determined that glyphosate
| is unlikely to be a carcinogen
|
| Yet Europe has banned glyphosate (it is allowed in the US).
| Curious
| hnarn wrote:
| Just to play devil's advocate for a second: the fact that the
| EU has banned glyphosate does not mean that it's a confirmed
| carcinogen. It only means that it's considered harmful, which
| it can be in many other ways apart from causing cancer.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| The EU was concerned about marine toxicity and the potential
| for the concentrated forms to cause serious eye damage!
| vanilla-almond wrote:
| Related:
|
| Status of glyphosate in the EU:
|
| > "Glyphosate is currently approved in the EU until 15 December
| 2022."
|
| https://food.ec.europa.eu/plants/pesticides/approval-active-...
|
| The ECHA's (European Chemical Agency) assessment:
|
| > "...the existing classifications for glyphosate as a
| substance that causes serious eye damage and is toxic to
| aquatic life with long lasting effects should be retained.
|
| > The committee found that the available scientific evidence
| did not meet the criteria to classify glyphosate for specific
| target organ toxicity, or as a carcinogenic, mutagenic or
| reprotoxic substance. "
|
| https://www.echa.europa.eu/-/glyphosate-no-change-proposed-t...
| abe_duarte wrote:
| People who have been exposed to the chemical got cancer.
| Internal Monsanto documents show the link and their concern. A
| man got a court to rule in his favour for 289 million dollars,
| after the jury saw this evidence:
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/10/monsanto-tr...
| adrr wrote:
| There's more than glyphosate in roundup. Also if glyphosate
| increased the risk of cancer, we would see cancer increase
| when it started to get widely used. Cancer rates except for
| skin cancer keep falling.
| emodendroket wrote:
| As far as I can tell the lawsuits they've lost have
| concerned non-Hodgkin's lymphoma where the picture looks a
| bit more mixed.
| https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/nhl.html
| lostlogin wrote:
| It's possible that rates would have fallen further if
| glyphosate wasn't present.
| aetherson wrote:
| Sure. Anything's possible. This is a fully generalizable
| argument. Maybe you, personally, cause 10% of the world's
| cancer, but other factors have caused an overall falling
| cancer rate, but when you, personally, die or turn off
| your magical cancer-causing powers, rates will fall even
| further.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| People who have been exposed to <everything possible in the
| world> got cancer, but that is meaningless in showing
| causation. Internal documents show concern, but show no
| evidence that it causes cancer, or that Monsanto had internal
| data showing it caused cancer.
| phkahler wrote:
| It's safe to drink, here have some:
|
| https://youtu.be/ovKw6YjqSfM
| xattt wrote:
| This type of rhetoric isn't helpful, except to companies
| and manufacturers looking to minimize the attention around
| specific products with known carcinogenic properties.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| What? It's about thinking about causality in a clear way.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| well it also doesn't help to make assumptions based on
| skewed correlations.
|
| Every living animal, including us, drinks water.
|
| Every living animal dies.
|
| Is there something in the water maybe?
|
| I don't see how this line of reasoning can be helpful
| honestly.
|
| ---
|
| There is no limit on how much damages this mentality can
| do.
|
| Think about the recent stream of
|
| _people got COVID vaccine, then died_
| rascul wrote:
| > Is there something in the water maybe?
|
| It has DHMO in it. It's pretty bad.
|
| https://dhmo.org/facts.html
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| This type of rhetoric isn't helpful, except to people who
| wish to replace basic critical thinking and healthy
| skepticism with vacuous opinionated polemics on evil
| corporations and their general evilness.
| hyperdimension wrote:
| _This comment contains allegations known to the State of
| California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other
| reproductive harm._
| djcannabiz wrote:
| username checks out ;)
| zzzeek wrote:
| right and that's why they just settled instead of proving
| their product is safe
| omginternets wrote:
| You don't prove a product is safe. You fail to prove it
| isn't.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| In a civil lawsuit, the actual legal standard is
| "preponderance of evidence".
|
| Factor that by cost of defending the case and potential
| risk of payout in that _and future_ cases as well.
|
| A multimillion dollar settlement suggests some doubt on
| the part of the defendant to establish their case.
| omginternets wrote:
| I was speaking scientifically.
| zzzeek wrote:
| i was speaking legally
| mushbino wrote:
| Considering how much money they have and the size of
| their very highly paid legal team, I'd say that says a
| lot.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Actually, for _most_ products, the best they do is _in
| different trials it appears safe_. They don't even try
| and prove the product isn't safe.
| aetherson wrote:
| Companies settle lawsuits all the time for claims they
| believe are meritlesss, for two reasons:
|
| 1. Going through a lawsuit all the way to conclusion,
| even if you win, is a long, expensive process that
| potentially exposes you to a considerable amount of
| negative publicity and causes a degree of internal chaos.
|
| 2. Juries are unpredictable and even a small chance of a
| bad outcome may be worth paying to avoid.
| emodendroket wrote:
| If this is to be believed, they've set aside _billions_
| for cancer-related claims and pulled the product from the
| residential market, and there are still questions about
| the EPA's ruling that it is safe. Definitive, no, but
| certainly raises serious questions.
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/court-rejects-trump-
| era-...
| vixen99 wrote:
| Many consider glyphosate as the most heavily used weed-
| killer in history. If 'internal documents show concern',
| what should we conclude?
|
| https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/03/glyphosate-most-
| heavily...
|
| https://www.greens-
| efa.eu/legacy/fileadmin/dam/Documents/Stu...
|
| (All members of the EU Parliament from 13 countries,
| excrete glyphophosphate in their urine).
|
| https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-18110-0
|
| (Quantifable urine glyphosate levels detected in 99% of the
| French population, with higher values in men, in younger
| people, and in farmers)
| chasil wrote:
| The wiki summary says two important things.
|
| Glyphosate is the "penicillin of agriculture," a
| foundational discovery that has revolutionized the
| industry.
|
| Glyphosate alone has not been found to be a strong
| carcinogen in scientific studies, but testing with the
| surfactants, adjuvents, and other additives with which it
| is normally used may increase the carcinogenicity.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate
| [deleted]
| gruez wrote:
| >A man got a court to rule in his favour for 289 million
| dollars, after the jury saw this evidence:
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/10/monsanto-
| tr...
|
| You seem to be presenting this fact as some sort of that
| bayer is guilty, but it's not really convincing. For one,
| it's a 8 person jury in san francisco. I'd expect them to
| rule against bayer on ideological grounds (ie. little guy vs
| multi bililon dollar multinational corporation) alone.
| Second, if there's no scientific consensus on the effects of
| glysophate, I doubt a panel of laypersons would do better.
| emodendroket wrote:
| If the jurors all just ruled against Bayer "on ideological
| grounds" then their counsel was asleep at the wheel.
| noirbot wrote:
| Perhaps, but there's also a reason most lawyers do their
| best to make sure their case is heard in a favorable
| jurisdiction. You can only strike so many jurors for
| something as banal as "doesn't like large multinational
| corporations", which it's not obvious that would entirely
| bias them.
|
| It's not to say that every juror walked in already
| decided on it, but I'd somewhat expect a panel of urban
| CA citizens to be at least 60/40 in favor of a person
| against a big corp, and so if the evidence is already
| somewhat in that direction, then that's how it goes.
| user3939382 wrote:
| As far as I'm concerned Bayer and Monsanto are like evil
| incarnate and last time I brought up this lawsuit on HN I was
| shocked people were defending them. We're talking about the
| company that intentionally sold HIV infected blood to people.
| If it was legal and they could increase profits by lighting
| people on fire they would do it. Yet people trust corrupt
| research that they paid for showing their product is safe.
|
| Well their crap poison is on almost all the produce in every
| grocery store in the country so I guess they get the last
| laugh.
| telesoft wrote:
| >people were defending them.
|
| I believe that some company monitors websites like reddit
| and twitter for talk about Monsanto or Big Oil (fracking)
| and that company pays shills to defend them.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I mean, it would be strange that in 2022 HN would _not_
| be included in continuous campaigns to maintain good PR
| and keep getting baseless positive opinions, seed doubt
| and confusion to any criticism.
|
| I would expect any big multinational corp to have few
| permanent people / external agency on permanent contract
| just for this. And considering how these corps in
| discussion are almost cartoonishly evil, there is
| probably a lot of work being done constantly.
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| Someone on reddit claimed he was on a US presidential
| campaign doing exactly that. Respond to posts with pre-
| made replies, if things got hairy, distract with humor or
| memes. Interestingly, they were aware when they were
| dealing with another paid shill from the opposing side.
|
| After all those years on the internet I think I can also
| feel the impact of systematic forum activity;
| controversial topics that get swift, well articulated
| replies with links and upvotes. Another comment,
| declaring the winner of the debate!
|
| Is it individual experts who weigh in, organically?
| Groups who are passionate about the topic and organize
| via Discord? Or professional shitposters and memers? Who
| can tell. But a few internet-addicted Reddit aficionados
| could cover a lot of topics in a lot of communities for a
| small salary and huge impact.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Hillary Clinton had a super PAC that did so openly:
|
| "In April 2016, Correct the Record announced that it
| would be spending $1 million to find and confront social
| media users who post unflattering messages about Clinton
| in a "task force" called "Barrier Breakers 2016".[1][5]
| In addition to this, the task force aimed to encourage
| Sanders supporters to support Clinton and to thank both
| "prominent supporters and committed superdelegates".[6]
| The organization's president, Brad Woodhouse, said they
| had "about a dozen people engaged in [producing] nothing
| but positive content on Hillary Clinton" and had a team
| distributing information "particularly of interest to
| women".[7]"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record
|
| If you watched r/politics and political humor back that
| it went from organic looking to the consent manufacturing
| factories they are today.
| vosper wrote:
| Lots of companies provide that kind of monitoring as a
| service.
|
| https://www.g2.com/products/dataminr/competitors/alternat
| ive...
|
| Not sure if any of them also include PR/shilling, though.
| colpabar wrote:
| I don't know which thread it was but I have seen the same
| thing. Apparently considering a company's past actions when
| judging their current actions is "childish" because all the
| bad people left after they got in trouble and everyone
| there is good now. What a load of crap!
| fleddr wrote:
| There was a dutch researcher that claimed that their weed
| killer was responsible for the wiping out of many insects,
| notably bees and bumblebees, but possibly others.
|
| The man was ridiculed by his professional peers, whom later
| turned out to be bribed. The researcher was fully correct.
| marc_abonce wrote:
| > Bayer [...] intentionally sold HIV infected blood to
| people.
|
| I had no idea about this. For anyone else that's curious:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/may/23/aids.suzanneg
| o... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia
| _blood...
| emodendroket wrote:
| Not only impressively cynical but seems pretty reckless.
| User23 wrote:
| Virtually everyone who eats food has been exposed to
| glyphosate at this point. You could use the same logic to
| conclude water is a carcinogen. Every case of cancer is
| _clearly_ linked to water exposure.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It also works the other way: people who stop consuming
| water almost never die of cancer.
| pohl wrote:
| One thing I've noticed with regard to all of the safety claims
| made about glyphosate is that it only claims that it's safe
| with respect to humans directly.
|
| They never discuss what it might do to your gut biome. That
| seems like a curious omission, to me, for a substance like
| this.
|
| Shouldn't that be a standard part of the risk analysis?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Yes that should be part of the full regulatory analysis, but
| then you're talking about active effect concentrations, which
| are generally going to be _much_ higher than possible
| carcinogen concentrations.
| gruez wrote:
| >Shouldn't that be a standard part of the risk analysis?
|
| To be fair all this stuff about "gut biome" causing
| everything from depression to obesity only got popular around
| the last few years, not a decade or two ago when the bulk of
| the studies were being done.
| grendelt wrote:
| The back and forth with regulatory agencies is so frustrating.
|
| Another user here pointed out a while back that the better
| regulatory model, when it comes to health, is to put the onus
| on the supplier. We must scientifically prove the thing is safe
| to use, not have to prove it is unsafe to be removed.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| A difficult task indeed: red dye no. 2
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranth_(dye)
| coredog64 wrote:
| Proving a negative is trivial.
| pmichaud wrote:
| This is essentially the model that we have with the FDA,
| right? And we have a bunch of problems with that too. I don't
| think there's a simple solution that just makes all scenarios
| better/easier/safer/whatever.
| wussboy wrote:
| Perhaps we do have problems with that model. But are the
| problems of the "tens of millions of humans have
| potentially been exposed to this harmful compound and the
| result seems disastrous" variety? Or are the problems of
| the "it takes longer than normal" variety?
|
| Because both are "problems". But I know which one I'd
| rather have as a society.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Sometimes the result actually results in millions of
| humans getting cancer as a result of inaction.
|
| In most of the world (Canada, EU, Korea, Japan, etc.)
| sunscreen is regulated as a cosmetic, but in the US the
| FDA regulates it as an OTC drug. The last time an
| ingredient was approved for sunscreen use was in 1999,
| and in other countries there are more active ingredients
| with better properties than what is currently approved
| for use in the US.
|
| The problem is that a good deal of the US approved list
| is basically off limits because they've since been shown
| to be unhealthy, and what's left on the list has
| challenging cosmetic properties to the point where people
| can't be convinced to apply sunscreen every day, because
| formulations do things like become oily and don't play
| nice with other cosmetics, or show up as chalky white
| pigment on any remotely dark skintones.
| https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/new-sunscreens-for-
| uva-...
| majormajor wrote:
| Do the results seem disastrous?
| https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/update-on-
| cancer-de... Cancer death rates in the US are going down.
| The primary one is lung cancer, though, and cigarette
| usage has been declining... so would love to see more
| incidence rates broken out into types, too. But it seems
| at least non-disastrous in death outcomes, so far, unless
| you have those other numbers handy and are going off of
| that.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| >We must scientifically prove the thing is safe to use, not
| have to prove it is unsafe to be removed.
|
| Wait... so _every_ restaurant has to show scientific proof
| that _each_ of their ingredients are safe to use?
|
| I'm pretty sure _that_ is an impossible standard to meet.
| WarChortle wrote:
| You're overthinking this a little. If Monsanto comes up
| with a new weedkiller, they have to prove that its safe for
| humans before its put into use. It has nothing to do with
| restaurants. Obviously stuff would be grandfathered in as
| well. But its a fantastic idea going forward.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| If you require farmers to use "approved" processes for
| farming, but you _don 't_ require grocery stores and
| restaurants to _use those farmers_ , then they will
| simply buy food from farmers that don't follow those
| principles.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| If we're talking about domestic farmers, they're going to
| get caught at the same rate regardless of what you tell
| grocery stores and restaurants to do.
|
| If you mean international farmers, I think it's obvious
| you'd have to apply the same rules to imported food, so
| no they won't simply buy food that doesn't follow the
| rules.
|
| But _also_ , even if we did require grocery stores and
| restaurants to use certified farmers in some way, that
| wouldn't be hard at all! That's not even in the same
| ballpark as requiring scientific proof of chemical
| safety.
| thfuran wrote:
| That would pretty much mean no new chemicals could be
| used for anything ever.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle
| timcash wrote:
| yup
| its_bbq wrote:
| Well that's a feature if we can't come up with chemicals
| that aren't harmful at industrial scale
| thfuran wrote:
| "Not proven harmless" and "harmful" are very different
| things.
| elcomet wrote:
| Of course they could, you just have to prove that they
| are harmless (at least in their expected usage and
| dosage)
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| How do you do that?
| thfuran wrote:
| Great, so we're just going to need a few long term
| clinical trials assessing the impacts of each of
| ingestion, skin contact, inhalation, eye exposure, etc.
| separately for childhood exposure, adult exposure,
| exposure during pregnancy, acute exposure, chronic
| exposure, and so on. 100 billion dollars and thirty years
| later, maybe you can start provisionally selling your
| slightly better scotch tape.
| jmole wrote:
| That's a little disingenuous. Something like an herbicide
| that's broadly applied to fruits and vegetables that
| millions of people are eating should be under far higher
| scrutiny than a niche product that has limited human
| contact.
| thfuran wrote:
| Things that don't have much human contact in the general
| population can have significant human contact during the
| manufacturing process of products containing or processed
| with them.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Some would consider that a good tradeoff for stopping
| cancerous forever chemicals from being in 80% of pee. And
| it will be less, not no.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| They probably haven't thought through all the good
| chemicals have done. If we stopped all progress in
| chemicals 100 years ago our world would like a very
| different place.
|
| A less wealthy place where more people died of
| starvation.
| tomohawk wrote:
| If you're eating anything with oats grown in the US, especially
| things like Cheerios, you're likely getting a big dose of
| glyphosate. They spray this on the oats to kill and dessicate
| them prior to harvest to prevent the crop from being ruined by
| rain.
| hammock wrote:
| Does that include organic oats?
| kazinator wrote:
| > _a finding scientists have called "disturbing" and
| "concerning"._
|
| What were they expecting; that stuff sprayed onto crops will
| magically _not_ end up in people?
| lurquer wrote:
| Maybe we should just pee on the weeds.
| deepsquirrelnet wrote:
| Brawndo works really well too. Toilet water, not so much.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| My dog is 3 steps ahead of you there.
| IncRnd wrote:
| In 1961, 13 years prior to being sold by Monsanto to kill weeds,
| Glyphosate was patented in the U.S. as a Descaling and Chelating
| Agent by the Stauffer Chemical Co.
|
| In 2010, Monsanto patented Glyphosate as an antibiotic.
|
| Take a moment to consider that if CLR (a brand name that removes
| Calcium and Lime from metal pipes) were discovered to be a
| weedkiller, your sons or daughters would have this same
| conversation in a decade or two about CLR in their urine.
|
| You can substitute trace plutonium, anthrax, or anything else for
| CLR in the above paragraph.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > were discovered to be a weedkiller
|
| coke is a potent weedkiller
|
| people love to drink it
|
| or to put it in another way: some things we eat and drink are
| great to kill weeds, just not selective enough or too
| destructive
|
| an example: salt
| pfdietz wrote:
| "Tied to cancer" in the sense of "if you torture data long
| enough, it will confess."
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Which seems like a really good reason to verify that tie is an
| artifact as you imply it must be. It may be, but the fact
| nearly every human is ingesting it regularly means we might
| want to be certain, no?
| rasz wrote:
| In a sense of here mister lobbyist this is a glass of perfectly
| safe glyphosate, drink it
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWM_PgnoAtA
| slowking2 wrote:
| The dose makes the poison. It's possible for a chemical to be
| perfectly safe if ingested in low quantities but dangerous in
| extremely high quantities. The duration of exposure for the
| same dose matters a lot too. Drinking glyphosate could be a
| much larger acute exposure so it's perfectly reasonable to
| say it's safe as normally used but not want to drink it. For
| example, you need trace amounts of copper to live, but very
| large doses can damage the liver. You'd need to take actual
| measurements to determine at what dose glyphosate becomes
| dangerous, and compare that to actual use. The whole "I could
| drink it" thing is just bullshitting, but so is the reverse.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > Drinking glyphosate could be a much larger acute exposure
| so it's perfectly reasonable to say it's safe as normally
| used but not want to drink it.
|
| It's a short video. But, you are commenting without even
| having watched it.
|
| The executive said that glyphosate is so safe that it is
| safe to drink. When the interviewer then said that they
| have a glass of glyphosate and asked if the exec would like
| to drink it, the executive replied, "No. I'm not stupid."
| He said that twice.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| ? I don't see how that in any way diminishes what the GP
| said.
| IncRnd wrote:
| He is refuting what was said in the video but in the
| process has completely mistated what was said in that
| same video.
| slowking2 wrote:
| No. I did watch the video before I posted. Thus the last
| sentence of my first post about drinking it (or not)
| being bullshitting in both directions. You are the one
| not reading or understanding.
| slowking2 wrote:
| Did you read the last sentence of my post? I literally
| said the executive was bullshitting when he said he could
| drink it...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this is outdated thinking. LD50 is a measure of poison in
| testing, but since then it is acknowledged that there are
| cumulative over a lifetime effects, there are endocrine
| disrupting effects, and there may be effects from small
| doses that tip balancing systems in the body
| significantly.. those are from memory, not a specialist
| here.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Water also has an LD50 but you wouldn't say there are
| cumulative over lifetime harms from drinking water.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| water tainted with lead may be more to the point
| slowking2 wrote:
| Alcohol has cumulative effects too. The long term effects
| are still dose dependent. My point is you can't just
| eyeball it by being like "well that guy bullshitted then
| refused to drink it". You need to do a bunch of hard work
| taking measurements. You know it's not super toxic as
| typically used or huge swathes of people would be keeling
| over dead. But it could be long term toxic at the doses a
| farmer or landscaper is exposed too. It could have small
| absolute effects on everyone that could be detected in
| mass population statistics although that's much much
| harder to untangle.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I dare you to ingest small amount of Caesium-137 every day
| if you truly stand by your reasoning.
|
| I can argue with list of names of firemen that didn't die
| from radiation poisoning while putting off fire in
| Chernobyl.
| slowking2 wrote:
| Different chemicals have different dangerous doses.
| What's your point? I specifically said that I don't know
| what the toxic dose of glyphosate is. My point is whether
| or not you can literally drink a highly concentrated
| version of it doesn't tell you much.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| People already do take in small amounts of Caesium-137
| every day and it is harmless.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2015934/
| parineum wrote:
| Salt isn't a carcinogen but if you drink a glass of salt
| water you'll vomit.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| olive oil is great and I could not live without it, but I
| would not drink a glass of it it for no reason!
| jancsika wrote:
| If I got paid by Big Olive as a lobbyist I'd at least take
| a swig. (I believe that lobbyist made a claim about
| drinking a spoonful.)
|
| Then I'd probably cough and pivot to how to tell the
| difference between high quality olive oil and what the
| fraudsters are pushing. I'd celebrate the good work of my
| good friends at the California Olive Oil Council and many
| others to address the growing problem of fake olive oils.
| Let's protect our small olive farmers!
|
| In short: if I instead turned red, started freaking out and
| stormed out of the interview, it would probably be wise to
| stay away from olive oil until you figured out exactly what
| happened there.
|
| Edit: clarification
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| A spoon is good for your health, a glass will make you
| run to the toilet if not worse.
|
| It's also very hard to swallow even in modest quantities.
|
| Not surprisingly it was one of the most popular forms of
| punishment and humiliation fascist blackshirts used.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor_oil#Punishment
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Mister organic farmer, here is a plate of cow manure, eat it.
| yasp wrote:
| Safer than eating glyphosate (people actually do this).
| raverbashing wrote:
| "Safer" oh boy...
|
| That's why it's hard to take some "nature is perfect"
| people seriously
|
| (of course it's dose dependant, but don't eat manure.
| period)
|
| Here's a good writeup
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3880910/
| slowking2 wrote:
| Safer depends how much cow manure is eaten vs how much
| glyphosate.
|
| Although cow manure also has various microorganisms in it
| so if you got really unlucky with the wrong type of even
| one of those in the manure a little bit of shit could
| make you very sick (edit: as you point out, but my point
| is eating more shit exposes you to more of these on
| average).
|
| Don't eat shit or drink 1000x or 1000000x doses of
| something that's safe at 1x people _.
|
| _ no idea where glyphosate exposure sits but even if it's
| safe at normal exposure, don't just drink it ok?
| IncRnd wrote:
| That's the point, though. From the article, the urine of
| 80% of the people was laced with glyphosate. It's not
| about a single ingestion but about it building up in the
| body.
| slowking2 wrote:
| Dose dependence is still a thing for long term exposure.
| There's a lot of crap in urine. Knowing someone is
| pissing something doesn't mean it's toxic. We already
| know they're exposed because they eat it. There is very
| little new information gained just by knowing people
| urinate it. You'd need to know how much of it they
| urinate compared to the amount they are exposed to and
| for how long to start figuring out if there is a long
| term build up. And even if there was no long term build
| up it may or may not be long term toxic. Like drinking
| alcohol. There is no long term build up of ethanol in the
| body but long term consumption of enough alcohol is still
| dangerous.
| krolden wrote:
| That's stupid. But I will definitely drink some compost tea
| if it will shut you up.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| _subgroup analysis showed that increase in consumption of
| three cups of black tea per day was a significant risk
| factor for breast cancer (RR, 1.18; 95% CI, 1.05-1.32)._
| foxhop wrote:
| that's ridiculous it also messes up digestive systems, gluten
| intolerance. the chemical is BAD and does cause cancer.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Let me express my utter lack of confidence in your
| statement's connection to reality. The "gluten intolerance"
| should be a strong warning sign of Woo.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Don't see any citations on either side of this discussion.
|
| WHO says yes [0] while EPA says "not likely" [1]. Until the
| experts agree people can decide for themselves what risks
| they consider acceptable. Or at least they can if they can
| afford buying from farmers who don't yet use the chemical.
|
| [0] https://www.iarc.fr/featured-news/media-centre-iarc-
| news-gly...
|
| [1] https://www.epa.gov/pesticides/epa-releases-draft-risk-
| asses...
| parineum wrote:
| WHO doesn't say "yes" they say "probably". Same category
| as very hot water (65c).
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IARC_group_2A
| cameronh90 wrote:
| To be fair, being submerged in hot water for long enough
| might cause cancer, if you somehow survive.
|
| From what I can tell, the WHO only categorises a single
| chemical as "Group 4: the agent (mixture) is probably not
| carcinogenic to humans".
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Just a nit (thanks for sources!!) it'll be stronger with
| a peer reviewed citation rather than a regulatory notice.
| There's a lot of skepticism about the neutrality of
| regulators in this topic. Sadly with regulatory capture
| so rampant and regulators being political footballs
| they're poor sources of information.
| CharlesW wrote:
| How come? Is it not true that ~0.75% of Americans have
| celiac disease?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeliac_disease
| pfdietz wrote:
| How can that be relevant? I mean, this is just the
| grossest of correlations "Americans have X, and are also
| exposed to Y, therefore Y causes X"? If anything, it
| means actually establishing a causal relationship
| (assuming one existed) would be difficult because the
| background rate of this disease is so high.
| CharlesW wrote:
| I was responding to the parent commenter's claim that
| "gluten intolerance" (quotes theirs) was a "strong
| warning sign of woo".
|
| We know that environmental factors contribute to the
| development of celiac disease, so we should understand
| the degree to which glyphosate may be one of those.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| It's also true that 12% of Americans are left handed. But
| that doesn't mean it's caused by Roundup.
| kennywinker wrote:
| There's not a well established link between gluten
| intolerance and glyphosate, but:
|
| > Fish exposed to glyphosate develop digestive problems
| that are reminiscent of celiac disease. Celiac disease is
| associated with imbalances in gut bacteria that can be
| fully explained by the known effects of glyphosate on gut
| bacteria
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945755/
|
| This isn't made up woo. It's a real potential link that
| needs to be fully explored not dismissed.
| parineum wrote:
| > It's a ... potential link that needs to be fully
| explored not dismissed
|
| Sure. Explore/research away but that doesn't justify the
| comment...
|
| > that's ridiculous it also messes up digestive systems,
| gluten intolerance.
|
| Anyone making a definitive statement on a causal link
| between glyphosate and cancer is not being informed by
| science. There might be a link, I don't really care. If
| there is, I'd definitely support getting it out of food.
| I really don't have an opinion on
| glyphosate/monsanto/miscellanious megacorp/chemical but
| what I do care about is people not perverting science to
| do their bidding.
|
| It's further frustrating because these arguments all
| originate from the same mindset as all the other nonsense
| that you may or may not believe depending on various
| cultural influences (anti-vax, homeopathy, chiropracty,
| global warming, "supplements", etc).
| CobaltFire wrote:
| While I understand your view, and shared it, I was recently
| diagnosed with exactly that and have had to reevaluate my
| position.
|
| I don't know WHY it happened or what caused it, but it's
| absolutely a real thing. It's also absolutely miserable;
| trying to navigate all of this without the woo and without
| others telling you that you are crazy or peddling woo is a
| hell of a needle to thread.
| jjulius wrote:
| Not-so-hot take: Both of you are wrong to state with
| certainty whether this discovery of glyphosate in our urine
| is good or bad for us, or whether we should discard this
| because of "data torture". From the article:
|
| >Cynthia Curl, Boise State University assistant professor
| of community and environmental health, said it was
| "obviously concerning" that a large percentage of the US
| population is exposed to glyphosate, but said _it is still
| unclear how that translates to human health_.
| parineum wrote:
| Only one of these people is wrong because only one is
| making or implying a statement of fact concerning a
| causal link that isn't shown in this paper and has never
| been shown in the past. Neither tried to make the claim
| that glyphosate in urine is a good thing.
| abe_duarte wrote:
| Monsanto knows this, they have known it for a while. It's a
| similar case to the teflon "issue".
| parineum wrote:
| Prove it.
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| Well, if it truly is tied to cancer, I'll be sure to let Hacker
| News know.
|
| Back in college I was paid $50 to wear a backpack sprayer loaded
| with the stuff and go nuclear on a guy's weed-infested garden.
| Backpack sprayers leak, so I got glyphosate all over my skin, my
| back in particular.
|
| It's been a little more than 10 years, so nothing, but then
| again, I'm also only 32, live a fairly healthy lifestyle, and
| have no family history of cancer, so maybe it just sort of
| cancels itself out.
| colordrops wrote:
| Exposure to carcinogens doesn't guarantee that you will get
| cancer.
| toxik wrote:
| I smoked a pack of cigs back in my teens and I don't have
| cancer.
| elif wrote:
| The skin is designed to protect you from foreign substances.
|
| The intestines are designed to absorb foreign substances.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I recommend you remind yourself of the HN rules.
|
| The evidence that glyphosate in fold causes cancer is currently
| really weak, albeit enough to convince a lay jury.
| swayvil wrote:
| The reply to which you replied is flagged and killed. It was
| not a very hot reply. It did not break the "guidelines". Well
| worded and informative actually.
|
| This is telling.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| It insinuated that there are a number of users on this
| website that are being paid by Monsanto. That is absolutely
| against site guidelines.
| swayvil wrote:
| No, the rules forbid explicit accusation. Not vague
| insinuation.
|
| A rule forbidding vague insinuation would be too broad
| and open to abuse.
|
| That said, Monsanto would certainly deploy a flock of
| shills to HN, reddit, twitter, facebook, etc. The
| existence of motive, means and opportunity is clear.
| Therefore they have definitely done that.
|
| Are we going to ignore that fact?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Why make up something so easily checked? From the HN
| rules:
|
| > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing,
| shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like.
| swayvil wrote:
| You got me. I assumed sanity would prevail. What a dope.
| stfp wrote:
| You're not responding to the parent's point. They're not
| saying that it causes or doesn't cause cancer.
|
| They're saying Monsanto and other multi billion dollar
| industrial players have permanent PR campaigns running that
| include posting on social media. I think that's obviously
| right and a big problem in terms of public discourse, at the
| very least, because it drowns out legitimate questions and
| concerns.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I am responding. Accusing others of astroturfing is a
| violation of HN guidelines.
|
| FWIW, people seem to vastly overestimate the amount of
| astroturfing that they are experiencing, perhaps because
| they find it difficult to believe many people have
| different views than they do.
| stfp wrote:
| > Accusing others
|
| They are pointing out that Monsanto does it, not accusing
| anyone here of being a shill.
|
| I thought it was a good reminder that views can be, and
| are influenced by industry (it's the foundation of modern
| PR?). I believe it's helpful to make others aware of
| this.
|
| At least that's how I read it -\\_(tsu)_/-
| whimsicalism wrote:
| HN guideline: Please don't post insinuations about
| astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents
| and the like.
|
| > Monsanto has had a huge astroturf campaign online for
| several years defending/promoting glyphosate (even on
| this website). ... I started noticing that there were the
| same users over and over with extremely well-researched
| defensive responses (the stuff that only someone with a
| PhD or JD could put together) and it's pretty obvious
| what's going on.
|
| Seems pretty obviously an insinuation that HN is full of
| pro-Monsanto astroturfing and I don't think it is a
| stretch to say it is a commentary on the specific
| comments in this thread.
| stfp wrote:
| jboogie77 wrote:
| The og comment is flagged so I can't reply to it but anyone
| with two brain cells can see the level of astroturfing
| Monsanto/Bauer has done in the past 15 years
| whimsicalism wrote:
| It's getting flagged because you both are breaking HN
| guidelines.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Maybe people just in general are opposed to removing car
| infrastructure and it is not some anti-democratic plot
| against your views?
|
| It's kind of sad that everyone thinks the person responding
| to them is a bit nowadays. In the vast majority of cases
| where I have looked into it, the person is not a "shill", but
| it is a convenient way to shy away from the actual arguments
| they are making.
|
| Unfortunately, that convenient method is not welcome here at
| HN. Reread the HN guidelines.
| stfp wrote:
| I'm saying people repeating talking points from industry
| without realizing it, or having really considered them in
| any serious way. This extends to offline conversations with
| family / friends so it's not about shills.
| UberFly wrote:
| "said it was "obviously concerning" that a large percentage of
| the US population is exposed to glyphosate, but said it is still
| unclear how that translates to human health"
|
| That last line pretty much sums up the article. Lots more
| questions than answers.
| de6u99er wrote:
| Remember this guy? https://youtu.be/ovKw6YjqSfM
| astrostl wrote:
| It's been in global use for almost 50 years. I don't doubt that
| it may produce some negative effects, but it wouldn't concern me
| even a little bit to discover that some of it could be detected
| in my urine. If the impacts were that severe I expect that they
| would have shown up in force by now.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| But isn't there a similar concern with microplastics?
|
| Plastics have been around for decades, but they're being used
| in greater volume every year, and we've been finding them in
| odd places, and we aren't sure it's safe for them to be in
| those places.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| The last 50 years has seen significant increases in the rates
| of obesity, severe allergies, celiac, heart disease,
| alzheimer's, depression, etc.
|
| There are plenty of other (demonstrated and theoretical)
| reasons behind that, but it seems a little hasty to say we
| haven't seen severe health impacts. It might just be that we
| haven't figured out the link yet.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| What do you mean by "severe effects" and how are you sure they
| haven't shown up in force?
|
| Let's say the incidence rate of certain types of cancer
| triples. You still might never meet someone with one of these
| types of cancer, and you might not even know if you did whether
| their cancer was caused by glyphosate.
|
| But still sounds like a severe effect to me if you're the guy
| with cancer, right?
| kpennell wrote:
| The US sprays this all over Colombia to get rid of Coca but it
| ends up getting into the water and other crops
| https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/03/20/biden-pushes-co...
| wronglyprepaid wrote:
| Maybe you linked to the wrong article, that article mentions
| "Duque's spraying campaign" - fairly sure that Duque is not US.
|
| Also Biden is the most progressive president in history, and I
| think with Colombia's track record when it comes to black and
| trans bodies you should maybe look in the mirror before
| pointing fingers.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Monsanto has poisoned the world..not just the US. Now that it
| sold out to Bayer, most of the world is fed by the same powers
| that made Agent Orange and Napalm.
|
| Our food is grown with fossil fuels and chemicals. It's chemical
| warfare on soil and water.
|
| Glyphosate gets into us due to runoff's into the water system and
| the aquifers. This is food grown as fodder and it gets into
| animals and then into us. It's hideously obscene.
|
| Most of the problem would be solved if we adopted eesponsible
| animal husbandry. Which means less meat and animal based foods.
| But that's only one part of the solution.
| csisnett wrote:
| Meat is good for you
| twawaaay wrote:
| There is very basic, simple reason for it and has nothing to do
| with the company being evil. I believe it is possible to use
| Roundup safely and the reason it gets into our food is misuse.
|
| (disclamier: "possible to use safely" does not mean it is
| reasonable to expect people to do so on their own)
|
| Roundup kills plants. It does it by breaking roots of the plant
| which causes the entire plant to dry out.
|
| For some crops (like wheat), it is very beneficial to harvest the
| crop after it dried out. But plants do not care about calendar
| and do not necessarily all dry out at the same time.
|
| So what farmers do, is to spray their crop just before harvest.
| It all dries out nicely and uniformly and can be harvested all
| together at the same time with minimum spoilage. It can also let
| them schedule harvest on various plots to happen at different
| times rather than all at the same time. It can also allow to
| force harvest earlier if you, for example, predict bad weather.
| Or if you want to go for vacation.
|
| This is not how Roundup is supposed to be used but this is very
| popular "hack".
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| I quit a job in the industry during the era the studies started
| coming out when I found out about the bosses ties to Monsanto.
| The real kicker for me was during my digging into them, although
| largely due to corporate buyout name games, they were the ones
| responsible for agent orange, with Nam vets in my family I
| couldn't stay.
|
| Use the most natural chemicals you can for crop/yard control. The
| same warning applies to the neurotoxins that are bug killers.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Natural doesn't mean anything when it comes to safety of a
| substance. There are quite a few dangerous substances used for
| "organic" weed and pest control. Well controlled synthetics can
| indeed be safer.
|
| Or if it's your yard, don't do anything to it. You don't need
| to.
| gregwebs wrote:
| I would encourage everyone to take a look at the glyphosphate
| toxicity report done by experts on toxicology:
| https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp214.pdf
|
| Most other summaries of glyphosphate toxicity are not by toxicity
| experts, are more politically influenced (today's agriculture
| relies on glyphosphate), and set the bar of evidence very high
| and otherwise assume glyphosphate is okay instead of taking a
| precautionary approach.
| pumnikol wrote:
| I've been in the field for many years and I see the EU on the
| forefront of public chemical safety, both in terms of legislation
| and enforcement. ECHA is transparent about glyphosate [1]. It is
| not even labelled as CMR on REACH Annex III [2], and that's
| saying a lot. If you follow the developments, you will find that
| there is no way to prove a chemical as "safe". All it takes is
| one bloke on record to develop any health condition which can be
| linked to a chemical, and it will be scrutinized six ways to
| Sundays. Often leading to the introduction or decrease of an OEL,
| or a classification of this substance. As new humans are born all
| of the time, and diagnostics and analysis methods are still being
| improved, the likelihood of any given chemical to be "harmless"
| asymptotically approaches zero. 1 in 2 people develop cancer
| during their lives [3]. There are currently > 23000 chemicals on
| the EEA market at >= 1 t/a [4].
|
| 1 https://echa.europa.eu/hot-topics/glyphosate 2
| https://www.echa.europa.eu/information-on-chemicals/annex-ii... 3
| https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/cancer/ 4
| https://echa.europa.eu/registration-statistics
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| However, there are people in the EU, who prolonged glyphosat
| usage for another few years, against the principles of the EU
| to only allow proven safe products.
|
| And they are still pushing CETA, which supposedly weakens
| standards for food and gives companies more rights to sue
| countries, when new protective laws are made.
|
| EU does many good things, but is far from always being on the
| lookout for the wellbeing of its people.
| emodendroket wrote:
| US regulators seemingly subscribe to the "three monkeys"
| approach where they assume everything being added to your food
| is safe and don't ask too many questions unless compelled.
| sharrington wrote:
| While most are focusing on glyphosate's debated status as a
| carcinogen, it was approved by the FDA as as an herbicide, in
| part, because it does not interact with any human metabolic
| pathways. We may be missing the forest for the trees talking
| about cancer when we could be exploring glyphosates negative
| impact on gut microbiome and bacterial/fungal metabolic pathway
| inhibition.
|
| Anecdotally, I know a lot of folks who have GI-distress from
| eating wheat (99% of which is sprayed with RoundUp to allow for
| faster harvesting time), but are fine when eating a non-
| commoditized grain like Farro. Notably, both contain plenty of
| gluten, however, Farro is harvested _without_ RoundUp (fact-check
| required...) in a much less efficient way (hence the higher price
| tag).
| kmbfjr wrote:
| I live in a very rural area, and have never seen winter wheat
| sprayed with Roundup to speed up harvest time.
|
| I have seen it sprayed in the early spring, but never when
| kernels are on the plant.
|
| Given that a majority of wheat is winter wheat harvested in the
| heat of summer, I just can't see how spraying it with Roundup
| speeds up anything.
|
| Soybeans? That gets blasted with Roundup. Frequently.
| airocker wrote:
| Does organic food really not carry glyphosate?
| colordrops wrote:
| It shouldn't if handled properly.
| pragmatic wrote:
| Add I kid I watched people who worked with the spray coups/planes
| work with zero safety equipment.
|
| They would reach right into tanks full of weed killer with bare
| hands to try to fix something. No masks worn, no gloves.
|
| We've learned a lot since the 70s/80s/90s.
|
| I would imagine direct substained contact with the stuff is
| different than the minimal amounts in food.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| Like how asbestos is never good for you, but if you're a
| shipbreaker working with asbestos for 40 years, it's definitely
| worse than if you're a homeowner and accidentally knock some
| asbestos out of your ceiling.
|
| But in the same lines, I'm still more worried about glyphosate
| showing up in food from the supermarket than if I spray it
| around my house
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Is this a case of:
|
| -no cancer -no famine -low cost
|
| Choose two?
| bfrog wrote:
| Aren't there side effects of this stuff killing other
| microorganisms in the soil? Like it's not just the cancer aspect,
| or the gmo crop aspect. It's, as I understand it, contributing to
| arable land loss
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