Monsanto Weedkiller Is ‘Probably Carcinogenic,’ WHO Says • Hacker News Board

Re: Monsanto Weedkiller Is ‘Probably Carcinogenic,’ WHO Says

#121

Post by jp555 » Sun, Mar 29, 2015, 1:05 PM UTC

kbutler wrote: post #99

Htsthbjig wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are not talking about toxicity, but about carcinogen products. Very different. Carbon monoxide is toxic. If I breath it while walking a previously fired forest, I feel bad today. If I breath too much I die. But if I get out alive tomorrow my body will be fine. Carcinogen work in totally different ways. If I contact or breath it I will feel fine today but I will have created damage to some of my cells DNA. This dam…

We know that sunshine is carcinogenic. Is a farm worker more likely to contract cancer from the 8 hours/day exposure to sunshine, or to glyphosate? I personally have no idea, but I think it would be an interesting measure.

Difficult to test. What if some workers are chronicly sleep deprived and that contribution was the tipping point for some of them, but not all sleep deprived workers? What if some workers are chronicly anxious, causing sustained elevated stress hormones that combined with other factors put them over the tipping point? So many possible confounding variables

Re: Monsanto Weedkiller Is ‘Probably Carcinogenic,’ WHO Says

#122

Post by anonbanker » Sun, Mar 29, 2015, 10:38 PM UTC

rmason wrote: post #7

I know that its hard for someone to understand who doesn't work with farm chemicals on a regular basis but Roundup is on the low side in terms of toxicity. Here's a copy of a Material Safety Data Sheet that all those who handle herbicides need to maintain for employee access: http://greenhouse.ucdavis.edu/pest/pmsds/Roundup.PDF Almost anything is toxic, even salt, if the dose is high enough. The question that must be…

the fact that this is the top comment on HN for this link is absolutely disgusting.

Re: Monsanto Weedkiller Is ‘Probably Carcinogenic,’ WHO Says

#123

Post by TaylorAlexander » Mon, Mar 30, 2015, 7:49 PM UTC

cowsandmilk wrote: post #68

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #42

I encourage anyone who wants to know more about glyphosate to watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqWwhggnbyw Stephanie Seneff is a Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Artificial Intelligence lab (BS in Biophysics, MS & EE in Electrical Engineering, PHD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) and she has done research suggesting glyphosate is responsible for a whole host of human health issues…

Quickly looking at her CSAIL page, I note 2 things about her glyphosate research: (1) Her talks generally are not at scientific conferences. (2) Her published articles are in "predatory open access journals". Since she is not stupid, I assume she is publishing this work there because she cannot publish in more respected journals. The WHO is respected, it is relying on well-performed studies. If they say glyphosate is…

Good points, thanks for the rational assessment.

I still can't tell if her claims don't hold water (specifically, that glyphosate materially harms gut microbes), but your observations do show she has been shunned by the scientific establishment. I'm no conspiracy theorist there, so that does lend credibility to the idea that she's making an error somewhere.

I would love to see a specific debunking of her claims that didn't cop out and say "glyphosate has already been proven safe, DUH" or attack her personally.

But your observations are good food for thought, thanks.