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Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

theguardian.com

21–30 of 379 posts

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#21
Not knowing anything about glyphosate, I went to the article before reading the comments. I’ll just put this here because it was clear the researchers wanted to be sure people see it. From the first paragraph of the article—>

> In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer determined that glyphosate is a “probable human carcinogen” (IARC, 2015). However, the European Food Safety Authority and the Joint Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/World Health Organization (WHO) Meeting on Pesticide Residues (EFSA 2015, FAO/WHO 2015) determined that glyphosate is unlikely to be a carcinogen. The US EPA concluded that “available data and weight-of-evidence clearly do not support the descriptors “carcinogenic to humans,” “likely to be carcinogenic to humans,” or “inadequate information to assess carcinogenic potential” (US EPA 2017a). Controversy and concern that the rising use of glyphosate may have adverse human-health effects exist (Myers et. al., 2016).

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#22
post #3

How far off are we from having drones that mechanically remove weeds at a reasonable cost? It's ridiculous that we put up with spraying sketchy chemicals on our food. We can build loyal wingman drones to kill enemy aircraft but we can't kill weeds?? Edit: I'm talking about farming, not lawns. RTFA

Likely very far off. Mechanical removal would be very hard to pull off, especially given how reliably and quickly it’ll have to work for a large farm.

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#24
post #4

"Tied to cancer" in the sense of "if you torture data long enough, it will confess."

Which seems like a really good reason to verify that tie is an artifact as you imply it must be. It may be, but the fact nearly every human is ingesting it regularly means we might want to be certain, no?

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#28
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawns are less important. We would have no agricultural output if we didn’t weed.

Farming existed before weed killing. It's extremely useful but output doesn't drop to zero without it.

> Farming existed before weed killing

Farming existed before pesticide.

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#29
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me express my utter lack of confidence in your statement's connection to reality. The "gluten intolerance" should be a strong warning sign of Woo.

Don't see any citations on either side of this discussion. WHO says yes [0] while EPA says "not likely" [1]. Until the experts agree people can decide for themselves what risks they consider acceptable. Or at least they can if they can afford buying from farmers who don't yet use the chemical. [0] https://www.iarc.fr/featured-news/media-centre-iarc-news-gly... [1] https://www.epa.gov/pesticides/epa-releases-draft-ris…

Just a nit (thanks for sources!!) it’ll be stronger with a peer reviewed citation rather than a regulatory notice. There’s a lot of skepticism about the neutrality of regulators in this topic. Sadly with regulatory capture so rampant and regulators being political footballs they’re poor sources of information.

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#30
post #3

How far off are we from having drones that mechanically remove weeds at a reasonable cost? It's ridiculous that we put up with spraying sketchy chemicals on our food. We can build loyal wingman drones to kill enemy aircraft but we can't kill weeds?? Edit: I'm talking about farming, not lawns. RTFA

Tensorfield Agriculture make robots that kill weeds with hot canola oil: https://tensorfield.ag/
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