A good portion of which can do serious harm to life. Therefore "unknown" is the issue.
Your daily coffee is probably an order of magnitude more carcinogenic than any glyphosate/roundup exposure.
You consider IARC to be "quack-science"?
They are using general classifications to infer potential harm. Glyphosate is in the same class as cooked meat.
This is also likely political posturing to appease anti-gmo sentiments.
I'm not clear how the mutagenic properties reported in cooked meats appease "anti-gmo sentiments" as 'organic' meats are as likely to be cooked as others.
You're being very vociferous in your arguing perhaps you got carried away in your claims for Monsanto products?
I'm saying that glyphosate is probably less carcinogenic considering it has less evidence of mutagenesis than meat.
And despite millions of tons of meat being consumed by the kilogram per week, we see relatively low levels of colon cancer.
We eat several dozen orders of magnitude less glyphosate/POEA. The conclusion then, is obvious.
"Of cancers that affect both men and women, colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States and the third most common cancer in men and in women."
People are eating kilograms of meat a week, and colon cancer is far from the leading cause of death.
Remember dosage is important!
I assume you drink alcohol (and if you don't it's likely not because the IARC classifies it as a "probable human carcinogen")?
Here's a quote that I think sums it up well:
"To take an analogy, think of banana skins. They definitely can cause accidents – but in practice this doesn’t happen very often (unless you work in a banana factory). And the sort of harm you can come to from slipping on a banana skin isn’t generally as severe as, say, being in a car accident.
But under a hazard identification system like IARC’s, ‘banana skins’ and ‘cars’ would come under the same category – they both definitely do cause accidents."
http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2012/06/14/diesel-fu...
So, in this case one might say: [made up example] "the 'inactive' ingredient of Roundup has been shown as likely to cause cancer at the same levels as eating cooked meats".
Some people do/have reduced their intake of cooked meats in order to reduce their [perceived if not actual] cancer risk.
For all intents and purposes, it is.
> yet through further reading I discovered that approximately half of it is glyphosate, and the rest is a combination of surfactants and whatever else.
This is a recent development in the literature. The case for glyphosate being carcinogenic has been so widely tested and proven false that Seralini's group has had to shift focus to save face.
They then turned to POEA as a potential carcinogen, a widely used chemical present in commercial roundup (and many many other products).
They did this because surfactants are irritants, so their physiological effect can easily confound sloppy studies.
The result is a protracted grasping at straws so Seralini can prove his predefined conclusion that "roundup causes cancer". Bad papers published in crap journals to get media attention so Seralini can sell his book.
It's not like being natural imbues anything with any guarantee of safety and wholesomeness, despite what advertising would have us believe. I mean, at this point, poison ivy is a lot more 'natural' in some sense than the average carrot and I know which one I'd rather eat.