California to list glyphosate as cancer-causing | Hacker News Reader

California to list glyphosate as cancer-causing

reuters.com

101 pointseuroclydon182 comments

Here's the current California Prop 65 list. It's... extensive.

https://oehha.ca.gov/media/downloads/proposition-65//p65sing...

I don't think this means as much as the headline makes it sound like. In the State of California, alcoholic beverages are also carcinogens requiring warnings.

California cognitive dissonance: the science suggesting carcinogenicity of acrylamide, which is present --- in significant amounts --- in most cooked food and especially roasted meat and potatoes, is far firmer than the science suggesting that glyphosate is a human carcinogen. It'll be awhile before California Prop 65's a bag of potatoes, though, won't it? but see below, where it turns out I'm wrong about this

I just bought a bag of chips (from Costco in Maryland) that has a known-in-the-state-of-California warning about acrylamide.

Wow. I stand corrected.

"The settlement requires the potato chip producers to reduce acrylamide to 275 parts per billion in three years, a low enough level to avoid a Prop. 65 warning label. That amounts to a 20 percent reduction for Frito-Lay and an 87 percent reduction for Kettle Chips, Brown's office said. Little or no reduction will be needed for most Cape Cod chips, but one product, Cape Cod Robust Russets, will require a warning label, the attorney general said."

from http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Lawsuit-over-potato-ch...

The acrylamide level of the potato increases as it browns. It appears the acrylamide level of these particular chips is therefore unavoidable.

Importantly: you are unlikely to avoid significant acrylamide production in home cooking. It's the potatoes that need the warning, not the chips.

My CIA cookbook begins potato recipes with first blanching them in water prior to roasting, sauté, etc, which is apparently an effective mitigation.

My understanding --- which is casual and mostly comes from Dave Arnold rants on Cooking Issues --- is that acrylamide is produced any time you brown a potato. So: you can eat boiled or mashed potatoes, sure, but if you roast them you're exposed.

This is equally true of meat, and other vegetables.

You essentially can't avoid acrylamide if you cook. Labeling it is silly.

Potatoes are worse than other foods because they have asparagine and starch together.

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/d...

So foods with less starch and/or less protein won't end up with as much acrylamide.

There's other carcinogens generated by high temperature cooking though, for example, https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/d...

I was not aware of the existence of a Culinary Institute of America, and assumed it was the Central Intelligence Agency.

"Why would the CIA have a cookbook..?"

McDonalds in California all have a prominent Prop 65 warning about acrylamide near checkout. Example: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T_-QObaB0sY/Tts3XPghilI/AAAAAAAAEL...

I haven't seen this in other venues that serve fried potato. I wonder if McDonalds was sued at some point.

Yep. Just a clarification: supermarkets, restaurants, bars, and coffee houses already have a single sign warning about cancer-causing agents per Prop 65. The "bag of potatoes" in your example would not have to be individually labeled. The Prop 65 warnings are basically invisible to Californians because they are literally posted everywhere food is sold.

If everything has a warning on it, what's the point?

At the point where you're putting a blanket warning on grocery stores: there is no point.

They might as well just start labeling the things that don't cause cancer, just like the little Kosher symbols on food.

Lawsuits. Giving lawyers something else to sue about.

Except it was the citizens who explicitly and separately vote for this one, and explicitly chose to allow suing over it.

They tried to do the same thing with GMO labeling, which would have had an identical result (lawsuits and everything being labeled GMO no matter whether it was or not) Thankfully, it lost the vote.

Who are 'they,' exactly? Lawyers are citizens too, and more than capable of employing PR agencies and lobby groups. It's not like propositions just pop out of the collective will of the citizenry; being voted on and confirmed by a majority is just the last step after some lobby group has already successfully waged a publicity campaign.

While I'm sure that wasn't the intent, the net result is .. you're not wrong about that.

The proposition was perhaps a good idea that was horribly executed. The idea is to get companies to stop using potentially dangerous chemicals, so the proposition required that companies give a warning if they use any of a set of chemicals on a certain list. Which might be okay, except it has several problems:

* Private citizens are able to initiate civil enforcement and collect penalties; it's not limited to regulatory agencies. Which virtually guarantees that enforcement is going to be about milking money rather than trying to actually reduce harm.

* There's no consideration for dosing, anywhere. So a potential trace contamination is considered as equal a violation as dumping vats of the stuff in the public water system.

* The requirement for listing a chemical is .001% of causing cancer of 70 years. That is a ridiculously low bar, which means many low-risk chemicals are going to be swept up.

* There's no danger for excessive labelling, and the labels remove the liability for violations.

Taken together, it's a recipe for companies to just slap the warning on everything.

>The proposition was perhaps a good idea that was horribly executed. [...] There's no danger for excessive labelling, and the labels remove the liability for violations.

Well, there's that old saying: "The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly." -- supposedly Abe Lincoln

https://www.google.com/search?q=The+best+way+to+get+a+bad+la....

was perhaps a good idea that was horribly executed.

This describes some rather large fraction of laws, period.

It also describes California's entire proposition system!

The point is for everything to have a warning on it, to obscure the actual dangers. (At least, if to wasn't, you'd expect the groups that pushed Prop 65 to realize the problem and push for a fix.)

Exactly. Eat at your own risk. Live at your own risk.

> The Prop 65 warnings are basically invisible to Californians because they are literally posted everywhere food is sold.

I just don't know what to do with the information on those signs. They are posted outside my apartment, at my work's garage, at Fry's... if I actively heeded the sign's warnings I would have to leave California I guess.

They are at Starbucks. I really don't know how to interpret these things because they have no details. They don't say which item is known to cause cancer, so I'm standing there adding sweetener and thinking "should I not add sugar? Or cinnamon?". It is doing more harm than good at this point.

I really want a t-shirt saying in bold letters "This person contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer."

Quick Google search: https://www.zazzle.com/ca_prop_65_t_shirt-235283992142706565

I'm not particularly fond of the front; saying people who vote for something are all morons is unecessarily polarizing. This one's better:

http://www.cafepress.com/mf/9264497/proposition-65-t-shir_ts...

Not really. Starbucks in CA have Prop 65 warnings listing coffee as as a carcinogen.

> In the State of California, alcoholic beverages are also carcinogens requiring warnings.

Well, alcohol is a carcinogen. Why not label it as such?

That was just one example of how everything is labeled a carcinogen there.

Alcohol is a poor choice if you are trying to illustrate over labeling, because alcohol, especially heavy consumption of spirits, has some notoriety as a cause of oral cancer.

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Cancer-of-the-mouth/Pages/Cause...

I think it's pretty simple to observe that if you're using the same label for ethylene oxide and potato chips, something is wrong with your system.

In fairness, an equally simple observation is that there might be something wrong with your potato chips.

Not that I think CA's level of labeling is reasonable or at all helpful.

No! The problem isn't potato chips; it's cooked potatoes. See the issue? The labels are actually subtracting from your understanding of the risk.

Dosage is important in factoring risk. Problem with prop 65 it doesn't factor in risk at all. Potassium-40 produces ionizing radiation and is present with all sources of potassium. That doesn't mean you shouldn't eat Bananas.

Because labeling everything desensitizes people to the label and distorts risk analysis. Desensitization allows people to overestimate the dangers of some substances, while potentially severely underestimating the dangers of others.

What isn't carcinogenic?

> In the State of California, alcoholic beverages are also carcinogens requiring warnings.

You make that sound like a dumb move, but alcohol is linked to several cancer, and people who drink alcohol need to know that drinking is raising their risk of several different types of cancer.

Whether prop 65 is the right way to do that is another matter.

I think you nailed it by distinguishing usefulness, labeling alchohol and potatoes the same way makes you want to treat one like the other and I don't see how that turns out well.

The state should find a new scientific threshold to use before issuing these warnings. The items added are so extensive that it renders the designation almost meaningless. You become desensitized to these things.

Why lump wine in with something clearly dangerous like asbestos? (Curiously Serpentine is the state rock).

> California cognitive dissonance

I was born here over 40 years ago, and I've lived here since then except for a 15 year stint in the south and midwest.

I love my state; but this place is objectively crazy in a lot of ways.

Maybe that's one of the core ingredients to the many other awesome things here.

> I love my state; but this place is objectively crazy in a lot of ways.

> Maybe that's one of the core ingredients to the many other awesome things here.

California cognitive dissonance. (Nice job setting up the symmetry!)

The California Prop 65 signs are the brick and mortar equivalent to "this site uses cookies" notices online. As soon as every store/site has them, it is the same as no store/site having them.

You can't go into a building in California without seeing a sign warning about carcinogens, so you tune them out. I have no idea how you're supposed to know if there's something truly dangerous.

I have often thought on my flights into California that as soon as the plane crosses the California state line, the pilot should just come on and announce "The State of California is known by the State of California to contain things known by the State of California to cause cancer."

You are exposed to radiation while flying, I wouldn't be overly surprised if California passed a law mandating that the pilot notify passengers that "flying is known to the state of California to cause cancer."

Last time roundup came up here I made the claim that it killed my dad (healthy guy, came from a healthy long lived family, he died about 15-20 years sooner than his relatives from the cancer that is associated with roundup, you can google "non-hodgkin's lymphoma roundup" and you'll see a zillion lawyers wanting to talk to you about it).

Yet hackernews people shouted me down saying that it wasn't possible. I'm not an oncologist, I have no idea who is right, it was my Dad who told me he was convinced it was roundup, so what do I know? But it is weird that now the state of California sees it as carcinogen, the lawyers are salivating over it (not that they are oncologists either but they tend not to get excited unless they believe they will win), yet I'm sure people are going to reply that roundup is fine.

I don't know what to believe. It sure _seems_ like there is some bad juju in roundup, there shouldn't be this much fuss if it is just a conspiracy theory. But who are the people here that keep defending it? It would be oh-so-nice if someone who was clearly objective and an expert could lay it out. Does it cause cancer? How much do you have to be exposed to to get cancer? Do you have to eat it? Or does just getting it on your skin or breathing the fumes do it?

From what I understand: we just don't know for sure. There is just no conclusive evidence saying 'humans exposed to this amount will have a higher risk at developing cancer'. That doesn't mean it's impossible, nor does it mean we will never know. That is probably what HN was trying to tell you (well, I hope it was, no other conclusions seem justified at this point - again, as far as I know from when I last read up on it a couple of months ago).

My understanding is that the EU is, or has already, going to label roundup as cancer causing. And California is now doing that.

So what are they basing that ban on? If there is no evidence why would they do that? Has the EU or California made a practice of labeling stuff as cancer causing without any evidence? That seems pretty weird if that's true.

Thanks for the tone of your answer, BTW.

So what are they basing that ban on?

I assume things like this:

  Kathryn Guyton, a senior toxicologist in the monographs programme at the IARC and one of the authors of the study, says,
  “In the case of glyphosate, because the evidence in experimental animals was sufficient
  and the evidence in humans was limited, that would put the agent into group 2A.”

From http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-20..., thanks to https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/18329/does-roun...

> My understanding is that the EU is, or has already, going to label roundup as cancer causing.

Well, the EU commission has to decide but the ECHA study concluded that it is not carcinogen

https://echa.europa.eu/-/glyphosate-not-classified-as-a-carc...

> That is probably what HN was trying to tell you (well, I hope it was

IIRC, the push back was against taking what his dad assumed was the cause as gospel without actual evidence. It's tricky, you want to respect the person that was ill knew something about what was going on, and respect their memory after they are gone, but there's really no reason we should provide them more factual relevance than previously. Human beings are often not rational creatures, and I see no reason to believe that the stress of illness and possible impending death would make them more rational in general (even if it may make certain individuals more or less rational).

> you want to respect the person that was ill knew something about what was going on

> and respect their memory after they are gone

Dead people can be wrong. That's totally okay - it doesn't tarnish their memory in the slightest. And just because you're the one that's ill doesn't mean you suddenly have greater medical insight or training. Me getting cancer doesn't give me the slightest idea what caused it.

You were probably shouted down because your argument is bad. First, you cite anecdotal evidence of one case. Next you claim to not be an expert in oncology, but you somehow have more knowledge on the subject than them. There may indeed be a link, but you are supporting your case poorly.

Condolences for your father.

I'm not trying to make an argument, I was just passing on a single data point. I made it pretty clear that I don't know and it's not my field. I don't know how you get from what I said to "somehow I have more knowledge than oncologists". If I said that then I'm 100% wrong.

My dad was a physicist and when he got cancer he started looking around to try and figure out why. He found that the only thing that made sense to him was roundup, I think he just went through all the stuff he had been exposed to in his life and that was the only thing that had any possibility of giving him cancer.

Maybe that's a bad argument but he was pretty baffled about it until he found roundup. There was literally no cancer in his family and his relatives tended to live well into their 90's. He was 75 and very fit, I went canoing with him 2 weeks before he died.

He had a lot of roundup exposure because he was very active in wetlands preservation and they fought off invasive species with roundup. At the time, there was very little noise about roundup being possibly cancer causing.

Again, that's just background, I'm not trying to make an argument that it is or is not cancer causing, I don't know. What I am trying to say is that he thought that was the cause, California seems to think there is something there, the EU seems to think there is something there, and the lawyers seem to think there is something there. That's a lot of people, in my opinion too many people, for it to be a conspiracy.

So it's fine if people want to say my dad's case is not evidence or useful or whatever. That's really not the point. The point is there is enough smoke there to think there is a fire and I don't get why people would argue about my smoke being nonsense; that seems to miss the bigger picture.

> But who are the people here that keep defending it?

In recent times, people have become afraid of being perceived as anti-science. See it all the time.

Worse, people believe in the results of anything labeled "science" blindly, without considering whether it's actually true or what the confidence level of the scientists is in their own result.

For example, evolution. I know someone who believes in it so strongly that you can't suggest that it's still just a theory, and that it's actually possible that it's incorrect. Unlikely, sure, but possible. He gets irate and claims it as a fact.

> For example, evolution. I know someone who believes in it so strongly that you can't suggest that it's still just a theory, and that it's actually possible that it's incorrect.

It is a theory, but theory in the scientific context doesn't mean what you think it means.

By the way, evolution is a fact.

Corbet does a great video on the Weaponization of Science:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yecefLsE44U

There is no solid evidence of a connection. Go ahead and Google it yourself. The only "evidence" against it is a bunch of biased sites who love to pooh-pooh "toxins" and "unnaturality"

There's very little epidemiological evidence to suggest glyphosate is a human carcinogen. Millions of people are exposed to it, some in significant amounts on work sites. If there's any correlation between heavy occupational exposure to glyphosate and human cancer, it's very weak.

Similarly: there's not a lot of first-principles logic to carcinogenicity of glyphosate. It's active in a metabolic pathway that animals don't have.

Finally, there's a lot of fuzz around glyphosate that would lead us to be skeptical of its danger. In particular: glyphosate is most closely associated with genetic modification and Monsanto (part of the appeal of glyphosate is that you can genetically engineer plants that resist it). But glyphosate itself is not a product of genetic engineering!

It's not impossible that glyphosate is a human carcinogen! But it's not impossible that a lot of things are carcinogens. To be intellectually consistent about the precautionary response to glyphosate, you're going to have to get rid of a whole lot of other features of modern life as well.

Acrylamide, which is produced in basically all human dry-heat cooking, is a known human carcinogen. The science behind the risks of acrylamide is, relative to that surrounding glyphosate, very solid. But we're never going to "ban" acrylamide, or, realistically, do anything to mitigate our exposure to it.

In that light, it seems reasonable to push back on public policy interventions for a useful chemical that has, based on current evidence, much less risk than "almost all cooked food".

The metabolic pathway-propaganda doesn't tell half the truth; there are plenty of living organisms and organs within the human body that are badly affected by Glyphosate; enough to make you wonder if that wasn't part of the plan all along. Nothing good ever came out of Monsanto, it's all harmful crap; it's mind-boggling that these psychos are allowed to continue given their track record.

Cornell has done studies where they've fed dogs and rats huge amounts of glyphosate over long periods of time and were unable to detect any cellular changes. Due respect, but when you're at the point where you can't give rats cancer with long-term high dosing, the bar for establishing carcinogenicity from first-principles reasoning is very, very high.

I would be interested in reading Cornell's study, because it seem to contradict a World Health Organization study that marks glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans (meaning that there is "sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals").

I'm wrong, it was the EPA, and Cornell just cited them (thanks for calling me on this!):

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2013-05-01/pdf/2013-10316.p...

The WHO ultimately walked back IARC's glyphosate assessment:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-who-glyphosate-idUS...

Thanks for the links. It seems to me that the animal studies made by the EPA returned different results than the one done by the IARC. Citing the article from Reuters:

> "IARC reviews published studies to identify potential cancer hazards," the WHO said. "It does not estimate the level of risk to the population associated with exposure to the hazard."

I honestly don't know what conclusion, if any, should I have from this.

You keep referring to animal studies conducted by IARC. What studies are you talking about? The one that got all the press, published in The Lancet, was a meta-study, covering many herbicides, and the conclusion it true about glyphosate's human cancer risk was based on other studies that also covered many herbicides and showed comparatively weak correlations for glyphosate.

The lymphoma study the IARC report actually footnotes covers something like 30 different chemicals, and equivocates on glyphosate.

I was not aware that the IARC evaluation was a meta-analysis (my fault, as I just read the results from this monograph: http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/iarcnews/pdf/MonographVol...), but yes I was referring to the one published in The Lancet.

> Nothing good ever came out of Monsanto, it's all harmful crap; it's mind-boggling that these psychos are allowed to continue given their track record. <

Can you back that up with even one verified instance ?

PCBs (1935-1977), Agent Orange (1965-1969), Aspartame (1985-2000); how many examples do you want? They have public, verifiable roots that go all the way back to the Nazis and Zyklon-B. Not to mention trying to take over and ruin the global food supply for profit with their artificial bullshit seeds and chemicals.

First, research is showing it has sub-lethal effects on many species of animals, particularly pollinators like bees where field-realistic doses can significantly reduce colony performance. Second, glyphosate persists and drifts easily from 'controlled' plants to nearby wild habitat, destroying and eroding critical forage.

Glyphosate is hugely responsible for the conversion of massive amounts of land into corn and soy cropland, where reduced pollinator habitat actually reduces crop yields (or requires more agricultural abuses like migratory honeybees).

To say this is a useful chemical is misleading. It's designed to kill things and like all such chemicals, there are significant tradeoffs, regardless of whether it is directly carcinogenic to humans.

That's interesting, but you're rebutting a bunch of arguments I didn't make.

I disagree with your argument that we should push back on policy intervention for glyphosate, because it might be non-carcinogenic to humans or it compares more favorably against another chemical in our food. My comments were other reasons why it may be dangerous. Considering it's one of the most-used common chemicals in the US, the standard for this usage must be very high.

Fair enough. I mean to say: we should push back on policy interventions based on marginal hypothetical cancer risks.

I would definitely agree with that.

Uhm, glyphosate doesn't affect pollinators.[1] It's an herbicide. And drift that reduces "critical forage"? That's not even part of the glyphosate controversy. Glyphosate either works on a plant or it doesn't. Where you're killing your neighbor's plants by drift, you're going to get a citation or sued or both.

[1] https://goo.gl/lGpC1k

Many people confuse herbicides with pesticides as you have probably noticed.

Both can be harmful or beneficial, depending on usage obviously.

"Pesticides", at least in common usage, is inclusive of herbicides.

> Uhm, glyphosate doesn't affect pollinators.

It does affect pollinators, show in some examples of recent research [1][2], and effects on other non-insect animal species like frogs [3] and fish [4][5]. We may not know why it does yet, but there is plenty of evidence. This is just a tiny sampling.

> And drift that reduces "critical forage"? That's not even part of the glyphosate controversy.

This is very much part of the controversy. As one example, glyphosate has been linked to decline of milkweed habitat, significantly impacting monarch butterflies. The NRDC petitioned the EPA in 2015 to restrict the use because of this [6]. Just because of the widespread application in agricultural and urban areas, drift and runoff contaminate large areas of habitat, impacting countless non-target species of both plant and animal.

One could also draw the conclusion that glyphosate-tolerant corn and soy have been particularly responsible for the conversion of over 150 million acres of land (almost the size of Texas) into food or biofuel development in the last ~25 years. This land is no longer animal/pollinator friendly and is leading to a rapid decline in plant/pollinator relationships.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25063858 [2] http://jeb.biologists.org/content/jexbio/218/17/2799.full.pd... [3] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/11-0189.1/abstrac... [4] http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es404258h [5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17933590 [6] https://www.nrdc.org/media/2015/150624

The milkweed concern isn't over drift. It's over monocultures, which is a different argument entirely. As for studies 1 and 2 below, I'll look into them more, but as cited above, there's also plenty of science indicating the opposite.

How much research have you done on this topic?

Could you tell us/me about your background in this area? I looked you up, you seem to be a computer security guy.

Yet you are talking like you have pretty deep knowledge about biology and oncology, certainly more than I would claim to have.

Just wondering.

I really hate Prop 65. Those warnings appear everywhere without a strong scientific basis backing their claims, so not only does everyone ignore the warnings, it drowns out the real important ones. Those cavalier exaggerations erode public trust.

yes. it's the boy who cried wolf.

one building may have some asbestos fibers in the interior of its walls, used as, say pipe insulation many decades ago. the asbestos is contained and does not enter the air.

another building, say, an auto body repair shop, may have organic solvent vapors floating around at a relatively high concentration on a daily basis.

both have the prop 65 warning. which one should i prefer to work in?

(the real answer is i don't know and i don't care because, like most Californians, i don't pay any attention to those signs. i don't even know what they mean. it's all noise to me. i think i'll have two bags of potato chips on my lunch break today.)

Seems to me that the evidence surrounding this isn't strong enough to warrant designating glyphosate as "cancer-causing" for humans, but the evidence surrounding the adverse effects in animals is pretty strong (based on my skimming of the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate#Humans).

Would like to hear thoughts from anyone close to the matter, I'm sure you have a different perspective than I.

After this disaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9ralini_affair I'm very skeptical about claims of glyphosate being "cancer-causing" (whatever that means when no measure of effect size is mentioned), even in animals.

Why? Flawed studies get run all the time. If you see a flawed study about bat flight, does that make you more skeptical about all bat flight studies?

Do you get joy from hippies being wrong? That's probably going to cause huge biases in your science reading.

The point being it is the only study that seemed to point to a link to cancer. But it was hugely flawed and was retracted. Given the hysteria over roundup you would think there were a bunch of such studies.

Reminds me of aspartame. It's probably the only drug that's been studied more than glyphosate as a result of bad science causing public outrage.

California thinks EVERYTHING is cancer causing. I took my kids to Disneyland last year and right after the security screen there was a Prop 65 sign saying (roughly) that "Disneyland contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer". How is that helpful at all?

It's as helpful as the cookie notifications on all the European websites.

EU Cookie law was mostly to deter the use of tracking tools (and actually allows them for login etc) but people ignored it and just slapped banners on.

Stupid real people creating unintended consequences for the well-meaning legislators. How's a legislator to regulate anything around here ?

Whatever it was intended for, they succeeded in making the browsing experience worse and annoying millions of people daily.

i live in California and i endorse your message. prop 65 warnings have become practically meaningless to me.

those warnings are almost everywhere. the average Californian could not carry out their daily routine if they refused to enter any buildings that had Prop 65 warning signs.

I have a picture of one of those signs near our hotel when we stayed there. My wife and I were very surprised to see it. It's so ridiculous.

I switched from using RoundUp to a vinegar/salt/dish soap solution this summer and can't believe how well it works.

It seems to be just as effective as RoundUp.

What are you putting it on? Does it kill everything or just the subset that you want? What's the mixture ratios?

If it worked on scotch broom I'd be forever grateful.

Thanks!

It definitely kills grass. I use it for both grass and weeds outside of the lawn. The recipe is from Pinterest of course but it's:

    1 gallon white vinegar (the kind we bought is 5% acidity)
    1 cup table salt
    1 tbsp Dawn dish soap

    Mix and pour into a spray bottle.

I'm not sure about scotch broom - reading says it's more effective on small weeds, but that it kills whatever it contacts. I think the salt is damaging to the soil, so don't spray it if you plan to grow something else.

Here's a paper I found with some info: https://extension.umd.edu//sites/extension.umd.edu/files/_do...

"I think the salt is damaging to the soil, so don't spray it if you plan to grow something else."

"Salt the Earth" is an established phrase in the English lexicon for a reason. The cancer-causing-ness of this mixture vs. Roundup may be in dispute, but this is certainly going to have a longer term effect than spraying Roundup, especially if you repeatedly apply it in the same place.

Thanks for the explanation and pointing that out. I wasn't aware until it was mentioned by you and another commenter.

http://weedcontrolfreaks.com/2014/06/salt-vinegar-and-glypho...

both salt and vinegar are more toxic than glyphosphate.

But, but they are "natural"...

I'll drink a teaspoon of vinegar and salt every day, you drink a teaspoon of glyphosphate every day.

If you are going to drink a teaspoon of pure (not diluted) acetic acid each day, and salt, i'll definitely take the glyphosphate.

The acetic acid is going to eat your internal organs.

Nobody said pure acetic acid. It's diluted to 5%.

and if you dilute the glyphosphate to the amount actually used, it's still going to be less toxic than the salt + vinegar.

You may not like this, but that's science!

Vinegar isn't pure acetic acid so I'm not sure why you're bringing that up. I mean I know why, because then you can argue against a point I didn't make instead of the point I did.

A teaspoon of regular vinegar a day is not going to have any lasting effects on your health other than making you despise anything that tastes even remotely like vinegar.

Saying "salt + vinegar is more toxic than glyphosphate" is only true if you bastardize the definition of both and willingly forget for a moment that one of the chemicals is specifically designed to kill things.

"Vinegar isn't pure acetic acid so I'm not sure why you're bringing that up. I mean I know why, because then you can argue against a point I didn't make instead of the point I did."

Ah, but now you've pointed out the problem with your own argument. Nobody uses 100% glyphosphate either. It's highly diluted.

"Saying "salt + vinegar is more toxic than glyphosphate" is only true if you bastardize the definition of both and willingly forget for a moment that one of the chemicals is specifically designed to kill things. "

Saying salt + vinegar is worse than glyphosphate is only true if you bastardize how glyphosphate is used. So yes, i'd agree with you that your point makes no sense :)

" forget for a moment that one of the chemicals is specifically designed to kill things."

Intent is irrelevant in nature. It's also not made to kill humans.

This point is just more of the same. Acetic acid is meant to destroy things too!

You are arguing "in the concentrations used, it's not destructive". That's quite literally the same as glyphosphate.

Have you seen the MSDS on acetic acid? Drinking a strong acid isn't good for your health.

Chronic Effects on Humans: MUTAGENIC EFFECTS: Mutagenic for mammalian somatic cells. Mutagenic for bacteria and/or yeast. May cause damage to the following organs: kidneys, mucous membranes, skin, teeth.

http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9922769

Well then it's a good thing we're talking about vinegar, which is 4-6% acetic acid, unless you're talking about wine vinegar (we're not), and not talking about 100% pure acetic acid, which is what you linked.

You're kind of making his point for him.

Chemically, a "strong acid" is one that dissociates completely in solution. HCl, H2SO4, HNO3, HBr, HI, HClO4, HClO3 comprise the complete list. That's it. All other acids have a dissociation constant, pKa.

The pKa for acetic acid is 4.76 . It is a "weak acid", but then again, so is HF, with a pKa of 3.17 . If you have ever seen Breaking Bad, you have seen what even a "weak acid" can do to the human body at high concentrations.

The usual story about acetic acid is that your chem prof was pipetting glacial acetic acid by mouth, and they accidentally got some in their mouth, and all the cells lining their oral cavity peeled off the next day. And they used bulbs or thumbwheel pumps on their pipettes ever since. Not sure if this story is especially common or if it is made up to scare students into using the lab equipment safely.

But anyway, the point is that the ill effects for caustic chemicals are largely dependent on concentration. "Vinegar" is acetic acid diluted to between 4 wt% and 18 wt%. You can drink vinegar, and just have skin rashes and weak teeth. If you drink enough glacial acetic acid (>99 wt%), you're going to die.

it will be less toxic, but probably tastes awful.

Depending on the vinegar/soap it may contain alcohol which is known carcinogen where glyphosates are a suspected carcinogen. On toxicity, acetic acid in vinegar is pretty high and associated with things like osteoporosis which has been seen in people who consume apple cider vinegar on a daily basis. Along the same lines LD50 of glyphosates is 10,000mg/kg where acetic acid in vinegar is fatal at 3000mg/kg.

LD50 and carcinogenesis have very little to do with each other.

Both are related to mortality.

Yes, and the topic of discussion is most assuredly not: which will make you drop dead while using it.

Rather, it's "which will give you cancer through long-term exposure".

I guess you could damage your skin via direct contact if you're not careful and use them a lot, but the alcohol and acetic acid will dissolve in the ground in reasonable time. Using such herbicides should be way less harmful than drinking a glass of wine or cider every now and then, and safer than glyphosate too.

Keep in mind that salt accumulates in the soil. Eventually, if you use too much, you can end up with soil that's too high in salt for plants to trive, and the only option is scoop it all out with an excavator and replace it. Of course, that's the extreme scenario and not super likely unless your concentrations are high.

Vinegar is less of an issue if you monitor soil acidity; and you can always compensate with lime (our soils here in the South East are naturally acidic so we often have to ammend them).

> I switched from using RoundUp to a vinegar/salt/dish soap solution this summer and can't believe how well it works.

Yeah, salting the Earth is rather well established as a herbicidal practice known for millenia; increasing soil and runoff salinity has rather negative long-term environmental consequences, though (though, I guess, desertification can be a rather dramatic solution to the “plants I don't like grow here” problem.)

How long does salt last in soil?

In the formulas I've read, there's very little salt. It's about a gallon of vinegar, a single squirt of dish soap, and a pour or two of salt.

> How long does salt last in soil?

Until it becomes salt in runoff, which is also a problem.

I've already switched to vinegar, salt, and a pump sprayer from lowes, it's cheaper and i can buy gallons and pounds of it from costco

but probably more toxic than glyphosphate. https://geneticliteracyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/0...

And more detrimental to soil life (though maybe that's exactly the point here)

i only use the soap + vinegar + salt on the driveway, and just the soap + vinegar on the "drought friendly" gravel backyard

I don't see acetic acid on your list, and as someone mentioned above, i'll take vinegar (salad dressing mainly) and take salt everyday, you can go drink the roundup.

interesting. that chart describes caffeine as more toxic than glyphosate.

caffeine is about thirty times more toxic than glyphosate. According to wikipedia:

"The LD50 of caffeine in humans is dependent on individual sensitivity, but is estimated to be 150 to 200 milligrams per kilogram of body mass (75–100 cups of coffee for a 70 kilogram adult)"

For glyphosate: "The acute oral LD50 in the rat is 5,600 mg/kg. Other oral LD50 values for glyphosate are 1,538 to greater than 10,000 mg/kg for mice, rabbits mg/kg, and goats"

http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/dienochlor-gly...

that's also really interesting.

here's what i don't get: how should i weigh the risks of acute toxicity against the risks of carcinogenicity?

i take in caffeine every day. glyphosate, only rarely, and in truly minute quantities. i haven't yet ingested enough of either to die immediately.

but have i ingested enough of either one to get cancer? is one a more powerful carcinogen than the other, taken in the quantities i experience? etc

Avoiding the various herbicides and pesticides is the reason everyone I know who eats organic and non-GMO food does so.

As always you should do your own research, draw your own conclusions. Be aware there is a shocking amount of astroturfing on this topic.

could be said about your side as well ... almost all anti gmo/glyphosphate arguments can be traced back to sources with a financial interest in spreading fear about our food supply.

I am sharing why the people I know who eat organic food do so.

understood, I was responding to your "astroturfing" comment. The shill card gets played pretty frequently in these discussions.

The astroturfing comment is broad about nearly any controversial information online, it's why people must be skeptical, critical, and discerning.

It's just an annoying reality of the internet, I suppose.

People are much too quick to conclude that they're observing astroturfing when what they're really observing is the simple fact that not everyone agrees with them. Because of this, we have two problems: real astroturfing (when it's actually going on), and imaginary astroturfing (which people project onto their opponents in arguments). Both are destructive, but since the imaginary variant is more common, it's more destructive. It poisons discussion. Therefore we ask HN commenters not to post insinuations about astroturfing unless they have specific evidence, and to remember that somebody merely stating an opposing view does not count as evidence.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=true&page=0&dateR...

That's totally fair. I suppose I should have clarified my original statement as to imply broad caution rather than anything specific.

Ironically, by avoiding "GMO foods", your friends are probably increasing their exposure to herbicides that have a much clearer connection to human health risks.

That would be ironic and sounds interesting, do you have a source that demonstrates organic food increases herbicide exposure?

Please respond to what my comment actually said, not what you wish it said.

> Ironically, by avoiding "GMO foods", your friends are probably increasing their exposure to herbicides that have a much clearer connection to human health risks.

I am responding to that comment from you. I'd love to read about how avoiding "GMO foods" increases exposure to herbicides, do you have any information on that?

> I'd love to read about how avoiding "GMO foods" increases exposure to herbicides,

The OP comment doesn't say that.

It says that probably is increasing their exposure more toxic herbicides, not that is increasing the exposure to herbicides

> It says that probably is increasing their exposure more toxic herbicides

OK, that sounds very interesting, can you show me the supporting data?

I don't have any data and I'm not the one making the claim, I just was correcting a misunderstanding about the claim

Do they know that organic food uses pesticides? Worse ones, too...

Which pesticides do you refer to? I'd love to read and share exactly that sort of data.

A quick Google finds this (I consider NPR to be at least a decent source): http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2011/06/18/13724926...

That seems to cover the basics of the situation.

The TL;DR is that an "organic" label just means the food was grown using only "organic" components. There are plenty of organic pesticides.

Interesting read, thanks.

I suspect the general need for pesticides and herbicides comes with large scale production, where manual efforts for weeding and pest control is inefficient.

you have to also consider which organic standard. The ones in California and Oregon are much more strict than USDA organic

Even when I've been outside of California I've noticed the "known to the State of California to cause..." warnings. I wonder why

It's because most products in the US are sold in multiple states, including California, and the logistics of ensuring your "known to cause cancer in California" warnings are only printed on the "California version" of those products just isn't worth the effort. Better to just have one version of your product that can be sold in any state.

Aha! Thanks for explaining.

Would this affect produce in a grocery store? I thought the pesticide was supposed to be mostly gone by the time the product is harvested. I mean there are stories of farmers blasting it on crops later in the cycle but those seem to be an exception.

If anything I feel as if there might be some general warning placed in the front of a store in order to comply with the need to inform shoppers

Pesticide residue is absolutely not a concern. If you're still terrified of it, just rinse your fruit and vegetables off first, and that will eliminate it.

Glyphosate itself really isn't a problem unless you're dealing with 55-gallon drums of it on a regular basis (and even then, the evidence is less than compelling). But such is chemophobia that we can't treat repercussions in an industrial settings with solely OSHA-style rules but must freak out about it even in situations where it's clearly not an issue.

Oh, I meant the labeling requirements. How much glyphosate is allowed to be on the produce before they have to label it? Or once the food has been touched, is it tainted forever (legally speaking)?

As far as I can tell from Proposition 65... any amount is sufficient to necessitate a label.

The current law states: [the requirements to not expose anyone to such a chemical are waived for] an exposure for which the person responsible can show that the exposure poses no significant risk assuming lifetime exposure at the level in question for substances known to the state to cause cancer, and that the exposure will have no observable effect assuming exposure at one thousand (1000) times the level in question for substances known to the state to cause reproductive toxicity, based on evidence and standards of comparable scientific validity to the evidence and standards which form the scientific basis for the listing of such chemical pursuant to subdivision (a) of Section 25249.8. In any action brought to enforce Section 25249.6, the burden of showing that an exposure meets the criteria of this subdivision shall be on the defendant.

So basically, the minimum amount you need to label is the minimum amount you'd be unable to convince a jury that exposure to is safe.

>I mean there are stories of farmers blasting it on crops later in the cycle but those seem to be an exception.

Glyphosate is used regularly as a desiccant, I don't think it's an exception[1].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_desiccation

I switched from glyphosate to a mix of diquat dibromide, fluazifop-p-butyl and dicamba (sold under the brand of Spectracide) but I don't know if that's any better.

Last time I looked, there was no solid evidence against glyphosate. Has the situation changed? Or is California reacting off of hype?

From what I can tell, everything that's been published since the IARC publication has been in the direction of glyphosate not being carcinogenic. As well: the World Health Organization walked IARC's claim back in a subsequent publication.

The "you may be entitled to compensation" ads are already out in full force.

(nevermind)

Don't comment like that here:

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:dang%20astroturf&sort=b...

It was mostly a joke, but I get your point and it's fair enough.

Here is some interesting reading instead:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-20...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4756530/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25801782/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/?term=glyphosate+cancer

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/04/us/lawn-herbicide-called-c...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22222006

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/?term=2%2C4-D+cancer

It's not a joke. It's like the 4th comment you've posted on this thread claiming that people who disagree with you must be paid shills.

As for your links: the ones actually about glyphosate are all based on IARC's assessment, which the WHO was later forced to walk back (see upthread). The remainder are about herbicides that aren't glyphosate. Nobody is arguing that all herbicides are safe. The discussion is about whether glyphosate is a human carcinogen. The evidence suggests: probably not.

(nevermind)

No, I just know how to read an abstract.

Well there are several hundred abstracts referenced in those links, some of which may surprise you.

There's a lot of interesting information out there.

Commonly? 2,4-D is a selective herbicide, and glyphosate is not. In most circumstances, adding 2,4-D to glyphosate would be burning money. And if you're going to target broadleafs, you would not, of course, add glyphosate. They're rarely used together. And even if they were commonly mixed, is your argument really that the carcinogenicity of one should be attributed to the other?

I'm always amazed at the level of specific knowledge people have on random topics on hackernews, it's why this is one of the best discussion communities online.

(nevermind)

While Enlist blends the two, 2,4-D resistant GMOs are brand new and still rarely used. I'm not as familiar with the toxicity/carcinogenicity of 2,4-D, but I think it's fair to confine this conversation to the carcinogenicity of glyphosate as that's the focus of the CA proposal.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14646002 and marked it off-topic.

OK, I'll just delete the comments if they're too controversial or something.

I'm a little confused as to why it's off topic though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com