Comment by QuickToBan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by QuickToBan | Hacker News Reader

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Such pesticides and other toxic chemicals not only cause cancer, but they also explain the increasing infertility in the West as explainable by germline damage in both men and women. This should worry you a lot. Please refer to:

[1] Assessment of Glyphosate Induced Epigenetic Transgenerational Inheritance of Pathologies and Sperm Epimutations: Generational Toxicology. (2019)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31011160

> The transgenerational pathologies observed include prostate disease, obesity, kidney disease, ovarian disease, and parturition (birth) abnormalities. Epigenetic analysis of the F1, F2 and F3 generation sperm identified differential DNA methylation regions (DMRs). A number of DMR associated genes were identified and previously shown to be involved in pathologies. Therefore, we propose glyphosate can induce the transgenerational inheritance of disease and germline (e.g. sperm) epimutations. Observations suggest the generational toxicology of glyphosate needs to be considered in the disease etiology of future generations.

[2] Environmental toxicant induced epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of ovarian pathology and granulosa cell epigenome and transcriptome alterations: ancestral origins of polycystic ovarian syndrome and primary ovarian insuffiency. (2018)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30207508

[3] The epigenetic impacts of endocrine disruptors on female reproduction across generations. (2019)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31077281

too bad glyphosate isn't one of the chemicals listed in the article.

Perhaps because it is not banned currently. It is scheduled to be banned in 2022 by the EU parliament.

So what is the safer alternative to Glyphosate?

"One study found that not using pesticides reduced crop yields by about 10%"[0]

That's not terribly bad. There are also communities of organic farmers working on methods to improve yields without pesticides. There is a lot still to be learned (and re-learned) about crop cycling, for example. Other ideas are mixed fields with different crops, new tilling protocols etc.

Some pesticides are also legal under different certification schemes. Sulfur, for example, is the most used pesticide in the EU. Pyrethroid is allowed under some schemes, and it's actually a drug approved for human use (lice), and therefore (and because it's rather old) thought to be safe at the far lower doses one is exposed to via the food chain.

The chart https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pflanzenschutzmittel#/media/Da... is also rather interesting, in that it shows highly diverging use of pesticides and fertilizers across EU countries. There is no definitive pattern here, with Sweden and the Netherlands as the extremes on opposite sides, two countries that are rather similar both in economics as well as climate. Spain/Italy/Portugal might be high because they have much larger shares of multi-year crops such as wine and olive trees, while yearly crops such as corn and wheat are less susceptible because the diseases die with the plants every year. OTOH, at least olives aren't fertilized I believe.

What's also interesting is the positive correlation between pesticide use and fertilizer use. I expected the opposite, i. e. farmers compensating for expected losses to disease with increased fertilizer and vice versa. This not happening may point at a cultural issue at play here, with some farmers choosing these tools excessively, or maybe a lack of knowledge of alternatives.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesticide#Benefits

Organic (natural) pesticides tend to be safer. Unfortunately, USDA has been doing a terrible job with their USDA Organic certification. It is firstly very expensive. Secondly, it is no guarantee that glyphosate is not present. This could be due to fraud or negligence. Third, it is subject to lobbying to legalize nasty synthetic pesticides as being Organic. The USDA needs to step up and do its job.

Meanwhile, I nevertheless advocate buying Organic. Use a warm solution of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) in which to dissolve fruits like apples and others for 12-15 minutes. It helps dissolve a fair portion of the pesticides, but is not a substitute for buying Organic. Refer to https://suppversity.blogspot.com/2017/10/nahco3-aka-baking-s...

> Organic (natural) pesticides tend to be safer.

This is patently false. Natural pesticides and herbicides are almost always more toxic to humans than synthetic pestices and herbicides, in large part because minimizing human toxicity is one of the goals in the chemical research programs.

What are some examples of organic pesticides that are less safe than glyphosate?

Copper sulfate is one.

Copper Sulfate is toxic to birds, mammals, insects, etc. It has a lower LD50 than glyphosate.

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2018/03/20/far-more-toxic...

The funny thing is that copper sulphate is actually an inorganic substance while glyphosate is an organic substance.

Sorry, layman here, but in what sense is a substance with a name like that "organic"? It neither sounds natural nor does it contain carbon to be called organic in the chemistry sense...

This is "organic" in the sense of "approved for use in organic agriculture." Which generally means "no icky multinational chemical firms that [average lay person] is aware of had a hand in the manufacture of it."

Oh I see, so like "organic" in quotes, not organic in the sense most people would expect it to be organic (natural etc.).

(anecdotal:) Most people all over the world think 'organic' when it's not about organic chemistry or a list of 'approved' things or a label some agency sticks on things that are considered 'organic'. Organic in the sense of organic pesticides are the kinds of pesticides that you'd find in the wild, without them being man-made. That doesn't exclude synthetic replication, because if you can mass-produce that thing that was already there anyway, that's a good way making it available for more uses. That said, some 'organic pesticides' may be introducing an insect that is a predator to the insect you are trying to get rid of. While a 'pest' in 'pesticide' doesn't mean just insects, you usually have organic predators that don't harm your produce while hunting the pest that does attack it.

Say you have a fungus that eats at your corn, maybe there is another one that just eats that fungus but leaves the corn alone. Or maybe you have some insect that eats your wheat, and some naturally occurring compound exists that is bad for the exoskeleton of that insect; put compound (found naturally or replicated synthetically) on the wheat, insects will be sad/dead/gone, there ya go, organic pesticide.

Those natural, or, organic pesticides usually evolved with some specific target in mind, while man-made pesticides are more like chemo therapy: kill as much as possible without killing the produce we want. This has the downside that killing as much as possible actually kills things we don't want killed.

Organic in the sense that when people refer to "organic pesticides" they are referring to a category that copper sulfate belongs to.

Organic is something that is not synthetic (the intricate philosophical details being left as an exercise).

Obviously, and sarcasm apart, the difference is nuanced. Organic Farming revolves around what is apparently natural, and in practice there is just a list farmers must respect.

I've been paraphrasing myself a lot these days, only to avoid saying the same thing many times. But in my humble opinion as a farmer, Organic Farming is a secular kosher for urban people. It has nothing to do with better farming practices, and everything to do with a sense of control over purity - purity in terms of what is closer to the urban conception of what constitutes True Nature.

Better farming practices involves the rational use of pesticides, synthetic or otherwise, used only as a last resort and having always in mind the effects to Nature (soil, water and wildlife) and human beings (farmers and consumers). In Europe all of these considerations are contemplated under an official standard called Integrated Farming - Organic Farming's big sister, as I call it.

Everything has a name like that.

Does it sound more organic if I call it ‘Bordeaux Mixture’ (before pointing at the all the people that died of copper poisoning)?

No it isn't. It does not have any long term exposure effects due to ingestion of residue on produce.

Nor does glyphosate.

No one has been able to demonstrate health effects due to pesticide residue. Even studies purporting to show health effects for glyphosate do so at concentrations associated with handling the chemical in bulk, not at concentrations associated with consumption of residue.

> Even studies purporting to show health effects for glyphosate do so at concentrations associated with handling the chemical in bulk

Do more well-accepted organic pesticides have these kinds of problems with bulk handling? Because otherwise I feel like this should be reason enough to avoid it.

Yes see the toxicology section. It's way worse than glyphosate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper(II)_sulfate

This isn't really what I was going for with "well-accepted" but I guess it's better than nothing, thanks. Copper sulfate's presence on that list is just about as questionable as glyphosate so I was hoping for something that people would actually think of as an organic pesticide (natural, etc. like already discussed earlier) not something that merely meets the federal requirements to be called 'organic'.

Isn't "less safe than glyphosate" is a weird metric, since glyphosate is relatively safe compared to other chemical herbicides? Wouldn't atrazine be a better comparison?

Rotenone, a naturally ocurring herbicide. Known cause of Parkinson's disease.

Source please?

There are plenty of alternatives, but none of them are easy money. They are in the order of slightly-less-easy-money all the way down to intense-changes-but-still-earn-well. That is also the problem, as any change that even costs a cent on the bottom line is a cultural no-no.

Solar powered weeding robots, big greenhouses and indoor hydroponics. Apparently environment control is the largest use of energy in farming, so much so, that you can actually use less energy by growing under lights.

Nothing. Don't listen to this guy. Glyphosate is not a pesticide, it's an herbicide. Anyone using the wrong terminology is a conspiracy theorist you can safely ignore.

I’m afraid it is you who are unfamiliar with the terminology, for glyphosate is commonly classed among "pesticides" in scholarly parlance.[0]

[0]https://scholar.google.pl/scholar?hl=pl&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=glyph...

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