Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by fleddr » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 9:15 PM UTC

user3939382 wrote: post #208

abe_duarte wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

As far as I’m concerned Bayer and Monsanto are like evil incarnate and last time I brought up this lawsuit on HN I was shocked people were defending them. We’re talking about the company that intentionally sold HIV infected blood to people. If it was legal and they could increase profits by lighting people on fire they would do it. Yet people trust corrupt research that they paid for showing their product is safe. We…

There was a dutch researcher that claimed that their weed killer was responsible for the wiping out of many insects, notably bees and bumblebees, but possibly others.

The man was ridiculed by his professional peers, whom later turned out to be bribed. The researcher was fully correct.

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

#302

Post by gruez » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 9:16 PM UTC

pohl wrote: post #269

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…

One thing I've noticed with regard to all of the safety claims made about glyphosate is that it only claims that it's safe with respect to humans directly. They never discuss what it might do to your gut biome. That seems like a curious omission, to me, for a substance like this. Shouldn't that be a standard part of the risk analysis?

>Shouldn't that be a standard part of the risk analysis?

To be fair all this stuff about "gut biome" causing everything from depression to obesity only got popular around the last few years, not a decade or two ago when the bulk of the studies were being done.

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

#303

Post by kmbfjr » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

sharrington wrote: post #281

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 h…

I live in a very rural area, and have never seen winter wheat sprayed with Roundup to speed up harvest time.

I have seen it sprayed in the early spring, but never when kernels are on the plant.

Given that a majority of wheat is winter wheat harvested in the heat of summer, I just can’t see how spraying it with Roundup speeds up anything.

Soybeans? That gets blasted with Roundup. Frequently.

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

#304

Post by vosper » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

telesoft wrote: post #239

user3939382 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I’m concerned Bayer and Monsanto are like evil incarnate and last time I brought up this lawsuit on HN I was shocked people were defending them. We’re talking about the company that intentionally sold HIV infected blood to people. If it was legal and they could increase profits by lighting people on fire they would do it. Yet people trust corrupt research that they paid for showing their product is safe. We…

>people were defending them. I believe that some company monitors websites like reddit and twitter for talk about Monsanto or Big Oil (fracking) and that company pays shills to defend them.

Lots of companies provide that kind of monitoring as a service.

https://www.g2.com/products/dataminr/competitors/alternative...

Not sure if any of them also include PR/shilling, though.

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

#305

Post by kmbfjr » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 9:24 PM UTC

tastyfreeze wrote: post #99

nverno wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there some indication it is more prevalent in processed foods? That wasn't indicated in the article afaict. Also, they mention it's used across a wider range of crops than just soy and grains sadly.

Glyphosate is sprayed on some grain crops prior to harvest to force a whole field into senescence at the same time.

Which species of crops? Because I have never seen that with winter wheat, common oats, #2 dent corn, soybeans or sorghum.

They grow all of that within 300’ of my home.

It may be that the farms near me are worked by smaller operators and they are not paying professional harvesting to bring in the crops in on a schedule. But not letting the grain mature on its own seems like a good way to take less money when sold at the elevator.

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

#306

Post by diordiderot » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 9:34 PM UTC

krolden wrote: post #172

nemo44x wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article a carefully crafted piece of propaganda disguising itself as journalism. This is part (banning herbicides and pesticides) of the green movement. Of course, they forget why we use them in the first place.

"We" use them in the first place because agribusiness wants to grow as much crops as cheaply as possible and consequences be damned as long as it cuts down on their expenses. Monsanto also pushed the sterile lawn image in american culture. Cover your lawn in our herbicides and fertilizers and you can be a proud american lawn mower. Who cares if that means carcinogenic runoff into your lakes and rivers.

Here's the right wing response

R: If we didn't people would starve!

L: people are starving right now anyways, less would starve if we raised taxes on meat

R: I don't care if they starve

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

#307

Post by parineum » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 9:43 PM UTC

abe_duarte wrote: post #43

pfdietz wrote: post #4

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

Monsanto knows this, they have known it for a while. It's a similar case to the teflon "issue".

Prove it.

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

#308

Post by gregwebs » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 9:49 PM UTC

I would encourage everyone to take a look at the glyphosphate toxicity report done by experts on toxicology: https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp214.pdf

Most other summaries of glyphosphate toxicity are not by toxicity experts, are more politically influenced (today's agriculture relies on glyphosphate), and set the bar of evidence very high and otherwise assume glyphosphate is okay instead of taking a precautionary approach.

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

#309

Post by pumnikol » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 9:50 PM UTC

I've been in the field for many years and I see the EU on the forefront of public chemical safety, both in terms of legislation and enforcement. ECHA is transparent about glyphosate [1]. It is not even labelled as CMR on REACH Annex III [2], and that's saying a lot. If you follow the developments, you will find that there is no way to prove a chemical as "safe". All it takes is one bloke on record to develop any health condition which can be linked to a chemical, and it will be scrutinized six ways to Sundays. Often leading to the introduction or decrease of an OEL, or a classification of this substance. As new humans are born all of the time, and diagnostics and analysis methods are still being improved, the likelihood of any given chemical to be "harmless" asymptotically approaches zero. 1 in 2 people develop cancer during their lives [3]. There are currently > 23000 chemicals on the EEA market at >= 1 t/a [4].

1 https://echa.europa.eu/hot-topics/glyphosate 2 https://www.echa.europa.eu/information-on-chemicals/annex-ii... 3 https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/cancer/ 4 https://echa.europa.eu/registration-statistics

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

#310

Post by parineum » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 9:58 PM UTC

kennywinker wrote: post #77

pfdietz wrote: 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.

There’s not a well established link between gluten intolerance and glyphosate, but: > Fish exposed to glyphosate develop digestive problems that are reminiscent of celiac disease. Celiac disease is associated with imbalances in gut bacteria that can be fully explained by the known effects of glyphosate on gut bacteria https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945755/ This isn’t made up woo. It’s a real potential…

> It’s a ... potential link that needs to be fully explored not dismissed

Sure. Explore/research away but that doesn't justify the comment...

> that's ridiculous it also messes up digestive systems, gluten intolerance.

Anyone making a definitive statement on a causal link between glyphosate and cancer is not being informed by science. There might be a link, I don't really care. If there is, I'd definitely support getting it out of food. I really don't have an opinion on glyphosate/monsanto/miscellanious megacorp/chemical but what I do care about is people not perverting science to do their bidding.

It's further frustrating because these arguments all originate from the same mindset as all the other nonsense that you may or may not believe depending on various cultural influences (anti-vax, homeopathy, chiropracty, global warming, "supplements", etc).