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

theguardian.com

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

#281

Post by sharrington »

While most are focusing on glyphosate's debated status as a carcinogen, it was approved by the FDA as as an herbicide, in part, because it does not interact with any human metabolic pathways. We may be missing the forest for the trees talking about cancer when we could be exploring glyphosates negative impact on gut microbiome and bacterial/fungal metabolic pathway inhibition.

Anecdotally, I know a lot of folks who have GI-distress from eating wheat (99% of which is sprayed with RoundUp to allow for faster harvesting time), but are fine when eating a non-commoditized grain like Farro. Notably, both contain plenty of gluten, however, Farro is harvested without RoundUp (fact-check required...) in a much less efficient way (hence the higher price tag).

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

#282

Post by User23 »

abe_duarte wrote: post #39
microSnowball wrote: post #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 Foo…

People who have been exposed to the chemical got cancer. Internal Monsanto documents show the link and their concern. A man got a court to rule in his favour for 289 million dollars, after the jury saw this evidence: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/10/monsanto-tr...

Virtually everyone who eats food has been exposed to glyphosate at this point. You could use the same logic to conclude water is a carcinogen. Every case of cancer is clearly linked to water exposure.

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

#283

Post by aetherson »

zzzeek wrote: post #141
WillPostForFood wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who have been exposed to got cancer, but that is meaningless in showing causation. Internal documents show concern, but show no evidence that it causes cancer, or that Monsanto had internal data showing it caused cancer.

right and that's why they just settled instead of proving their product is safe

Companies settle lawsuits all the time for claims they believe are meritlesss, for two reasons:

1. Going through a lawsuit all the way to conclusion, even if you win, is a long, expensive process that potentially exposes you to a considerable amount of negative publicity and causes a degree of internal chaos.

2. Juries are unpredictable and even a small chance of a bad outcome may be worth paying to avoid.

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

#284

Post by User23 »

aperson_hello wrote: post #246
dodgerdan wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny we execute people based on that standard, but yet it’s somehow lesser here…

And we get guilt wrong in criminal trials all the time (see the number of people the Innocence Project has gotten off of death row because the person didn't do it). A jury saying one thing doesn't make it objective truth.

The overwhelming majority of convicted criminals really did the deed. The existence of black swans doesn’t mean most aren’t white.

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

#285

Post by aetherson »

lostlogin wrote: post #271
adrr wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s more than glyphosate in roundup. Also if glyphosate increased the risk of cancer, we would see cancer increase when it started to get widely used. Cancer rates except for skin cancer keep falling.

It’s possible that rates would have fallen further if glyphosate wasn’t present.

Sure. Anything's possible. This is a fully generalizable argument. Maybe you, personally, cause 10% of the world's cancer, but other factors have caused an overall falling cancer rate, but when you, personally, die or turn off your magical cancer-causing powers, rates will fall even further.

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

#286

Post by anonuser123456 »

saiya-jin wrote: post #268
slowking2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I dare you to ingest small amount of Caesium-137 every day if you truly stand by your reasoning. I can argue with list of names of firemen that didn't die from radiation poisoning while putting off fire in Chernobyl.

People already do take in small amounts of Caesium-137 every day and it is harmless.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2015934/

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

#287

Post by colechristensen »

arminiusreturns wrote: post #245

I quit a job in the industry during the era the studies started coming out when I found out about the bosses ties to Monsanto. The real kicker for me was during my digging into them, although largely due to corporate buyout name games, they were the ones responsible for agent orange, with Nam vets in my family I couldn't stay. Use the most natural chemicals you can for crop/yard control. The same warning applies to t…

Natural doesn’t mean anything when it comes to safety of a substance. There are quite a few dangerous substances used for “organic” weed and pest control. Well controlled synthetics can indeed be safer.

Or if it’s your yard, don’t do anything to it. You don’t need to.

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

#288

Post by [deleted] »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #272
NullPrefix wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quoting any of these articles, but "settled with no admission of guilt"

The claim was about companies that are actually not guilty, and while sometimes that's ambiguous it's up to IncRnd to cite an example where it actually is ambiguous or better for the company, with a payment of a billion or more.

[deleted]

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

#289

Post by thfuran »

jmole wrote: post #247
thfuran wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, so we're just going to need a few long term clinical trials assessing the impacts of each of ingestion, skin contact, inhalation, eye exposure, etc. separately for childhood exposure, adult exposure, exposure during pregnancy, acute exposure, chronic exposure, and so on. 100 billion dollars and thirty years later, maybe you can start provisionally selling your slightly better scotch tape.

That’s a little disingenuous. Something like an herbicide that’s broadly applied to fruits and vegetables that millions of people are eating should be under far higher scrutiny than a niche product that has limited human contact.

Things that don't have much human contact in the general population can have significant human contact during the manufacturing process of products containing or processed with them.

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

#290

Post by dredmorbius »

omginternets wrote: post #149
zzzeek wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

right and that's why they just settled instead of proving their product is safe

You don’t prove a product is safe. You fail to prove it isn’t.

In a civil lawsuit, the actual legal standard is "preponderance of evidence".

Factor that by cost of defending the case and potential risk of payout in that and future cases as well.

A multimillion dollar settlement suggests some doubt on the part of the defendant to establish their case.

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