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Chlormequat in food and urine from adults in the United States from 2017 to 2023

nature.com

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Re: Chlormequat in food and urine from adults in the United States from 2017 to 2023

#41

Post by chasebank »

chabes wrote: post #22
chasebank wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine owns / operates a few hundred acre certified organic Avocado ranch in Carpinteria, CA. He explained to me it's mostly just paperwork and the organic pesticides / fertilizers are just as, if not more, gnarly than the non-organic ones. He said it just makes people feel good and there is virtually zero difference. Obviously a single source but one I hold very credible.

Sounds like your buddy is just using the organic title for marketing purposes. That is unfortunate, but not uncommon. Here’s a source that doesn’t fit your buddy’s description… Along the central coast of California, conventional strawberry growers apply chemicals like methyl bromide, an internationally banned substance that is no longer being manufactured, but is stockpiled for exemptions to the ban, which these grow…

"It is true that the National Organic Program is a joke, since they let the board get taken over by corporate big ag long ago. That doesn’t mean “it just makes people feel good and there is virtually zero difference”. In some cases it does, but to paint the whole thing as such is denying the larger reality."

The national program is the one that matters, right? Most people consuming organic produce in the US are affected by this. Isn't that the larger reality? The people who know and buy from their local organic strawberry farmer has to be the .0001 edge case.

Re: Chlormequat in food and urine from adults in the United States from 2017 to 2023

#42

Post by xkcd-sucks »

chasebank wrote: post #14
voakbasda wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Organic may not be much better, as many of the chemicals approved for organic crops are even worse. So, yes, regulation has failed. Good luck holding anyone accountable.

A friend of mine owns / operates a few hundred acre certified organic Avocado ranch in Carpinteria, CA. He explained to me it's mostly just paperwork and the organic pesticides / fertilizers are just as, if not more, gnarly than the non-organic ones. He said it just makes people feel good and there is virtually zero difference. Obviously a single source but one I hold very credible.

Like what specifically? It is certainly true that there's little difference between naturally and synthetically sourced chemicals of the same identity (ideally, where supply chain doesn't affect composition)

But at least naively, these all seem like the least concern: Fairly well behaved nutrient stuff like phosphate rock, nitrates, sulfur, etc.; while all the concerning compounds are synthetic or semisynthetic (besides arsenic lead etc. which have been out of use for a long time right?!)

AFAIK there is no natural source for most of the concerning pesticides/herbicides like glyphosate, chlormequat, paraquat, aminopyralid, maybe synthetic/semisynthetic pyrethrenoids etc. while the much smaller list of "natural" pestidides (pyrethrum, any others?) aren't concerning because they degrade quickly etc.

But I'm also assuming here that "approved for organic use" means "the substance can be trivially extracted from natural sources" which might not be true

Re: Chlormequat in food and urine from adults in the United States from 2017 to 2023

#43

Post by tekla »

snapcaster wrote: post #38
candiddevmike wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to say "worse", but for a lot of organic alternatives the problem is "more"--it requires significantly more applications/frequencies than synthetic alternatives. This can contribute to run off and groundwater contamination.

Can you name one example though? It's so hard to get information on this topic that isn't filtered through BigAg or other large interests

Night Soil

Re: Chlormequat in food and urine from adults in the United States from 2017 to 2023

#45

Post by burkaman »

alwa wrote: post #32
boh wrote: post #12

Excuse me if I’m reading this wrong, but less than 100 urine samples were tracked for any given year?

On the one hand, as a statistician memorably put it, “doesn’t matter how big the soup bowl is, you still need the same size spoon to taste what kind of soup it is.” On the other hand, yeah these particular convenience samples seem almost deliberately weird. The entire apparent spike in 2023 seems to correspond to a one-off total switch to buying random bulk urine from Florida.

Wow that is a great quote, really makes it intuitive why sample size doesn't have to grow with population size.

Re: Chlormequat in food and urine from adults in the United States from 2017 to 2023

#46

Post by Qem »

Mistletoe wrote: post #37
JohnMakin wrote: post #31

You have to scroll an absurdly long time to find it but this is the key sentence: > Current chlormequat concentrations in urine from this study and others suggest that individual sample donors were exposed to chlormequat at levels several orders of magnitude below the reference dose (RfD) published by the U.S. EPA (0.05 mg/kg bw/day) and the acceptable daily intake (ADI) value published by the European Food Safety Au…

>Toxicological studies suggest that exposure to chlormequat can reduce fertility and harm the developing fetus at doses lower than those used by regulatory agencies to set allowable daily intake levels. I think they are worried about this. Perhaps the levels are set too high?

Also there's hundreds of similarly synthetic substances, each not individually going over set limits, but perhaps the resulting cocktail causes "death by a thousand cuts".

Re: Chlormequat in food and urine from adults in the United States from 2017 to 2023

#47

Post by causi »

Mistletoe wrote: post #37
JohnMakin wrote: post #31

You have to scroll an absurdly long time to find it but this is the key sentence: > Current chlormequat concentrations in urine from this study and others suggest that individual sample donors were exposed to chlormequat at levels several orders of magnitude below the reference dose (RfD) published by the U.S. EPA (0.05 mg/kg bw/day) and the acceptable daily intake (ADI) value published by the European Food Safety Au…

>Toxicological studies suggest that exposure to chlormequat can reduce fertility and harm the developing fetus at doses lower than those used by regulatory agencies to set allowable daily intake levels. I think they are worried about this. Perhaps the levels are set too high?

Why would they say that without mentioning what levels those studies suggest are dangerous?

Re: Chlormequat in food and urine from adults in the United States from 2017 to 2023

#48

Post by [deleted] »

yifanl wrote: post #34
toomuchtodo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of the shareholder value though. /s People are going to scream about the cost of remediating all of this (hundreds of billions, if not trillions), but it was just shareholders through limited liability corporations stealing from taxpayers (who will end up with the remediation bill through taxes) by way of the market and government, with enormous aggregate harm a second order effect. So long, and thanks for all…

Man, really puts into perspective how silly it is for me to be paranoid about deploying a change for a webapp with 100 DAU, while agricorp businesses have no problems accidentally poisoning the planet.

[deleted]

Re: Chlormequat in food and urine from adults in the United States from 2017 to 2023

#49

Post by riversflow »

chabes wrote: post #22
chasebank wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine owns / operates a few hundred acre certified organic Avocado ranch in Carpinteria, CA. He explained to me it's mostly just paperwork and the organic pesticides / fertilizers are just as, if not more, gnarly than the non-organic ones. He said it just makes people feel good and there is virtually zero difference. Obviously a single source but one I hold very credible.

Sounds like your buddy is just using the organic title for marketing purposes. That is unfortunate, but not uncommon. Here’s a source that doesn’t fit your buddy’s description… Along the central coast of California, conventional strawberry growers apply chemicals like methyl bromide, an internationally banned substance that is no longer being manufactured, but is stockpiled for exemptions to the ban, which these grow…

> Here’s a source

?

You are an organic strawberry farmer?

Re: Chlormequat in food and urine from adults in the United States from 2017 to 2023

#50

Post by amanaplanacanal »

billfor wrote: post #35
readthenotes1 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to understand why you're getting downloaded and I hope some of those who did will explain. "Don't ask how the sausage is made" predates any of us still alive by a fair margin

Because life expectancy is nearly at an all time high. Folks that are 50 or older grew up playing with all sorts of toxic chemicals and most of us are still here and fine. If anything you are more likely to become ill by excessive worrying than the actual chemicals.

Our gains in life expectancy during the last 100 years are probably mostly due to vaccines, antibiotics, and anti-smoking campaigns, completely unrelated to whatever chemicals are in our food. These are separate issues.
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