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Comment by burntrelish1273 | Hacker News Reader

"Monsanto Advocate Says Roundup Is Safe Enough To Drink, Then Refuses To Drink It"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/27/monsanto-roundup-pa...

I wouldnt drink a glass somebody with a clear agenda gave me. Who knows what else they would have laced it with. Man throws up after ingesting glyphosate is a great title too if they put anything in it to make me vomit.

Or it might just not be wise to drink so much so quickly: man refuse to drink 20 gallons of water, could it be cancerous?

I have been told that urine is perfectly safe to drink by many people, yet not a single one of them agreed to drink a glass of it that I provided.

What'd you have for lunch? I might know a guy who's into that.

But this guy did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8sgEhpHM4k

Not going to click... Not going to click... <click>

Oh wait. It's exactly what you said it was. He made the exact same arguments I did. Pretty cool.

LOL: glyphosate, fracking fluid, artificial sweetener, salt and a red bull chaser. And what I'm pretty sure was an unorganic lemon.

And this guy drinks cyanide: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bWNpO5vvhpk

My point is that being able to drink one glass of the stuff doesn't really tell me much.

Its not the single cigarette that kills you :P

That's an acutely toxic simple anion (CN-), in random things like e.g. apple or peach seeds (#evolution) and commonly byproduct of breaking down more complex atoms.

Versus C3H8NO5P (with additives to multiply the effectiveness), which sounds less inherently safe...

btw cody's lab is an really fun scientific youtube channel. his series on extracting metals is really fun.

It was another glass. It's stupid either way.

Caffeine is a part of many drinks yet its LD50 is lower than that of Roundup. The dosage matters too.

Neem OIL is an biological pesticide that is organic approved. Vastly more likely to kill you than roundup use.

Neem OIL LD50 = 31.95g/kg Caffeine LD50 = 175 g/kg (150-200 estimate in humans) Glycosate LD50 = > 2000 g/kg

i.e. the "Biological&organic and traditional" alternative used is two orders magnitude more dangerous.

Except two of those numbers are off by three orders of magnitude. Caffeine's LD50 is 150-200 milligram/kg, Glyphosate is at 2-5.6g/kg (in rats). These numbers are completely meaningless, though, because LD50 is not the correct measure of toxicity unless you plan on drinking the stuff. The concerns are about the effects of pesticides on the body, not literally dying from the poisonous effects of pesticide. Salt is at around 3g/kg.

Thanks you are correct, I messed up my numbers.

Lithium ion batteries are pretty much 'safe to eat'^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H non-toxic (Edit: NOT safe to eat, as discussed below) (compared with lead-acid or nickel-cadmium batteries)... but I still wouldn't actually eat one.

Lithium in your stomach? Seriously?

Button batteries are a real risk for kids. They have died eating them. For any parent out there it's scary, button batteries are pretty common and look like a sweet or something.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/two-year-ol...

That's a terrible story. :( And a timely reminder that 'non-toxic' doesn't mean 'edible'.

It seems like a heartless nitpick but the reason button cells are dangerous is because they're batteries, not because of their constituent chemicals. The electric current they generate electrolyzes water producing highly corrosive hydroxide. A running blender isn't poisonous either, but you wouldn't eat one.

SOME Lithium in your stomach is safe, and in some circumstances is arguably safer than none, as it's an effective, prescribed antidepressant.

But I don't advocate eating batteries. Just saying that Lithium isn't poison in certain quantities.

Then don't brag about how you'd be happy to actually eat one and expect to hold on to your credibility.

So if I remember the discussion on this article when it was going around, the roundup they had wasn't pure glyphosate. They sometimes mix it with other stuff, especially the off the shelf stuff for lawns. You can drink pure glyphosate and survive (I wouldn't recommend it, though.) It's been tested on animals many times. It's not like some mystery substance that's never been tested.

Eating your feces is safe to eat but i wouldn't eat it. Same with drinking urine.

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