note: monsanto's roundup chemical is an endocrine disruptor. we put it on most of our food supply. this contributes to the high cost burden. secondary note: you don't want to have endocrine disruptors anywhere. they aren't good for you.
That's not true as far as I know. EPA selected glyphosate for screening based on the widespread use of the chemical. Not because it was suspected to be endocrine disruptor for any real reason. After tier 1 screening did not find any evidence no other testing was considered necessary.
Endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure in US: disease burden and cost analysis
21–30 of 164 posts
Re: Endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure in US: disease burden and cost analysis
#22Consider the possibility that some such chemicals are good for society. For example, exposure to pseudoestrogens may reduce violence. Medical literature doesn't really have a category for this -- there is only 'burden and cost' of environmental effects, assuming that any change from evolved human biology is bad. But it seems like evolved human biology is a little too violent for the society we want, and perhaps we'd…
The issue is that you are not getting proper hormone replacement therapy with those. You are getting random levels of chemicals that mess up your hormone balance. Ask anyone on hormone replacement therapy what happens when they skip a dose or mix up the dosage. Depression, headaches, migraines, suicidal thoughts etc. Not something you want the entire society to experience.
Re: Endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure in US: disease burden and cost analysis
#23Consider the possibility that some such chemicals are good for society. For example, exposure to pseudoestrogens may reduce violence. Medical literature doesn't really have a category for this -- there is only 'burden and cost' of environmental effects, assuming that any change from evolved human biology is bad. But it seems like evolved human biology is a little too violent for the society we want, and perhaps we'd…
The issue is that you are not getting proper hormone replacement therapy with those. You are getting random levels of chemicals that mess up your hormone balance. Ask anyone on hormone replacement therapy what happens when they skip a dose or mix up the dosage. Depression, headaches, migraines, suicidal thoughts etc. Not something you want the entire society to experience.
This is as much a statement about psychology than about biology, and what the definitions of "good" and "bad" are. Us paying more attention to potential negative consequences than positive ones is an example of loss aversion, and the resulting pressure to repress change (because negative changes get more airtime than positive one) is an example of status quo bias. They're often rational from the POV of an individual - you exist by virtue of being well-adapted to the present environment, and so any change in the environment is more likely to harm your own fitness function than individuals who do not yet exist - yet they're irrational from the POV of the system, where you would expect good and bad changes to occur in equal numbers and individuals who are no longer suited to the current environment to be replaced by ones who are.
Come to think of it, this may be behind the observed effect where any radical technical innovation or societal change that happens in your teens and twenties is an awesome opportunity to be capitalized on, while any such change that happens in your thirties or later is a threat to the natural order of things. In your late 20s and early 30s you typically make (nearly) irrevocable commitments in life that are the best adaptations you have to the world as it exists then; any change that happens afterwards will relatively benefit younger people who have not made such commitments more than it will benefit you. For biological changes the benefits are shifted even earlier: any change in the environment that affects relative survival rates will benefit people yet to be born more than people already born, because the latter have already won the evolutionary lottery while the future winners among the former still face selection pressure.
Re: Endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure in US: disease burden and cost analysis
#24note: monsanto's roundup chemical is an endocrine disruptor. we put it on most of our food supply. this contributes to the high cost burden. secondary note: you don't want to have endocrine disruptors anywhere. they aren't good for you.
Even dumber is that Beyer is retiring the brand Monsanto which will result in Beyer itself being named in the lawsuits and media.
They probably thought they could shake it off like Dow chemical when they aquired Union Carbide and claimed they are no longer responsible for the Bhopal disaster.
There was no social media in 1994, there is now.
Re: Endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure in US: disease burden and cost analysis
#25Re: Endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure in US: disease burden and cost analysis
#26note: monsanto's roundup chemical is an endocrine disruptor. we put it on most of our food supply. this contributes to the high cost burden. secondary note: you don't want to have endocrine disruptors anywhere. they aren't good for you.
That's not true as far as I know. EPA selected glyphosate for screening based on the widespread use of the chemical. Not because it was suspected to be endocrine disruptor for any real reason. After tier 1 screening did not find any evidence no other testing was considered necessary.
Glyphosate gets most of the (cooked up) research to the detriment of the people being exposed to many other mostly ignored co-formulants. Here is a study that says as much: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4808927/
>It was demonstrated for the first time that endocrine disruption by GBH could not only be due to the declared active ingredient but also to co-formulants. These results...challenge the relevance of the acceptable daily intake (ADI) value for GBHs exposures, currently calculated from toxicity tests of the declared active ingredient alone.
Re: Endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure in US: disease burden and cost analysis
#27Re: Endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure in US: disease burden and cost analysis
#28note: monsanto's roundup chemical is an endocrine disruptor. we put it on most of our food supply. this contributes to the high cost burden. secondary note: you don't want to have endocrine disruptors anywhere. they aren't good for you.
"The current assessment concluded that glyphosate does not have oestrogen, androgen, thyroid and steroidogenesis (EATS)‐mediated endocrine disrupting properties based on the facts that no endocrine‐mediated adverse effects were identified in apical studies; the weak evidence seen in a limited number of supplementary in vitro studies was inconsistent with the findings of the acceptable OECD (Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development) tests and it was not expressed in vivo in the OECD Level 4 and 5 studies; and no EATS‐mediated endocrine mode of action was identified. Since the database available to reach this conclusion was quite comprehensive, it was concluded that the data gap identified in the previous EFSA conclusion (EFSA Journal 2015;13(11):4302) was adequately addressed."
Source: https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.2903/j.efsa...
Re: Endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure in US: disease burden and cost analysis
#29How do I buy food in the US that I know hasn't been exposed to such pesticides?
As an added bonus, farmers' markets tend to be cheaper than supermarkets even as the food is better. It mystifies me that they aren't more commonly used and have a reputation as being for rich hipsters (i.e., like Whole Foods).
Re: Endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure in US: disease burden and cost analysis
#30note: monsanto's roundup chemical is an endocrine disruptor. we put it on most of our food supply. this contributes to the high cost burden. secondary note: you don't want to have endocrine disruptors anywhere. they aren't good for you.
I wanted to up vote you, but did some research and turns out that both the FDA and the European Food Safety Authority have not found evidence that it is: "The current assessment concluded that glyphosate does not have oestrogen, androgen, thyroid and steroidogenesis (EATS)‐mediated endocrine disrupting properties based on the facts that no endocrine‐mediated adverse effects were identified in apical studies; the weak…
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300483X0...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1257596/ "Surprisingly, Roundup is always more toxic than its active ingredient... We conclude that endocrine and toxic effects of Roundup, not just glyphosate, can be observed in mammals."
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00244-006-0154-8
"The cytotoxic, and potentially endocrine-disrupting effects of Roundup are thus amplified with time. Taken together, these data suggest that Roundup exposure may affect human reproduction and fetal development in case of contamination. Chemical mixtures in formulations appear to be underestimated regarding their toxic or hormonal impact."