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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

#61

Post by ericmcer »

Qem wrote: post #46
Mistletoe wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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".

It is scary. Our best recourse is just to "trust the science", but there are a ton of parties invested in keeping the status quo.

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

#62

Post by samatman »

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

You can look into what's legal to apply to organic crops here: https://www.omri.org/omri-lists/download

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

#63

Post by thfuran »

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.

It's not always accidentally.

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

#64

Post by dr-detroit »

causi wrote: post #47
Mistletoe wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

[dead]

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

#65

Post by chihuahua »

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #42
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.

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 (besi…

Rotenone is another example. It used to be allowed for use in organic farming, but in 2019 it was shown to be dangerous and was banned for organic farming. If one organic pesticide that was once considered harmless turned out to be dangerous, there can be others that we don't know about yet.

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

#66

Post by tgv »

ericmcer wrote: post #61
Qem wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

It is scary. Our best recourse is just to "trust the science", but there are a ton of parties invested in keeping the status quo.

"Trust the science" doesn't mean much. In the 70s, studies showed that jeans caused cancer. And yogurt. Other, real carcinogenic compounds were not studied. It takes ages for the dust to settle down and have a decent consensus. In the mean time, it's best to be cautionary.

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

#67

Post by vondur »

evancox100 wrote: post #55
vondur wrote: post #53

According the wikipedia page, Chormequat is not authorized for use in food crops, only ornamental plants. Has that changed?

But as the article states, the EPA allows you to import food crops treated with Chlormequat. Don’t ask me how that makes any sense

Yeah that's bad. I guess I shouldn't be surprised with how government works. Probably two different departments that don't talk with each other.

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

#68

Post by tgv »

burkaman wrote: post #45
alwa wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But it does grow with variability and effect size. And of processes you don't understand, you don't know these. So you often do need a big spoon, and to taste more than just the top. "This noodle soup is just water (p < 0.05)."

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

#70

Post by fransje26 »

s1gnp0st wrote: post #28
rtkwe wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next hundred years is probably going to be grappling with how many toxic chemicals we allowed at 'safe' levels because it was inconvenient to industry to ban them the same way we're floored by the casual irradiation of the early 20th century.

Yep, and how do we even begin to model the interactions between these? The burden of proof is upon those introducing novel substances into my food.

That's funny, because as researchers are finding out, the interaction of many chemicals are having significant effects at concentrations 1 to 2 orders of magnitude below the "safe" values of acceptable daily intakes.

They funded a state-of-the-art ecotoxicology research lab next to where I live, that was going to do pioneering work in the field, within a university-industry cooperation framework. As coincidence would have it, once the first results started coming in, there was a lot less interest from the industry in cooperation. The lab now runs at a fraction of its capacity.

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