3 ms·

I hate articles like this. Zero useful data. Zero useful sources. And zero information about the levels of glyphosate which were found.

by Bud 8y ago

exp1orer 8y ago
That's fair, if a bit strong - this one has more [1]. "Separately, FDA chemist Narong Chamkasem found “over-the-tolerance” levels of glyphosate in corn, detected at 6.5 parts per million, an FDA email states. The legal limit is 5.0 ppm." Here[2] are the FOIA documents they're citing. The original article does link directly to an email with the 6.5 ppm figure[3]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/30/fda-weedkiller-glyphosate-in-food-internal-emails https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/30/fda-weedkill... [2] https://usrtk.org/pesticides/fda-foia-documents-regarding-glyphosate-residue-testing/ https://usrtk.org/pesticides/fda-foia-documents-regarding-gl... [3] https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Over-the-tolerance-finding-in-corn.pdf https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Over-the-tolera...
dandare 8y ago
This is part of the reason why people believe in conspiracy theories. This issue should be absolutely clear - either there is a harmful level of pesticides in our food or not. Any ambiguity should be investigated by the police as a public endangerment crime. There should be zero room four doubt in cases like this.
- ItsMe000001 8y ago
  > either there is a harmful level of pesticides in our food or not That is an impossible standard even if we had far better methods. One, "damage" is a continuum. Two, who is affected is a wide range. Three, we only test chemicals individually, and set threshold levels individually, but in reality mixing chemicals very often leads to vastly different effects. For example, when lead and mercury were tested together (LD testing) it was found toxicity increased a thousandfold compared to each one alone. But there is no way to test a meaningful number of combinations, and that would still leave out what happens in the extremely complex biochemical environment of a human body in any case. For the foreseeable future, maybe forever even in 10,000 years of solid scientific progress (because complex stuff remains complex), will be be able to do more than do guesstimates - and they will all be on a population level, don't even try to say anything definite about an individual. That means calling for "solid proof of damage" before anything gets banned is a sure way to stall any action almost indefinitely. I recommend a look at the history of lead (which has not yet ended at all). The most "solid proof" I can think of is a large scale and long-term human experiment, unthinkable. Even then you could raise doubts about the context/environment, methods, selected participants, etc. "Solid proof" is a lot less solid than a lot of people think, the text book examples of easy primitive physics experiments make it seem as if it's easy to find out things "for certain".

I hate articles like this. Zero useful data. Zero useful sources. And zero information about the levels of glyphosate which were found.

by Bud 8y ago

I hate articles like this. Zero useful data. Zero useful sources. And zero information about the levels of glyphosate which were found.

exp1orer 8y ago

That's fair, if a bit strong - this one has more [1]. "Separately, FDA chemist Narong Chamkasem found “over-the-tolerance” levels of glyphosate in corn, detected at 6.5 parts per million, an FDA email states. The legal limit is 5.0 ppm." Here[2] are the FOIA documents they're citing. The original article does link directly to an email with the 6.5 ppm figure[3]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/30/fda-weedkiller-glyphosate-in-food-internal-emails https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/30/fda-weedkill... [2] https://usrtk.org/pesticides/fda-foia-documents-regarding-glyphosate-residue-testing/ https://usrtk.org/pesticides/fda-foia-documents-regarding-gl... [3] https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Over-the-tolerance-finding-in-corn.pdf https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Over-the-tolera...

dandare 8y ago

This is part of the reason why people believe in conspiracy theories. This issue should be absolutely clear - either there is a harmful level of pesticides in our food or not. Any ambiguity should be investigated by the police as a public endangerment crime. There should be zero room four doubt in cases like this.

ItsMe000001 8y ago
> either there is a harmful level of pesticides in our food or not That is an impossible standard even if we had far better methods. One, "damage" is a continuum. Two, who is affected is a wide range. Three, we only test chemicals individually, and set threshold levels individually, but in reality mixing chemicals very often leads to vastly different effects. For example, when lead and mercury were tested together (LD testing) it was found toxicity increased a thousandfold compared to each one alone. But there is no way to test a meaningful number of combinations, and that would still leave out what happens in the extremely complex biochemical environment of a human body in any case. For the foreseeable future, maybe forever even in 10,000 years of solid scientific progress (because complex stuff remains complex), will be be able to do more than do guesstimates - and they will all be on a population level, don't even try to say anything definite about an individual. That means calling for "solid proof of damage" before anything gets banned is a sure way to stall any action almost indefinitely. I recommend a look at the history of lead (which has not yet ended at all). The most "solid proof" I can think of is a large scale and long-term human experiment, unthinkable. Even then you could raise doubts about the context/environment, methods, selected participants, etc. "Solid proof" is a lot less solid than a lot of people think, the text book examples of easy primitive physics experiments make it seem as if it's easy to find out things "for certain".