13 ms·

So the "animals" mentioned in the title refers to roundworms, a parasite that lives in soil. Not something you exactly want, but also not something you would e

So the "animals" mentioned in the title refers to roundworms, a parasite that lives in soil. Not something you exactly want, but also not something you would expect to be targeted by a herbicide. Glyphosate discussions always brings out people with strong opinions, but the product is studied extensively by researchers and the majority of studies have not shown harm. That doesn't prove it's safe of course, but it's where we're currently at. Because Roundup is such an important part of our agricultural industry, it should continue to be studied in depth. This study and others like it are important to ensuring that farming at scale remains safe for human consumption, as well as minimizes environmental impact.

slimsag 4y ago
Do you know if there /are/ any studies done with smaller mammals, out of curiosity? My worry is always that we're poisoning our dogs/cats, where a toxic amount I imagine is much smaller
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  You’re worried about dogs and not children or adults?
  - serf 4y ago
    you're worried about children and adults and not our global society, war abroad, disease, destitution, and human suffering? see what I did there? I presumed you didn't care about anything not explicitly mentioned -- was I accurate? I bet not. humans tend to (generally) wait until the produce is washed and on a dinner plate before they try licking it -- animals (and certainly some humans, too) may not. The specific worry may be towards the danger of the high volumes of raw chemical on the plant itself rather than the underlying danger of treating a plant with that chemical before preparation and wash.
    - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
      > wait until the produce is washed It is my understanding that the produce assimilates the chemical internally
- nemo44x 4y ago
  You want to wait for it to dry before letting animals and people in the area you have applied Roundup.
  - slimsag 4y ago
    Of course, but it's still there after drying. dogs/cats sniff the ground, lay on it, eat bugs that have interacted with it, etc. (hopefully not for all of these, but I am sure they do)
    - cma 4y ago
      Some things completely change character after drying. Permethrin will kill cats while wet (like just after applying topically to a dog), but they wont absorb enough of it dry. And it doesn't really re-wet by just adding water (permethrin for hiking stays on clothes through 30 washes or something). I'm not sure if it chemically changes or if it starts out in some kind of emulsion or something that can't be recreated by just rewetting with water.
      - slimsag 4y ago
        That's really interesting, I didn't know that. Makes me wonder how many herbicides / insecticides are like this for sure
dzink 4y ago
That roundworm aerates the soil and is critical for the health of plants you’re eating as well. It’s also a proxy for nervous system reactions.
- XorNot 4y ago
  Glyphosate doesn't last in soil though, it's broken down in a few days by soil bacteria.
  - thecolorblue 4y ago
    I have heard this too, but then how is it showing up in people later on?
    - katbyte 4y ago
      It gets into plants and animals during those days https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/the-herbicide-glyphosate-persists-in-wild-edible-plants-b-c-study https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/the-herbicide-glyph...
  - katbyte 4y ago
    Doesn’t mean that it doesn't last elsewhere, studies in BC have shown that is persists in plants that are sprayed but don’t die for at least a year https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/the-herbicide-glyphosate-persists-in-wild-edible-plants-b-c-study https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/the-herbicide-glyph... Which makes the practice above of spraying replanted forests so “the good trees grow faster” even more abhorrent
    - soperj 4y ago
      > the good trees grow faster They replant with round-up ready pine, so they spray to kill aspen which is a firebreak species, and grow massive pine stands which are the opposite. It's the major reason for the massive forest fires we've had lately (and thus the massive flooding).
whalesalad 4y ago
wirrbel 4y ago
To me it appears that roundup kind of blocks an honest discussion on other causes of declining insect populations.
- soperj 4y ago
  what would these be? edit: this was a genuine inquisitive question, not snarkiness.
  - wirrbel 4y ago
    Global warming. There is a German entomologist who thinks this is the most likely explanation (or the largest contributor). Iirc the insect population declines everywhere. Also in woodland where roundup is not applied.
  - algoatecorn 4y ago
    One factor could be land use and reduction of the overall richness of our ecosystem. That could be highways, cities, suburbs, timberland, and the coverage of monoculture crops
user3939382 4y ago
> the product is studied extensively by researchers Which researchers and funded by whom? This is the line Monsanto brings out every time. It turns out their corrupt research couldn't convince a court, who decided glyphosate was to blame for cancer, to the tune of $300M c.f. Johnson v. Monsanto Co. And it's not just roundworms https://sites.psu.edu/soilmicrobiology/projects/glyphosate-impacts-soil-microbes/ https://sites.psu.edu/soilmicrobiology/projects/glyphosate-i... This chemical is bad news and the only reason it's legal is regulatory capture by Monsanto/Bayer.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  you know that this judgment was very controversial or you believe everything is just 1 and zeroes in life?
  - saiya-jin 4y ago
    Seriously, WTF is wrong with people... we repeatedly polluted whole world with harmful substances like lead that killed god knows how many people and damaged in some way everybody else with this kind of logic, yet people have the balls to come up with "innocent until proven guilty by 100 peer reviews" mantra for... MONSANTO I don't believe, unlike many, that they are comically evil guys. Just playing a god for profit with stuff they probably understand only in lower 90 percentile range, especially second, third etc. order effects. And probably too over-invested in direction company took decades ago, so nobody looking at bonuses as drive will change its direction dramatically.
    - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
      Choosing to blindly believe one side over blindly believing the other side is a dubious approach to these things. I care about environmental issues, and have no love for many aspects of Monsanto’s business and history, but your emotional appeal is extremely unconvincing. > for Monsanto GP isn’t making their comment “for Monsanto”, but for the sake of seeking the truth on this specific issue. You will continue to be shocked until you change your perspective on how we ought to evaluate nuanced issues. Especially when those issues have to do with global food production.
Dig1t 4y ago
>Glyphosate discussions always brings out people with strong opinions That's funny, I've experienced this first hand. There's a guy who comes into the vet clinic I frequent who's dog died of cancer and he drives around with giant decals pasted all over his white van saying that Roundup killed his dog and to stay away from it. He claims that the gardener sprayed his dog deliberately and that his dog died as a result. He is very passionate about it and spends a lot of time evangelizing this cause.
jiggywiggy 4y ago
Pesticides & herbecides in general are just not safe at the moment and it's been clear they having been causing lots of health problems. A lot of people, especially the farmers themselves & people living close to the farms get way too high amounts of pesticides in their system. And I also don't trust the safe amounts allowed are actually properly tested over a lifetime. Causing all kinds of issues, among parkinsons and such, take France for instance: https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2021/06/vineyard-pesticides-linked-to-parkinsons/ https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2021/06/vineyard-...
- gcheong 4y ago
  This site seems to promote organic agricultural practices as pesticide-safe but organic farming uses some of the most dangerous pesticides (e.g copper sulfate) precisely because of the anti-scientific requirement that anything used must be of "natural" origin, which is just the naturalistic fallacy. The bias here is clear.
throwaway4aday 4y ago
I wonder how much the effect on microorganisms has been studied. I have a small hunch that a lot of the weird reactions people have to various plants can be traced back to glyphosate and its effect on our gut biome.
kingkawn 4y ago
These neurotoxins do not deserve the benefit of the doubt until shown otherwise
- gruez 4y ago
  It's a neurotoxin... according to whom? A search for "neuro" in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate turns up 0 matches. However, the same wikipedia article does mention the mechanism of action >It inhibits a plant enzyme involved in the synthesis of three aromatic amino acids: tyrosine, tryptophan, and phenylalanine which seems decidedly not a neurotoxin.
photochemsyn 4y ago
This whole subject does reveal the duplicity and manipulation of Bayer-Monsanto on this topic, because they use studies on purified glyphosate to make their claims of harmlessness. However, RoundUp is glyphosate + surfactants (oily lipid-type molecules) which are needed to dissolve the waxy leaf surface so that the glyphosate can be absorbed by the plant, without which the herbicide would be ineffective. Studies with RoundUp formulation show the disruption of cell cycle effects, which can lead to cancer in applicators who get exposed. This is a common issue with a wide variety of strong surfactants, for example see this from the Deepwater Horizon blowout, where they dumped tons of a surfactant mix called Corexit: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Corexit https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Corexit
- gabereiser 4y ago
  There will always be people who believe the Bayer-Monsanto propaganda. Just like there are people who believe that burning 100m-year-old plant matter is fine. Just like people believe that there are aliens living among us. There have been countless studies on the matter. Even without the surfactants it's still a nasty substance. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2021.763917/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2021.7639... https://www.cornucopia.org/2014/03/gut-wrenching-new-studies-reveal-insidious-effects-glyphosate/ https://www.cornucopia.org/2014/03/gut-wrenching-new-studies... https://www.figo.org/removal-glyphosate-global-usage https://www.figo.org/removal-glyphosate-global-usage https://jech.bmj.com/content/71/6/613 https://jech.bmj.com/content/71/6/613 https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-016-0117-0 https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-...
- shawnz 4y ago
  Surfactants are essentially soaps, right? So surely their safety profile is well understood already and glyphosate is the more important component to be researching anyway?
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    "Surely" is the opposite of science. There are as many kinds of surfactants as of acids and bases. You would not say of an acid, "surely it is essentially vinegar", or of a base "surely it is essentially baking soda".
pvaldes 4y ago
Soil roundworms are not necessarily parasites. Free living ones have huge populations in the soils and sea bottoms. In ecology handbooks there is often shown a study that found more kilograms of roundworms than kilograms of deer living in the same places. They are highly influential in fertile soils.
dekhn 4y ago
c elegans are roundworms, but they are not parasites. They eat bacteria and yeast that grow on rotting fruit and other decaying matter. If roundup or glyphosate had these effects on c. elegans I'd expect a large-scale visibly noticeable impact on crop yields.

slimsag 4y ago

Do you know if there /are/ any studies done with smaller mammals, out of curiosity? My worry is always that we're poisoning our dogs/cats, where a toxic amount I imagine is much smaller

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
You’re worried about dogs and not children or adults?
- serf 4y ago
  you're worried about children and adults and not our global society, war abroad, disease, destitution, and human suffering? see what I did there? I presumed you didn't care about anything not explicitly mentioned -- was I accurate? I bet not. humans tend to (generally) wait until the produce is washed and on a dinner plate before they try licking it -- animals (and certainly some humans, too) may not. The specific worry may be towards the danger of the high volumes of raw chemical on the plant itself rather than the underlying danger of treating a plant with that chemical before preparation and wash.
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    > wait until the produce is washed It is my understanding that the produce assimilates the chemical internally
nemo44x 4y ago
You want to wait for it to dry before letting animals and people in the area you have applied Roundup.
- slimsag 4y ago
  Of course, but it's still there after drying. dogs/cats sniff the ground, lay on it, eat bugs that have interacted with it, etc. (hopefully not for all of these, but I am sure they do)
  - cma 4y ago
    Some things completely change character after drying. Permethrin will kill cats while wet (like just after applying topically to a dog), but they wont absorb enough of it dry. And it doesn't really re-wet by just adding water (permethrin for hiking stays on clothes through 30 washes or something). I'm not sure if it chemically changes or if it starts out in some kind of emulsion or something that can't be recreated by just rewetting with water.
    - slimsag 4y ago
      That's really interesting, I didn't know that. Makes me wonder how many herbicides / insecticides are like this for sure

dzink 4y ago

That roundworm aerates the soil and is critical for the health of plants you’re eating as well. It’s also a proxy for nervous system reactions.

XorNot 4y ago
Glyphosate doesn't last in soil though, it's broken down in a few days by soil bacteria.
- thecolorblue 4y ago
  I have heard this too, but then how is it showing up in people later on?
  - katbyte 4y ago
    It gets into plants and animals during those days https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/the-herbicide-glyphosate-persists-in-wild-edible-plants-b-c-study https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/the-herbicide-glyph...
- katbyte 4y ago
  Doesn’t mean that it doesn't last elsewhere, studies in BC have shown that is persists in plants that are sprayed but don’t die for at least a year https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/the-herbicide-glyphosate-persists-in-wild-edible-plants-b-c-study https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/the-herbicide-glyph... Which makes the practice above of spraying replanted forests so “the good trees grow faster” even more abhorrent
  - soperj 4y ago
    > the good trees grow faster They replant with round-up ready pine, so they spray to kill aspen which is a firebreak species, and grow massive pine stands which are the opposite. It's the major reason for the massive forest fires we've had lately (and thus the massive flooding).

whalesalad 4y ago

wirrbel 4y ago

To me it appears that roundup kind of blocks an honest discussion on other causes of declining insect populations.

soperj 4y ago
what would these be? edit: this was a genuine inquisitive question, not snarkiness.
- wirrbel 4y ago
  Global warming. There is a German entomologist who thinks this is the most likely explanation (or the largest contributor). Iirc the insect population declines everywhere. Also in woodland where roundup is not applied.
- algoatecorn 4y ago
  One factor could be land use and reduction of the overall richness of our ecosystem. That could be highways, cities, suburbs, timberland, and the coverage of monoculture crops

user3939382 4y ago

> the product is studied extensively by researchers Which researchers and funded by whom? This is the line Monsanto brings out every time. It turns out their corrupt research couldn't convince a court, who decided glyphosate was to blame for cancer, to the tune of $300M c.f. Johnson v. Monsanto Co. And it's not just roundworms https://sites.psu.edu/soilmicrobiology/projects/glyphosate-impacts-soil-microbes/ https://sites.psu.edu/soilmicrobiology/projects/glyphosate-i... This chemical is bad news and the only reason it's legal is regulatory capture by Monsanto/Bayer.

ekianjo 4y ago
you know that this judgment was very controversial or you believe everything is just 1 and zeroes in life?
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  Seriously, WTF is wrong with people... we repeatedly polluted whole world with harmful substances like lead that killed god knows how many people and damaged in some way everybody else with this kind of logic, yet people have the balls to come up with "innocent until proven guilty by 100 peer reviews" mantra for... MONSANTO I don't believe, unlike many, that they are comically evil guys. Just playing a god for profit with stuff they probably understand only in lower 90 percentile range, especially second, third etc. order effects. And probably too over-invested in direction company took decades ago, so nobody looking at bonuses as drive will change its direction dramatically.
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    Choosing to blindly believe one side over blindly believing the other side is a dubious approach to these things. I care about environmental issues, and have no love for many aspects of Monsanto’s business and history, but your emotional appeal is extremely unconvincing. > for Monsanto GP isn’t making their comment “for Monsanto”, but for the sake of seeking the truth on this specific issue. You will continue to be shocked until you change your perspective on how we ought to evaluate nuanced issues. Especially when those issues have to do with global food production.

Dig1t 4y ago

>Glyphosate discussions always brings out people with strong opinions That's funny, I've experienced this first hand. There's a guy who comes into the vet clinic I frequent who's dog died of cancer and he drives around with giant decals pasted all over his white van saying that Roundup killed his dog and to stay away from it. He claims that the gardener sprayed his dog deliberately and that his dog died as a result. He is very passionate about it and spends a lot of time evangelizing this cause.

jiggywiggy 4y ago

Pesticides & herbecides in general are just not safe at the moment and it's been clear they having been causing lots of health problems. A lot of people, especially the farmers themselves & people living close to the farms get way too high amounts of pesticides in their system. And I also don't trust the safe amounts allowed are actually properly tested over a lifetime. Causing all kinds of issues, among parkinsons and such, take France for instance: https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2021/06/vineyard-pesticides-linked-to-parkinsons/ https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2021/06/vineyard-...

gcheong 4y ago
This site seems to promote organic agricultural practices as pesticide-safe but organic farming uses some of the most dangerous pesticides (e.g copper sulfate) precisely because of the anti-scientific requirement that anything used must be of "natural" origin, which is just the naturalistic fallacy. The bias here is clear.

throwaway4aday 4y ago

I wonder how much the effect on microorganisms has been studied. I have a small hunch that a lot of the weird reactions people have to various plants can be traced back to glyphosate and its effect on our gut biome.

kingkawn 4y ago

These neurotoxins do not deserve the benefit of the doubt until shown otherwise

gruez 4y ago
It's a neurotoxin... according to whom? A search for "neuro" in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate turns up 0 matches. However, the same wikipedia article does mention the mechanism of action >It inhibits a plant enzyme involved in the synthesis of three aromatic amino acids: tyrosine, tryptophan, and phenylalanine which seems decidedly not a neurotoxin.

photochemsyn 4y ago

This whole subject does reveal the duplicity and manipulation of Bayer-Monsanto on this topic, because they use studies on purified glyphosate to make their claims of harmlessness. However, RoundUp is glyphosate + surfactants (oily lipid-type molecules) which are needed to dissolve the waxy leaf surface so that the glyphosate can be absorbed by the plant, without which the herbicide would be ineffective. Studies with RoundUp formulation show the disruption of cell cycle effects, which can lead to cancer in applicators who get exposed. This is a common issue with a wide variety of strong surfactants, for example see this from the Deepwater Horizon blowout, where they dumped tons of a surfactant mix called Corexit: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Corexit https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Corexit

gabereiser 4y ago
There will always be people who believe the Bayer-Monsanto propaganda. Just like there are people who believe that burning 100m-year-old plant matter is fine. Just like people believe that there are aliens living among us. There have been countless studies on the matter. Even without the surfactants it's still a nasty substance. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2021.763917/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2021.7639... https://www.cornucopia.org/2014/03/gut-wrenching-new-studies-reveal-insidious-effects-glyphosate/ https://www.cornucopia.org/2014/03/gut-wrenching-new-studies... https://www.figo.org/removal-glyphosate-global-usage https://www.figo.org/removal-glyphosate-global-usage https://jech.bmj.com/content/71/6/613 https://jech.bmj.com/content/71/6/613 https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-016-0117-0 https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-...
shawnz 4y ago
Surfactants are essentially soaps, right? So surely their safety profile is well understood already and glyphosate is the more important component to be researching anyway?
- ncmncm 4y ago
  "Surely" is the opposite of science. There are as many kinds of surfactants as of acids and bases. You would not say of an acid, "surely it is essentially vinegar", or of a base "surely it is essentially baking soda".

pvaldes 4y ago

Soil roundworms are not necessarily parasites. Free living ones have huge populations in the soils and sea bottoms. In ecology handbooks there is often shown a study that found more kilograms of roundworms than kilograms of deer living in the same places. They are highly influential in fertile soils.

dekhn 4y ago

c elegans are roundworms, but they are not parasites. They eat bacteria and yeast that grow on rotting fruit and other decaying matter. If roundup or glyphosate had these effects on c. elegans I'd expect a large-scale visibly noticeable impact on crop yields.