Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer
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Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer
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Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer
#2Does anyone have the insight as to why Bayer purchased Monsanto? This to me is one of the biggest corporate acquisition mistakes in history. To make things worse Bayer even retired the name Monsanto making Bayer the defendant in all these cases.
Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer
#3> ...10,000 further cases are pending, worrying Bayer investors as well as farmers who rely on the product as a cheap, effective herbicide.
> Cancer may only be part of the story. Studies over the past decade suggest that glyphosate — the active ingredient in Roundup — pollutes water sources, hangs around in soil far longer than previously suspected, and routinely taints human food supplies.
I mean... yeah. I'm not formally trained in biology, but I think at this point it's a sane default to just suppose that any chemical compound that kills plants so efficiently on contact is likely to also have effects on human tissue, especially when the contact is as frequent and intense as is the case for farm workers.
This style of farming (using genetic modification to increase robustness against a particular chemical, and then dousing the field with that chemical) is best understood as a mistake and completely set aside as immediately as can practically be done.
Until it ceases (and after that), if you can afford organic food, buy it (and I don't just mean USDA Certified Organic, although that's a great start, I mean food you know to be organic from a farmer's market). Even if you don't care to reduce your own exposure, it turns out that life is sucking for thousands of these farm workers who get this shit on their hands and faces and clothes every day.
Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer
#4Does anyone have the insight as to why Bayer purchased Monsanto? This to me is one of the biggest corporate acquisition mistakes in history. To make things worse Bayer even retired the name Monsanto making Bayer the defendant in all these cases.
Bayer has a long history of doing the wrong thing on purpose and coming out the other side with riches to show for it. It appears that people have wisened up to this style of business practice faster than Bayer realized.
Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer
#5"Evidence of the cheap herbicide’s danger to biological functions and the environment continues to mount. Why are U.S. regulators not listening?"
Why are regulators not listening is a great question. Perhaps they are listening, just to well paid lobbyists on Bayer's side.
Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer
#6Here is the paper that made me start to take organic food seriously a few years ago:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945755/
I don't have the skills to evaluate it in depth but it seems to indicate a plausible connection between glyphosate and leaky gut, which could explain why a lot of people who don't actually have celiac's have troubles with wheat.
This is conjecture on my part, but it's possible that many people with trouble with wheat would be fine if they were able to avoid pesticides and repair their gut bacteria and general gut health.
The other thing I learned alongside reading that paper (or maybe it was mentioned in it, I forget), was that they use glyphosate not just to kill weeds, but as a dessicant applied directly to wheat to aid in the harvest, and a "ripening agent" applied directly to sugar cane.
Finally, although the risks are not well understood, it has been demonstrated that glyphosate does appear in detectable amounts in human excretions (urine and milk), which goes against some of the claims that were made in approving its safety (they claimed it does not bioaccumulate).
Sorry I don't have sources handy for the rest of this stuff, but it's enough to perhaps encourage others to run some searches too.
Edit: a final concern is not to humans but to soil biology. This new and growing field has been finding that there are symbiotic relationships between plants and fungi in the soil and that pesticides may disrupt this, dramatically reducing effective soil quality and the nutritional content of the plants grown there.
Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer
#7Does anyone have the insight as to why Bayer purchased Monsanto? This to me is one of the biggest corporate acquisition mistakes in history. To make things worse Bayer even retired the name Monsanto making Bayer the defendant in all these cases.
oh - I suspect that Monsanto was seeing this coming, and that caused them to sell to a "too big to fail"-type company, with out-of-US base.. as noted extensively in other places, its not a bad business decision until the costs have to be paid, and actually are paid.. meanwhile collect money as usual.. the extent of this sort of strategy in the real world is probably shocking to people who aren't in the back rooms of money decisions often.. of course its unpleasant, thats part of why they keep it quiet
Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer
#8This topic is so aggravating. On one hand, you have the "Don't eat science words, they give you the autism cancer!" reactionaries, and on the other side, you have the "Everything is completely benign, because science!" reactionaries.
Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer
#9> ...10,000 further cases are pending, worrying Bayer investors as well as farmers who rely on the product as a cheap, effective herbicide. > Cancer may only be part of the story. Studies over the past decade suggest that glyphosate — the active ingredient in Roundup — pollutes water sources, hangs around in soil far longer than previously suspected, and routinely taints human food supplies. I mean... yeah. I'm not f…
Glyphosate has been used for over 60 years. It works in a part of the plant that controls photosynthesis. No one is even sure how it would impact humans. Here's a podcast with some more information. They will update if better information comes in it disproves the previous assumptions.
Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer
#10This topic is so aggravating. On one hand, you have the "Don't eat science words, they give you the autism cancer!" reactionaries, and on the other side, you have the "Everything is completely benign, because science!" reactionaries.
Yup, I hear you. I try to put my faith on the in-between folks, who say, "we can't prove in a court of law that this is harmful, but in this case there is a plausible mechanism and the risks don't seem justified. In this other case, there's no plausible mechanism for harm or the benefits outweigh the risks."
The people who show some kind of doubt are, as always, the ones to actually listen to.