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New Evidence About the Dangers of Monsanto’s Roundup
- searine 10y agoBunk. > But mounting evidence, including one study published in February The article boldly cites a paper by Gilles-Eric Séralini for "evidence" of roundup causing cancer. Seralini is a known fraud who has had multiple papers retracted. The only reason this paper they cited was published at all is because it is published in a predatory journal that will accept anything as long as you pay the fee. >World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) declared glyphosate a probable human carcinogen Their definition of "probable human carcinogen" is laughably broad. >Meanwhile, in November the European Food Safety Authority issued a report concluding that the active ingredient in Roundup was “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans.” The EFSA is order of magnitude more reliable than a fraud like Seralini, so I am puzzled why it took so long for the article to mention this? This position is mirrored by the EPA, Royal Society, and National Academy of Sciences. The article then goes in depth to ride Seralini's dick and give attention to this quack. This is a shameful piece of "science" reporting, I expected better from The Intercept instead of this ignorant garbage. Edit by request : EFSA : http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/4302 http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/4302 EPA [PDF] : https://www3.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_search/reg_actions/reregistration/fs_PC-417300_1-Sep-93.pdf https://www3.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_search/reg_actions/rere... NAS : http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/national-academy-of-sciences-finds-no-evidence-of-gmo-health/article_a7ffbe9a-5848-5826-aa28-6b75b3c947d2.html http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/national-academy-of-s... Safety of POEA : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15862083 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15862083
- guelo 10y agoThanks but I'll pass on the side order of unknown chemicals.
- searine 10y agoBad news buddy. Everything is made of chemicals.
- goda90 10y agoA good portion of which can do serious harm to life. Therefore "unknown" is the issue.
- searine 10y agoI agree, so why be concerned with ppb of rigorously studied chemicals shown time and again to be safe (quack-science excluded)? Your daily coffee is probably an order of magnitude more carcinogenic than any glyphosate/roundup exposure.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago>(IARC) declared glyphosate a probable human carcinogen // You consider IARC to be "quack-science"?
- searine 10y agoThey don't have evidence that glyphosate is a carcinogen. They are using general classifications to infer potential harm. Glyphosate is in the same class as cooked meat. This is also likely political posturing to appease anti-gmo sentiments.
- pbhjpbhj 10y agoCooked meats are carcinogenic though (eg http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/diet/cooked-meats-fact-sheet http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/di...) aren't they? So ... are you saying glyphosate is known to be mutagenic and likely to cause cancers or that the common understanding on cooked meats is wrong. I'm not clear how the mutagenic properties reported in cooked meats appease "anti-gmo sentiments" as 'organic' meats are as likely to be cooked as others. You're being very vociferous in your arguing perhaps you got carried away in your claims for Monsanto products?
- tptacek 10y agoYou think that if farmers eschew Roundup you're going to have a better idea of what chemicals are on the crops you consume? Roundup is popular because it's potent, and it's potent because glyphosate is an elegant and powerful weed control solution. Most farmers who don't use glyphosate will use something less biochemically elegant, and those things are more likely to be harmful to humans, not less.
- guelo 10y agoIt's like everybody missed the part of the article where it's not just glyphosate and we're not allowed to know what the other additives are.
- tptacek 10y agoNo, I read that part too, and I understand the concern --- but how is it less of a concern for other pesticides? The safety record on conventional weed control is... not great.
- ArtDev 10y agoRegardless, Roundup is not safe. Glyphosate probably is safe, by itself. After college I did landscaping. Once I cleared brush that had been treated with Roundup, and broke into an itchy rash from head to toe. After that experience, I quite landscaping forever. The biggest lie is that Roundup IS glyphosate. This false. Roundup is a chemical slurry of byproducts that happens to contain some glyphosate. Otherwise it would not be so cheap.
- searine 10y ago>Regardless, Roundup is not safe. PROVE IT. All studies thus far point to roundup/glyphosate being incredibly safe. Far safer than any alternative, including many "natural" ones. The LD50 for glyphosate is like a fucking kilogram for humans. >After college I did landscaping After college I did a Phd in genetics.
- ArtDev 10y agoI was a biology major. If Roundup was only glyphosate, it would be safe. It is made from recycled chemicals. That is all I know.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago> It is made from recycled chemicals Is this a joke? So are apples, people and cats.
- ArtDev 10y agoIndustrial chemistry doesn't have to be that clean. Especially if you are just spraying it on the ground and selling it cheap. Makes sense to me. No, I don't have any links to back it up.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- WHGANDNORAHG 10y ago
- angersock 10y agoI'm downvoting you (pretty much everywhere here) because you haven't provided any links to substantiate your dismissals and further you've come off rather uncivilly.
- searine 10y ago> you haven't provided any links to substantiate your dismissals Because it is the widely publicized scientific consensus. But if you insist. EFSA : http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/4302 http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/4302 EPA [PDF] : https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-06/documents/glyphosate-417300_2015-06-29_txr0057175.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-06/documents... NAS : http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/national-academy-of-sciences-finds-no-evidence-of-gmo-health/article_a7ffbe9a-5848-5826-aa28-6b75b3c947d2.html http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/national-academy-of-s... Safety of POEA : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15862083 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15862083
- aresant 10y agoI would suggest that you attach these to your top comment with an "EDIT" flag since primary source info substantiates your comment.
- bcoates 10y agoIt's trivial to google the guy's name and confirm he's a self-identified anti-GMO crank with paper retractions. It's not reasonable to ask for citations on things you can easily confirm or deny yourself.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoIt is polite to provide them, though.
- colordrops 10y agoReally odd how articles criticizing a weed killer rile up such emotion. Your response is a good part ad hominem and emotional attacks. Do you have any facts to back up your claims? Seralini is a fraud according to who? He is well respected and has won awards from the German Federation of Scientists. He has actually won court cases against special interests that have attempted to libel him. Seems that you were influenced by this libel. And why should I trust your judgement over WHO on carcinogenicity? Talking about "riding dicks" doesn't help your cause either. You come off as immature and it hurts your credibility. I'm surprised you've been voted to the top.
- davidw 10y ago> Talking about "riding dicks" doesn't help your cause either. Yeah, whatever else is true in his comment (and I think most of it is), I didn't care for that at all. I think people get riled up about this stuff because Monsanto is a particular bête noire of some leftish anti-science people. BTW, the guy in question is very definitely controversial and has an Agenda with a capital A. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9ralini_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9ralini_affair
- Chathamization 10y ago> I think people get riled up about this stuff because Monsanto is a particular bête noire of some leftish anti-science people. The reverse is true as well. Monsanto/GMO debates seem to be mostly about posturing/signaling, with the two sides throwing pseudoscience and FUD at each other and absolutely no chance of either side reconsidering their stances or taking a close look at the facts. It's more akin to the argument between different religious fanatics, and agnostics or non-believers don't have much to gain by getting in the middle of it.
- davidw 10y agoA lot of it seems to be the anti-science folks who are against GMO's and the like, and Monsanto is a convenient bad guy. Most of the actual science and law doesn't seem to look that bad for them once you get past the "outrage!" articles. Of course, like many a large company, they do have some ugly history in their past, and I'm sure they're not perfect, so I guess that makes it more convenient. However, yeah, it does make discussing specific things kind of difficult.
- kafkaesq 10y agoBunk Maybe, but your post is overly emotional in a bunch of ways -- and worse, uses language that's really quite a turn-off, viscerally, in a technical forum -- and as such, doesn't exactly inspire me to follow up on any of your links. If anything, it leaves the impression that even if the Intercept article was sloppy (or worse), then most likely your analysis is engaging in some form of cherry picking or other rhetorical manipulation, as well... so why should I bother?
- ArtDev 10y agoAs my chemisty professor explained to me many years ago, its not the glyphosate that makes Roundup dangerous, its the byproducts and accidental ingredients. Roundup is made from recycled chemicals. Every batch is different and some of it has lots of heavy metals.
- johnm1019 10y agoThis is much more interesting than the article. Is there anywhere that explains how roundup is made and highlights this fact?
- ArtDev 10y agoI haven't looked into it, but I have always been curious about it. I would imagine that many chemical processes from industry have byproducts that are recycled and used in different ways. Putting them into cheap products like Roundup makes sense, from a pure business perspective.
- DanBC 10y agoIt would make the MSDS fucking useless. Since these are regulated (at least, in the EU) I find it hard to believe that monsanto puts any of shit into a barrel, and some glyphosate, and then puts a Roundup label on it.
- ArtDev 10y agoI do. It is dirt cheap. Maybe you can trust the safety standards in Europe but here in the US, government regulation for food safety is notoriously bad. The FDA has been broken for years.
- hathawsh 10y agoYour explanation is appealing because it fits Hanlon's razor: "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." If you're right, then we're putting chemicals of unknown toxicity in homes everywhere. Do you have anything else to back up this assertion?
- maxerickson 10y agoThis 1998 MSDS does list polyethoxylated tallow amine as an inert ingredient, with an immediately adjacent note that it is a Hazardous chemical under the criteria of the OSHA Hazard Communication Standard (29 CFR 1910.1200). http://greenhouse.ucdavis.edu/pest/pmsds/Roundup.PDF http://greenhouse.ucdavis.edu/pest/pmsds/Roundup.PDF I've used Roundup a little bit (not anywhere close to what would happen occupationally) and have always been more concerned with exposure to the solvent during application than any later exposure. I'm not sure what the OSHA thing entails, I'm sure it means that employers would have to make information available to employees, but it isn't clear that it would require them to do anything more.
- ArtDev 10y agoInteresting that is contains Ethoxylated Tallowamine. I would like to know what other "inert" ingredients are commonly found in it. Also, is it true that it contains heavy metals?
- maxerickson 10y agoThe linked article is largely about Ethoxylated Tallowamine. If you believe that the US system for hazardous materials is effective, then no, it won't contain anything more than traces of other materials, because those things aren't on the safety label. If you don't believe that the US system for hazardous materials is effective, why would you believe me either?
- ArtDev 10y agoI think that MSDS sheets have their limits. Its basically just for acute exposure.
- maxerickson 10y agoThey are required to characterize the material in question. They don't say a bit of glyphosate and some other stuff we had around, they list the ingredients and give the proportion of each ingredient.
- clarkevans 10y agoWhy is the burden of proof on the public to show a pesticide is unsafe, rather than on the manufacturer to ensure (and publicly document, explain) that they have reasonable expectation of safety? Why is it hard/impossible for independent investigators to get samples? We're talking about our water (run-off) and food supplies here.
- colordrops 10y agoIt's clearly because moneyed interests run a multi-pronged campaign to avoid that.
- briandear 10y agoHow can you prove a negative? Can you prove that you don't beat your wife? The MSDS process does provide a rather comprehensive treatment of chemicals. It would be ridiculous to prove that every single chemical doesn't cause a rare pancreatic cancer. How do you test that? Human trials? It isn't the money'd interests, it just practical reality. These chemicals ARE tested to some extent.. It would be ridiculous for a company to have to prove their product doesn't cause any of 10,000 types of cancer, diseases or any other ailment. Then you have pseudo-science forces working against "industry" regardless of facts. DDT is a great example of what happens when we let people like Rachel Carson have the unrestricted ability to effectively libel a product based on discredited science -- leading to malaria almost being eliminated to malaria killing millions of people each year. Maybe activists ought to have their claims subject to regulation.. They are guilty of scientific fraud. Vaccines, DDT, GMOs, fracking.. They are opposed to those things not based on actual, credible and repeatable science but because pop culture "experts" want to sell books or movie tickets and organizations have a financial interest in promoting their "non-profits."
- jayfuerstenberg 10y agoIt's good to see Europe taking the opposite approach of America with regards to Glyphosate. Forget the studies and just let time show us who is right and who is wrong. All I do know is that humanity made it this far (15000+ years of agriculture) without such chemicals and we'll probably make it much further without them. If you like Glyphosate, fair enough, enjoy! The rest of us might sit on the sidelines and watch this experiment unfold.
- wslh 10y agoThis is an "old" news from Argentina http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27373134 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27373134 where Monsanto pesticides were used and cancer affected many people in a specific population.
- DrScump 10y ago"We diluted the formulation 5,000 times, and some of the embryos died and some of them became malformed. I decided to inject pure glyphosate into embryos and we got the same result." If you try both baseline concentration and 5000X baseline and get the same results, that would seem to indicate that glyphoshate was not causative in that experiment.
- wslh 10y agoI invite you to come to Argentina and see the result with your own eyes.
- andrewclunn 10y agoEnvironmental puritan wackos hate genetic engineering. Fight for science. Fight for food security. Fight against this rising tide of ignorance and scare tactics posing as science. http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-gm-corn-rat-study/ http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-gm-corn-rat...
- ArtDev 10y agoReal science is actually hard to find on the internet. Yes, mostly wackos dominate Google results on certain searches.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago> Real science is actually hard to find on the internet I start on Wikipedia and then move to referenced sources. Next I move to Google Scholar, sorting by citations.
- sndean 10y agoAnd PubMed is pretty good for health related things: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed Cochrane reviews are about as good as it gets, but it looks like they don't have anything on glyphosate: http://www.cochrane.org/ http://www.cochrane.org/
- shkkmo 10y agoFight for making the genome of our food supply FLOS?
- andrewclunn 10y agoSo attacking safety with bad science is no okay in achieving an end goal of up law reform, which doesn't even follow? Go look up moving goal post.
- shkkmo 10y ago
- luketych 10y agoAll people are immature. Maybe we should stop trying to hide that, acting all proper. I talk that way as well, it's better than censwhoring your thoughts 24/7. All people are also racist and those who say they arent usually are the most racist. That's a different discussion, but similarly applies. It does no good to be afraid of being human. We are simian. We are an immature, racist, justifying species. So what? Embrace the grease. It's going to get worse before it gets better. Or maybe your precious AI will save you? Good luck my rational human friends.
- throwastone 10y agoRespectfully disagree. We are what we strive to be. Hacker News was, once upon a time, almost purely respectful even in the face of stark criticism or blatant dismissals. That, sadly, has changed.
- luketych 10y agoOver many hours of awareness and training I would agree. But at the end of the day the elephant calls the shots, not the rider. Unless we learn to influence the beast more and more, and in all areas of our lives. P.S. Is it just me who loves the rush of getting downvoted? The truth is almost always unpopular. Not saying that what I say is necessarily the truth, but it's a good sign :). Pussified zombies ;).
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y agoYou forgot sexist. That is so annoying.
- MaxfordAndSons 10y agoThis strikes me as a plainly false equivocation - railing against political correctness or "acting proper" as a way of justifying being "immature, racist, justifying". But one can (and must, imo) agree that too much political correctness can be problematic and unproductive without accepting the next proposition.
- 10y ago
- sschueller 10y agoInteresting since the EU will be voting to permit the use for another 7 years this week or next.
- ArtDev 10y agoFrom the article: " But because manufacturers of weed killers are required to disclose only the chemical structures of their “active” ingredients — and can hide the identity of the rest as confidential business information — for many years no one knew exactly what other chemicals were in these products, let alone how they affected health. "
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoDo we have a better source on this claim?
- maxerickson 10y agoThis page discusses the MSDS disclosure rules for trade secrets: http://www.ilpi.com/msds/ref/tradesecret.html http://www.ilpi.com/msds/ref/tradesecret.html In the US, it has to be a legitimate trade secret, not just something they don't feel like disclosing.
- perlgeek 10y agoWouldn't a mass spectroscopy give pretty good clues about the other ingredients?
- underbluewaters 10y agoFor many tasks involving herbicide, there's a choice between these chemicals or labor intensive and exhausting use of heavy machinery and hand tools. There may some day be a proven link between Roundup and cancer. But there is a known high risk using more labor intensive methods. Agricultural work is one of the most dangerous occupations and it's due to tractor rollovers, falls, and lacerations. Suspending the use of herbicide would mean hundreds (thousands?) more gruesome deaths per year. I've got a small coffee farm with some wild areas that I'm clearing and I started out wanting to do everything "organic". After 1 year it was clear that prepping land the old fashioned way would be significantly more hazardous.
- searine 10y agoThis is an excellent point. So many people forget about the human costs of agriculture.
- dexterdog 10y agoThey also forget about the energy costs and the subsidies. If we had to pay what food really costs agriculture might be considered the sexiest area to work in.
- cfontes 10y agoAlso productivity, there would be a lot less food available without it, and I imagine it would be close to impossible to manage pests and diseases in a 200km wide one crop farm.
- Retric 10y agoThere is a huge range of pesticides. Also, the US has such a massive food surplus producing less food is a viable option.
- dogma1138 10y agoThe US won't be affected, neither would be Europe the rest of the world well.... It's all nice when we talk about organic food and about being ok with paying 10$ for couple of ecofriendly organic fair traded tomatoes but some one in India won't be able to afford that, heck many people in the US won't be able to afford them either. Banning GMO's is all nice and dandy but all what we do is push farmers to produce "premium" crops that can be sold at 10 times the price while producing 1/4th of the amount which would leave allot of people hungry. A framer doesn't care how many people he feeds he only cares about the button line if he can make more money by feeding less people with organic food the fact the some one will go hungry won't really be in that equation.
- elf25 10y agoThere ARE organic weed killer available. My brother in law made one and seels it and it's rather effective.