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

theguardian.com

101–110 of 379 posts

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

#101
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a sense of here mister lobbyist this is a glass of perfectly safe glyphosate, drink it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWM_PgnoAtA

The dose makes the poison. It’s possible for a chemical to be perfectly safe if ingested in low quantities but dangerous in extremely high quantities. The duration of exposure for the same dose matters a lot too. Drinking glyphosate could be a much larger acute exposure so it’s perfectly reasonable to say it’s safe as normally used but not want to drink it. For example, you need trace amounts of copper to live, but v…

this is outdated thinking. LD50 is a measure of poison in testing, but since then it is acknowledged that there are cumulative over a lifetime effects, there are endocrine disrupting effects, and there may be effects from small doses that tip balancing systems in the body significantly.. those are from memory, not a specialist here.

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

#102

Yet another reason to avoid grains, soy, and processed foods. I would love to see some meat tested to see if it’s still detected in the meat after the animals eat the tainted corn.

There are a few references that say glyphosate doesn't bioaccumulate well due to the chemical's "ionized state, its low octanol-water partition coefficient"[1]. However there are others that suggest glyphosate may bioaccumulate in biofilm consuming invertebrates, where biofilms concentrate glyphosate and prevent the chemical from being retained in surrounding water[2].

Personally, these concepts are newer to me and I'm not sure what to make of it all yet.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6827263/ [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.03.234856v1....

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

#103
If you're eating anything with oats grown in the US, especially things like Cheerios, you're likely getting a big dose of glyphosate. They spray this on the oats to kill and dessicate them prior to harvest to prevent the crop from being ruined by rain.

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

#104
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

There are many ways that don't require that much more effort. For instance plastic covering the field will clean up a field. But that's a tiny bit more work then just spraying and poisoning everything. Of course the GMO crops that are bred to be glysophate resistant are even more convenient

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

#105
In 1961, 13 years prior to being sold by Monsanto to kill weeds, Glyphosate was patented in the U.S. as a Descaling and Chelating Agent by the Stauffer Chemical Co.

In 2010, Monsanto patented Glyphosate as an antibiotic.

Take a moment to consider that if CLR (a brand name that removes Calcium and Lime from metal pipes) were discovered to be a weedkiller, your sons or daughters would have this same conversation in a decade or two about CLR in their urine.

You can substitute trace plutonium, anthrax, or anything else for CLR in the above paragraph.

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

#106
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>people did agriculture before 1974 (without drones) We've added about 3.8 billion people to the planet since then. I'm not saying that we can't feed the world without glyphosate, but "Let's just do it like we did in '74!" doesn't account for the fact that we need a lot more food today.

All the chemical inputs to farms make them unprofitable. Each year takes more input to make the farm work. We broke the ecosystem, nitrogen cycle and phosphate cycle by tilling, monocropping, and chemical input. The way we farm kills the soil. We can support the population without chemical inputs if we manage the land differently. It takes about 3 years to transition to a regenerative management style. That is how lo…

Tell that to Sri Lanka. There is massive unrest, because people will starve. The farmers were not the ones saying, "don't use chemical fertilizer", the ex-government was.

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

#108
post #5
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

Why do you need to kill weeds? Adapt and stop having lawns.

> Why do you need to kill weeds? Adapt and stop having lawns.

If people spray glophysate on their lawns, that is what will happen. Their lawns will die. It's very easy to test, and many people have done this by accident.

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

#109
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

I was shocked to learn that many farms are using the chemical to spray the entire field in order to not just kill weeds, but also to increase bud yield / weight.

Similar to the rohip whatever chemical is given to some beef when it close to slaughter to magically make it gain weight.

Apparently when you spray this stuff on the plants a couple days before harvest, they know they are being killed / dieing - so they put all their energy in to the buds to give the seeds / fruits a better chance at living - so the sell weight is higher.

So it's not just being used to kill weeds, it's actually being used to cover the food a short time before it's cut and sold.

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

#110

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 Foo…

Monsanto settled a batch of civil cases regarding Roundup for $10bn. No one settle’s for that sum unless they’re guilty. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/business/roundup-settleme...

Not really, 10B just isn't very much. 95,000 cases are being settled for $25-250k a person, where individual cases are 9 digit awards and only require convincing a jury. 100, max 1000, out of those 95,000 people getting awards at jury trials is enough to make that cheaper. It'll be interesting to see what/if 3M settles earplug liability for. Talc powder liability has already cost JNJ over 5 billion, and that's with the Texas two-step.

Also, there's this:

> Part of the $1.25 billion will be used to establish an independent expert panel to resolve two critical questions about glyphosate: Does it cause cancer, and if so, what is the minimum dosage or exposure level that is dangerous?

> If the panel concludes that glyphosate is a carcinogen, Bayer will not be able to argue otherwise in future cases — and if the experts reach the opposite conclusion, the class action’s lawyers will be similarly bound.

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