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Comment by squift | Hacker News Reader

Tsingtao has the highest glyphosate content of the beers tested at 48.7ppb. That's 0.02254 mg per 16 ounces. You'd have to drink nearly 100 pints per kilogram of body weight in a day to get to the 2mg/day EPA safe limit recommendation referenced in the linked article. The article, and the US PIRG report that "1 part per trillion" of glyphosate can stimulate cancer cells but doesn't say what unit of measurement that figure is measured from.

Also consider PIRG's funding sources and biases. I'm absolutely for minimizing the use of pesticides but, this is just not it.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=49.7+ppb+of+16+ounces

https://uspirg.org/feature/usp/glyphosate-pesticide-beer-and...

https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/u-s-public-interes...

[Edit: I missed the per kilogram of body weight part of 2mg/kg/day on the EPA guidance]

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It's not just 2mg/day; it's 2mg/day/kg of body weight.

So a woman who weighs 110lbs (50kg) would have to drink 50 times that, or 5000 pints in one day to pass the EPA limit.

Obviously most people won't drink that in a year, and this article is fairly useless for limiting itself to the easy-clicks topic of booze versus industrial agriculture chemicals. What I think would be interesting is to look at, across an average diet, what one's total daily glyphosate exposure might be, against any relevant clinical information, but that's more of a research paper than a piece of blog content.

Oh, thank you for catching that! I can't believe I missed such a big detail.

Whats the clearance rate? Does it store in fat? What is the dosage from other things in the diet. Those are very important questions.

Amazing when you consider the confidence espoused in the tone of the original post and the dismissiveness of a major safety matter. And it's still the top comment here two days later. This is on HN, what hope do the commons have?

Also consider influencewatch.org's biases

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/influence-watch/

Ah! Thank you. I already knew of PIRG via Ralph Nader, but you're correct. Influencewatch definitely leans right which is unfortunate if they want to appear neutral.

Is glyphosate not found in other foods and drinks? Are beers and wines special in some way?

# diapers : "Traces of dangerous chemicals found in disposable nappies in France"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/23/france-traces-...

# children foods: "Weedkiller found in wide range of breakfast foods aimed at children"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/16/weedkill...

RoundUp would be found in close to 100% of everyone's urine, if only people had access to the tests.

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