7 ms·

Estimated concentrations of atrazine in agricultural groundwater

146 points by Jimmc414 2y ago

rawgabbit 2y ago
The report said Atrazine is commonly used in corn and sorghum production. Can traces of Atrazine enter our bodies when eating corn or corn fed meat?
- roguecoder 2y ago
  Yep: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3481744/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3481744/
  - rawgabbit 2y ago
    Thanks
Jimmc414 2y ago
As recently as 2012, Atrazine was the second-most widely used weed killer in the United States, with more than 70 million pounds applied across the nation each year https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2017-01/documents/pesticides-industry-sales-usage-2016_0.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2017-01/documents/pe...
bassrattle 2y ago
When Alex Jones' auction is on the top of HN, but his most famous claim is right there with it -- Atrazine in the water turning the frogs gay
- logicchains 2y ago
  It's funny, he was almost correct, but in actuality Atrazine turns frogs transgender: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2842049/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2842049/ .
  - josefresco 2y ago
    > he was almost correct That's the key element to effective conspiracy theories. A thread of truth, exaggerated, twisted and manipulated for maximum virality. Debunkers are met with links like the one you provided, and that's typically enough to discourage further debate because the truth is boring and a lot of hard work. And who wants to spend time trying to debunk when the believers don't want the truth!
    - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
      Yes, and the blame is always placed on some cabal or minority group or political tendency that the conspiracy theorist dislikes... rather than looking at anything systematic. Which actually has the ultimate effect of blunting change rather than fostering it.
    - TeaBrain 2y ago
      The truth in this case is even more strange than the conspiracy theory though.
    - calculatte 2y ago
      His point was to keep the chemicals out of our food supply. Argue about the details all you want, but nobody wants to consume this toxin and feed it to their children. So yet again, Alex Jones was right.
    - devops99 2y ago
      He's more of a corruption protestor than conspiracy theorist. A somewhat belligerent corruption protestor, yeah, but more that than anything else.
  - graemep 2y ago
    In fact it makes them change sex, not gender (gender is a cultural construct, so only applies to humans). It makes frogs that would otherwise develop as male become female or intersex instead.
    - 2y ago
- freeone3000 2y ago
  75% of an exposed pop stop producing testosterone. 10% of the pop shift from male to female. These frogs still mate successfully with male frogs, and even produce male offspring — it turns the frogs trans :) (https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/ https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/)
  - bassrattle 2y ago
    Right! So it's worse than altering their behavior, it causes physical sexual changes
- cluckindan 2y ago
  That’s a bit of twist: in fact amphibians, like humans, start out all female - atrazine just interferes with the development of male characteristics, making male frogs develop intersex or even completely female characteristics.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago
    Can you elaborate on humans starting out all female ? Are you talking about the women's egg chromosomes ? I wouldn't call that a human.. an embryo has a strong claim to being a human, but an egg ?
    - bena 2y ago
      All embryos start out biological female, it’s only after some time that the testosterone kicks in and differentiates males from females. If you block that process, you’d wind up with an XY female.
      - chemeng 2y ago
        Swyer syndrome being the representative example of this for those looking for more info. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_gonadal_dysgenesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_gonadal_dysgenesis)
      - giantg2 2y ago
        I thought that would be considered intersex as there are some anatomical structures that do not rely on the testosterone to develop minimally, such as udecended (non/minimally functioning) testicles in an XY individual who has external femal genitalia.
        bena 2y ago
        If you would call that intersex, then go for it. I'm not here to argue the semantics. These are edge cases that are fairly complicated. We're talking about a person with a uterus, vulva, vagina, etc. But without the widening of hips or development of breasts that happen in most women. No penis, no scrotum, no vas deferens, no testosterone. Nothing you would find in the majority of men. The only thing they have are testes and the testes present in these individuals are basically inert. They're usually removed because they're more likely to develop testicular cancer. With hormone therapy, they will develop the secondary sex characteristics of women. But the overall point here is that atrazine would need to be administered in utero to have the effects claimed by Alex Jones. Frogs reproduce externally. They lay eggs that are then fertilized. These eggs can be contaminated with surface atrazine which would then affect their development as described earlier.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  The issue I think there is never the specific claim but the manner in which Jones makes these pronouncements linking a fact like this to broader conspiracies and politics. That somehow this shit is a left-wing / liberal conspiracy blah blah blah when it's just run of the mill (and far more insidious and systematic) corporate malfeasance in the search of profits.
  - devops99 2y ago
    He espouses a lot that much of the modern "left wing", or at least what is sold as "left wing" (but is not our typical progressive/liberal friend we know), comes right out of technocratic think tanks. It's in there, among all the other shouting.
    - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
      There's nothing new about that. That's the whole schtick the populist far right has had forever. Look up Lyndon LaRouche, or hell Mussolini & Hitler. They start from what seems like legitimate concerns and often from what seems like a pro working class agenda, but ultimately the purpose is more power to the Market and more power to people themselves or people like themselves, and usually there's this huge socially regressive aspect to it especially attacking minorities, huge amounts of anti-Semitism, yada yada yada Hitler has a whole part of Mein Kampf where he talks about a communist trade union protest and how his explicit goal is to capture that same anti-establishment anger and form of organizing but direct it in the service of the Nation and the Leader. Hence keeping around the "socialist" symbolism in the NAZI name and symbolism long after they murdered any actual "socialists" in the party.
- graemep 2y ago
  I do not know what his claim is, but the the fact is it turns them female or intersex, not gay.
  - aaron695 2y ago
    [dead]
- gklitz 2y ago
  If someone is claiming that global climate change has melted all the arctic ice and created a Vulcan into spring up in lower Manhatten, they are a crackpot. But that doesn’t mean global climate change isn’t real or isn’t bad. Two can be true. Atrazine can be bad, and Alex Jones claims about it can be outrageous unfounded conspiracy theories.
  - devops99 2y ago
    He does call out a lot of corruption, much of it prima facie. And given how much there is, who conspired with who else (or not) is neither here nor there. Alex and the circa 2010 Occupy Wall Street crowd have a lot more in common with each other than the "other side", which would be the warmongering "Neocons". But this might be more than some will want to contend with cognitively. Easier to bamboozle someone than tell them they have been bamboozled, and all that.
autoexec 2y ago
Shout out to Tyrone Hayes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrone_Hayes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrone_Hayes), frog scientist, who turned down piles of industry hush money to speak out against the dangers of atrazine and publish his research. He seems like a cool guy. I'd totally buy him a drink and talk about frogs.
- benopal64 2y ago
  Wow-- props to Professor Hayes. This guy is a role model for researchers!
- cedws 2y ago
  Guessing nobody went to prison over this?
  - belter 2y ago
    https://youtu.be/vm7dIAq7QwM?t=28 https://youtu.be/vm7dIAq7QwM?t=28
- nraleigh 2y ago
  Guessing his research is what Alex Jones attributes to turning the frogs gay?
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  Where can I find out more about him turning down piles of industry hush money? All I can see on wikipedia is he was beefing with some makers of atrazine.
  - autoexec 2y ago
    I haven't seen him disclose a specific number but they basically offered to keep him very comfortably employed by them, however they wanted to manipulate his research and working for them meant that they could keep the results out of the public eye (They owned his research and he was under a confidentiality contract) so when they buried his work he left and continued his research independent of their funding so that he could publish. I've seen far too many of his talks and interviews on youtube to recall which ones had him speaking about it himself, but here is his wife: > "Tyrone was asked to be on a scientific panel to review the evidence about atrazine. When he discovered these results and reported it to them, they asked him to do some additional work to make sure that these things were really accurate. So he did some additional work and then they wanted him to do more and more and more and this is where Syngenta said basically we can fund you for a really long time if you'll just keep repeating this. It could have been very easy just to take all the money they were offering and be set for life. It would have been like an endowment for life for him, for research." (https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/the-new-yorker-presents-what-s-motivating-hayes https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/the-new-yorker-present...)
calgarymicro 2y ago
The Trump admin repeatedly weakened regulations around atrazine imposed by the Obama admin[0][1], only for the Biden admin to reimpose them.[2][3] I suppose we're about to see them severely weakened again. Edit: to the people talking about RFK Jr., he's not going to be running the EPA; anti-regulation crusader and laissez-faire fan Lee Zeldin will be.[4] [0]https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/trumps-epa-to-weaken-safeguards-for-pesticide-linked-to-birth-defects-cancer-2019-11-15/ https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/trumps... [1]https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/trump-administration-cuts-requirement-monitor-atrazine-midwest-rivers-streams-2020-04-29/ https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/trump-... [2]https://www.eenews.net/articles/epa-tightens-limit-on-popular-weedkiller/ https://www.eenews.net/articles/epa-tightens-limit-on-popula... [3]https://www.sej.org/headlines/biden-proposes-raising-acceptable-threshold-common-agricultural-pesticide https://www.sej.org/headlines/biden-proposes-raising-accepta... [4]https://www.eenews.net/articles/meet-the-great-deregulator-trump-chose-to-lead-epa/ https://www.eenews.net/articles/meet-the-great-deregulator-t...
- quotemstr 2y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure of that. This chemical seems like a central example of something RFK would love to ban.
  - anticorporate 2y ago
    The FDA (potential future home of RFK) does not have oversight on pesticides. This is an EPA issue.
    - quotemstr 2y ago
      You're overindexing on formal authority and prematurely discounting informal influence. RFK will be a prominent member of the administration. He'll have the ears of powerful people. He'll get some wins at the FDA (because it's blindingly obvious we're poisoning ourselves), and he'll be able to use these wins to drive changes at other agencies. The org chart is always just a suggestion.
zahma 2y ago
Doubt that’s going to change anytime soon with Lee Zeldin the incoming EPA director.
- Coffeewine 2y ago
  It will be an interesting dynamic, FDA taking a turn to ban much more, EPA taking a turn to ban much less.
fao_ 2y ago
The last time I looked into this, at least one US pesticide* banned in the EU seemed to significantly disrupt oxytocin, notably the pesticide in question seems to be present on fruit, in the store, and can be absorbed through incidental contact. Oxytocin is most notably involved in empathy, giving people a nasal spray of oxytocin and testing them on empathy indicates higher response (in the one story it boiled down to roughly, "how much do you give a shit or relate to the suffering of other people who you do not know") after their oxytocin has been raised. It does seem like there's room here for a study to see what the general oxytocin level is in the US versus other countries — if it's notably reduced, I wonder if that can help explain why all the US legislation around societal benefits and e.g. healthcare, feels not just apathetic towards, but particularly hostile and mean spirited to people who are suffering. * - When i originally penned this, I was under the assumption it was Atrazine, but it isn't and I can't find the pesticide in question and don't feel like sifting through a list of "1000 pesticides banned in the EU that the US loves to use" to find the one in question edit, NB: HNers that love to skim read and argue based on that, take note — the only claims made here are: - At least one US pesticide that is banned in the EU disrupts oxytocin (plausible, if not cited) - Oxytocin is directly connected to expression of empathy (incredibly well-founded) - US legislation around societal benefits and healthcare feels apathetic and mean spirited (opinion, take it or leave it) Note that I very carefully do not claim that a {pesicide contact -> reduced oxytocin-> reduced empathy -> mistreatment of the poor and sick} chain is actually the case (I leave that in speculation — "I wonder if"), I only say that it seems viable and worthy of investigation if and only if the first claim in the list above is true. I also do not claim it to be the only cause — that's why I say the words "can help explain". Thank you for reading.
- galangalalgol 2y ago
  Atrazine does affect hypothalamic function so maybe? Could be Chlorpyrifos or permethrin too.
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    I don't think permethrin or pyrethrins generally are banned in the EU, are they? They're not good for cats, but are generally recognized to do ... not much of anything... to mammals. Insects develop resistance to them quite quickly, too. But damn, we'd be somewhat in trouble without them.
ourmandave 2y ago
Ask your doctor if Atrazine is right for you.
- nozzlegear 2y ago
  No need – my senator, the venerable† Chuck Grassley, has already decided for me! † Venerable and decrepit.
asdasdsddd 2y ago
What are the actual vectors here, does it come thru the vegetables we eat, the meat from animals that eat the vegetables, or the ground water and do we measure this stuff?
- cluckindan 2y ago
  Ground water. Although you’d probably do better being scared of PFAS compounds in everything around you.
legitster 2y ago
The EPA has actually been pretty active regarding Atrazine in recent years, a lot of restrictions are in the works: https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/atrazine https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/atra...
- jdietrich 2y ago
  Banned in the EU since 2004. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2004.078.01.0053.01.ENG https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:...
  - legitster 2y ago
    Okay? Who banned what first isn't a really salient point since each respective governing body has their own criteria and methodology.
    - geysersam 2y ago
      The criteria are insufficient to protect people from harmful chemicals. That's the point.
      - legitster 2y ago
        Do you have a source on that? The US actually ranks third in the world in food safety: https://impact.economist.com/sustainability/project/food-security-index/#global-overview https://impact.economist.com/sustainability/project/food-sec... As a rule of thumb, the US just operates differently - spending much more effort on testing and inspection and labeling on the final product - whereas Europe has stricter, more precautionary scrutiny of ingredients, but operates with less oversight. (If you can remember the horse meat fiasco in Europe a decade ago, something like that could have never happened in the US.) There are also some counter examples like Chlorpyrifos which is banned in the US but not the EU.
        2y ago
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
It’s crazy that various chemicals like this or food dyes are banned elsewhere but legal in America. Is this due to the power and influence of corporate lobbyists or just a failure of a slow bureaucracy? Either way it is unacceptable

146 points by Jimmc414 2y ago

The report said Atrazine is commonly used in corn and sorghum production. Can traces of Atrazine enter our bodies when eating corn or corn fed meat?

roguecoder 2y ago
Yep: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3481744/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3481744/
- rawgabbit 2y ago
  Thanks

Jimmc414 2y ago

As recently as 2012, Atrazine was the second-most widely used weed killer in the United States, with more than 70 million pounds applied across the nation each year https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2017-01/documents/pesticides-industry-sales-usage-2016_0.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2017-01/documents/pe...

bassrattle 2y ago

When Alex Jones' auction is on the top of HN, but his most famous claim is right there with it -- Atrazine in the water turning the frogs gay

logicchains 2y ago
It's funny, he was almost correct, but in actuality Atrazine turns frogs transgender: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2842049/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2842049/ .
- josefresco 2y ago
  > he was almost correct That's the key element to effective conspiracy theories. A thread of truth, exaggerated, twisted and manipulated for maximum virality. Debunkers are met with links like the one you provided, and that's typically enough to discourage further debate because the truth is boring and a lot of hard work. And who wants to spend time trying to debunk when the believers don't want the truth!
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    Yes, and the blame is always placed on some cabal or minority group or political tendency that the conspiracy theorist dislikes... rather than looking at anything systematic. Which actually has the ultimate effect of blunting change rather than fostering it.
  - TeaBrain 2y ago
    The truth in this case is even more strange than the conspiracy theory though.
  - calculatte 2y ago
    His point was to keep the chemicals out of our food supply. Argue about the details all you want, but nobody wants to consume this toxin and feed it to their children. So yet again, Alex Jones was right.
  - devops99 2y ago
    He's more of a corruption protestor than conspiracy theorist. A somewhat belligerent corruption protestor, yeah, but more that than anything else.
- graemep 2y ago
  In fact it makes them change sex, not gender (gender is a cultural construct, so only applies to humans). It makes frogs that would otherwise develop as male become female or intersex instead.
  - 2y ago
freeone3000 2y ago
75% of an exposed pop stop producing testosterone. 10% of the pop shift from male to female. These frogs still mate successfully with male frogs, and even produce male offspring — it turns the frogs trans :) (https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/ https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/)
- bassrattle 2y ago
  Right! So it's worse than altering their behavior, it causes physical sexual changes
cluckindan 2y ago
That’s a bit of twist: in fact amphibians, like humans, start out all female - atrazine just interferes with the development of male characteristics, making male frogs develop intersex or even completely female characteristics.
- IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago
  Can you elaborate on humans starting out all female ? Are you talking about the women's egg chromosomes ? I wouldn't call that a human.. an embryo has a strong claim to being a human, but an egg ?
  - bena 2y ago
    All embryos start out biological female, it’s only after some time that the testosterone kicks in and differentiates males from females. If you block that process, you’d wind up with an XY female.
    - chemeng 2y ago
      Swyer syndrome being the representative example of this for those looking for more info. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_gonadal_dysgenesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_gonadal_dysgenesis)
    - giantg2 2y ago
      I thought that would be considered intersex as there are some anatomical structures that do not rely on the testosterone to develop minimally, such as udecended (non/minimally functioning) testicles in an XY individual who has external femal genitalia.
      - bena 2y ago
        If you would call that intersex, then go for it. I'm not here to argue the semantics. These are edge cases that are fairly complicated. We're talking about a person with a uterus, vulva, vagina, etc. But without the widening of hips or development of breasts that happen in most women. No penis, no scrotum, no vas deferens, no testosterone. Nothing you would find in the majority of men. The only thing they have are testes and the testes present in these individuals are basically inert. They're usually removed because they're more likely to develop testicular cancer. With hormone therapy, they will develop the secondary sex characteristics of women. But the overall point here is that atrazine would need to be administered in utero to have the effects claimed by Alex Jones. Frogs reproduce externally. They lay eggs that are then fertilized. These eggs can be contaminated with surface atrazine which would then affect their development as described earlier.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
cmrdporcupine 2y ago
The issue I think there is never the specific claim but the manner in which Jones makes these pronouncements linking a fact like this to broader conspiracies and politics. That somehow this shit is a left-wing / liberal conspiracy blah blah blah when it's just run of the mill (and far more insidious and systematic) corporate malfeasance in the search of profits.
- devops99 2y ago
  He espouses a lot that much of the modern "left wing", or at least what is sold as "left wing" (but is not our typical progressive/liberal friend we know), comes right out of technocratic think tanks. It's in there, among all the other shouting.
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    There's nothing new about that. That's the whole schtick the populist far right has had forever. Look up Lyndon LaRouche, or hell Mussolini & Hitler. They start from what seems like legitimate concerns and often from what seems like a pro working class agenda, but ultimately the purpose is more power to the Market and more power to people themselves or people like themselves, and usually there's this huge socially regressive aspect to it especially attacking minorities, huge amounts of anti-Semitism, yada yada yada Hitler has a whole part of Mein Kampf where he talks about a communist trade union protest and how his explicit goal is to capture that same anti-establishment anger and form of organizing but direct it in the service of the Nation and the Leader. Hence keeping around the "socialist" symbolism in the NAZI name and symbolism long after they murdered any actual "socialists" in the party.
graemep 2y ago
I do not know what his claim is, but the the fact is it turns them female or intersex, not gay.
- aaron695 2y ago
  [dead]
gklitz 2y ago
If someone is claiming that global climate change has melted all the arctic ice and created a Vulcan into spring up in lower Manhatten, they are a crackpot. But that doesn’t mean global climate change isn’t real or isn’t bad. Two can be true. Atrazine can be bad, and Alex Jones claims about it can be outrageous unfounded conspiracy theories.
- devops99 2y ago
  He does call out a lot of corruption, much of it prima facie. And given how much there is, who conspired with who else (or not) is neither here nor there. Alex and the circa 2010 Occupy Wall Street crowd have a lot more in common with each other than the "other side", which would be the warmongering "Neocons". But this might be more than some will want to contend with cognitively. Easier to bamboozle someone than tell them they have been bamboozled, and all that.

autoexec 2y ago

Shout out to Tyrone Hayes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrone_Hayes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrone_Hayes), frog scientist, who turned down piles of industry hush money to speak out against the dangers of atrazine and publish his research. He seems like a cool guy. I'd totally buy him a drink and talk about frogs.

benopal64 2y ago
Wow-- props to Professor Hayes. This guy is a role model for researchers!
cedws 2y ago
Guessing nobody went to prison over this?
- belter 2y ago
  https://youtu.be/vm7dIAq7QwM?t=28 https://youtu.be/vm7dIAq7QwM?t=28
nraleigh 2y ago
Guessing his research is what Alex Jones attributes to turning the frogs gay?
IncreasePosts 2y ago
Where can I find out more about him turning down piles of industry hush money? All I can see on wikipedia is he was beefing with some makers of atrazine.
- autoexec 2y ago
  I haven't seen him disclose a specific number but they basically offered to keep him very comfortably employed by them, however they wanted to manipulate his research and working for them meant that they could keep the results out of the public eye (They owned his research and he was under a confidentiality contract) so when they buried his work he left and continued his research independent of their funding so that he could publish. I've seen far too many of his talks and interviews on youtube to recall which ones had him speaking about it himself, but here is his wife: > "Tyrone was asked to be on a scientific panel to review the evidence about atrazine. When he discovered these results and reported it to them, they asked him to do some additional work to make sure that these things were really accurate. So he did some additional work and then they wanted him to do more and more and more and this is where Syngenta said basically we can fund you for a really long time if you'll just keep repeating this. It could have been very easy just to take all the money they were offering and be set for life. It would have been like an endowment for life for him, for research." (https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/the-new-yorker-presents-what-s-motivating-hayes https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/the-new-yorker-present...)

calgarymicro 2y ago

The Trump admin repeatedly weakened regulations around atrazine imposed by the Obama admin[0][1], only for the Biden admin to reimpose them.[2][3] I suppose we're about to see them severely weakened again. Edit: to the people talking about RFK Jr., he's not going to be running the EPA; anti-regulation crusader and laissez-faire fan Lee Zeldin will be.[4] [0]https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/trumps-epa-to-weaken-safeguards-for-pesticide-linked-to-birth-defects-cancer-2019-11-15/ https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/trumps... [1]https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/trump-administration-cuts-requirement-monitor-atrazine-midwest-rivers-streams-2020-04-29/ https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/trump-... [2]https://www.eenews.net/articles/epa-tightens-limit-on-popular-weedkiller/ https://www.eenews.net/articles/epa-tightens-limit-on-popula... [3]https://www.sej.org/headlines/biden-proposes-raising-acceptable-threshold-common-agricultural-pesticide https://www.sej.org/headlines/biden-proposes-raising-accepta... [4]https://www.eenews.net/articles/meet-the-great-deregulator-trump-chose-to-lead-epa/ https://www.eenews.net/articles/meet-the-great-deregulator-t...

quotemstr 2y ago
I wouldn't be so sure of that. This chemical seems like a central example of something RFK would love to ban.
- anticorporate 2y ago
  The FDA (potential future home of RFK) does not have oversight on pesticides. This is an EPA issue.
  - quotemstr 2y ago
    You're overindexing on formal authority and prematurely discounting informal influence. RFK will be a prominent member of the administration. He'll have the ears of powerful people. He'll get some wins at the FDA (because it's blindingly obvious we're poisoning ourselves), and he'll be able to use these wins to drive changes at other agencies. The org chart is always just a suggestion.

zahma 2y ago

Doubt that’s going to change anytime soon with Lee Zeldin the incoming EPA director.

Coffeewine 2y ago
It will be an interesting dynamic, FDA taking a turn to ban much more, EPA taking a turn to ban much less.

fao_ 2y ago

The last time I looked into this, at least one US pesticide* banned in the EU seemed to significantly disrupt oxytocin, notably the pesticide in question seems to be present on fruit, in the store, and can be absorbed through incidental contact. Oxytocin is most notably involved in empathy, giving people a nasal spray of oxytocin and testing them on empathy indicates higher response (in the one story it boiled down to roughly, "how much do you give a shit or relate to the suffering of other people who you do not know") after their oxytocin has been raised. It does seem like there's room here for a study to see what the general oxytocin level is in the US versus other countries — if it's notably reduced, I wonder if that can help explain why all the US legislation around societal benefits and e.g. healthcare, feels not just apathetic towards, but particularly hostile and mean spirited to people who are suffering. * - When i originally penned this, I was under the assumption it was Atrazine, but it isn't and I can't find the pesticide in question and don't feel like sifting through a list of "1000 pesticides banned in the EU that the US loves to use" to find the one in question edit, NB: HNers that love to skim read and argue based on that, take note — the only claims made here are: - At least one US pesticide that is banned in the EU disrupts oxytocin (plausible, if not cited) - Oxytocin is directly connected to expression of empathy (incredibly well-founded) - US legislation around societal benefits and healthcare feels apathetic and mean spirited (opinion, take it or leave it) Note that I very carefully do not claim that a {pesicide contact -> reduced oxytocin-> reduced empathy -> mistreatment of the poor and sick} chain is actually the case (I leave that in speculation — "I wonder if"), I only say that it seems viable and worthy of investigation if and only if the first claim in the list above is true. I also do not claim it to be the only cause — that's why I say the words "can help explain". Thank you for reading.

galangalalgol 2y ago
Atrazine does affect hypothalamic function so maybe? Could be Chlorpyrifos or permethrin too.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  I don't think permethrin or pyrethrins generally are banned in the EU, are they? They're not good for cats, but are generally recognized to do ... not much of anything... to mammals. Insects develop resistance to them quite quickly, too. But damn, we'd be somewhat in trouble without them.

ourmandave 2y ago

Ask your doctor if Atrazine is right for you.

nozzlegear 2y ago
No need – my senator, the venerable† Chuck Grassley, has already decided for me! † Venerable and decrepit.

asdasdsddd 2y ago

What are the actual vectors here, does it come thru the vegetables we eat, the meat from animals that eat the vegetables, or the ground water and do we measure this stuff?

cluckindan 2y ago
Ground water. Although you’d probably do better being scared of PFAS compounds in everything around you.

legitster 2y ago

The EPA has actually been pretty active regarding Atrazine in recent years, a lot of restrictions are in the works: https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/atrazine https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/atra...

jdietrich 2y ago
Banned in the EU since 2004. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2004.078.01.0053.01.ENG https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:...
- legitster 2y ago
  Okay? Who banned what first isn't a really salient point since each respective governing body has their own criteria and methodology.
  - geysersam 2y ago
    The criteria are insufficient to protect people from harmful chemicals. That's the point.
    - legitster 2y ago
      Do you have a source on that? The US actually ranks third in the world in food safety: https://impact.economist.com/sustainability/project/food-security-index/#global-overview https://impact.economist.com/sustainability/project/food-sec... As a rule of thumb, the US just operates differently - spending much more effort on testing and inspection and labeling on the final product - whereas Europe has stricter, more precautionary scrutiny of ingredients, but operates with less oversight. (If you can remember the horse meat fiasco in Europe a decade ago, something like that could have never happened in the US.) There are also some counter examples like Chlorpyrifos which is banned in the US but not the EU.
      - 2y ago

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

It’s crazy that various chemicals like this or food dyes are banned elsewhere but legal in America. Is this due to the power and influence of corporate lobbyists or just a failure of a slow bureaucracy? Either way it is unacceptable