Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples | Hacker News Reader

Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

theguardian.com

420 pointsmindracer366 comments

Not knowing anything about glyphosate, I went to the article before reading the comments. I’ll just put this here because it was clear the researchers wanted to be sure people see it. From the first paragraph of the article—>

> In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer determined that glyphosate is a “probable human carcinogen” (IARC, 2015). However, the European Food Safety Authority and the Joint Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/World Health Organization (WHO) Meeting on Pesticide Residues (EFSA 2015, FAO/WHO 2015) determined that glyphosate is unlikely to be a carcinogen. The US EPA concluded that “available data and weight-of-evidence clearly do not support the descriptors “carcinogenic to humans,” “likely to be carcinogenic to humans,” or “inadequate information to assess carcinogenic potential” (US EPA 2017a). Controversy and concern that the rising use of glyphosate may have adverse human-health effects exist (Myers et. al., 2016).

People who have been exposed to the chemical got cancer. Internal Monsanto documents show the link and their concern. A man got a court to rule in his favour for 289 million dollars, after the jury saw this evidence: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/10/monsanto-tr...

People who have been exposed to <everything possible in the world> got cancer, but that is meaningless in showing causation. Internal documents show concern, but show no evidence that it causes cancer, or that Monsanto had internal data showing it caused cancer.

right and that's why they just settled instead of proving their product is safe

You don’t prove a product is safe. You fail to prove it isn’t.

Considering how much money they have and the size of their very highly paid legal team, I'd say that says a lot.

Actually, for _most_ products, the best they do is _in different trials it appears safe_. They don't even try and prove the product isn't safe.

In a civil lawsuit, the actual legal standard is "preponderance of evidence".

Factor that by cost of defending the case and potential risk of payout in that and future cases as well.

A multimillion dollar settlement suggests some doubt on the part of the defendant to establish their case.

I was speaking scientifically.

i was speaking legally

Agreement on terms and context is critical to discussion.

(Applies to this entire thread, not just parent comment.)

... and just because this is still bothering me:

A surprisingly common form of conversational failure is when two (or more) parties are discussing some matter all with different ideas as to what is being discussed or the context of the discussion.

I'd run across a good description of that recently though I can't seem to recall where / find it presently.

It's not included in this discussion of Wiio's Laws, though there's enough other material there that's excellent guidance for communication that I'm linking it regardless:

https://jkorpela.fi/wiio.html

If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

Companies settle lawsuits all the time for claims they believe are meritlesss, for two reasons:

1. Going through a lawsuit all the way to conclusion, even if you win, is a long, expensive process that potentially exposes you to a considerable amount of negative publicity and causes a degree of internal chaos.

2. Juries are unpredictable and even a small chance of a bad outcome may be worth paying to avoid.

If this is to be believed, they've set aside _billions_ for cancer-related claims and pulled the product from the residential market, and there are still questions about the EPA's ruling that it is safe. Definitive, no, but certainly raises serious questions.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/court-rejects-trump-era-...

This type of rhetoric isn’t helpful, except to companies and manufacturers looking to minimize the attention around specific products with known carcinogenic properties.

What? It's about thinking about causality in a clear way.

well it also doesn't help to make assumptions based on skewed correlations.

Every living animal, including us, drinks water.

Every living animal dies.

Is there something in the water maybe?

I don't see how this line of reasoning can be helpful honestly.

---

There is no limit on how much damages this mentality can do.

Think about the recent stream of

people got COVID vaccine, then died

> Is there something in the water maybe?

It has DHMO in it. It's pretty bad.

https://dhmo.org/facts.html

This type of rhetoric isn’t helpful, except to people who wish to replace basic critical thinking and healthy skepticism with vacuous opinionated polemics on evil corporations and their general evilness.

Blind acceptance is just as dangerous as toxic skepticism.

Many consider glyphosate as the most heavily used weed-killer in history. If 'internal documents show concern', what should we conclude?

https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/03/glyphosate-most-heavily...

https://www.greens-efa.eu/legacy/fileadmin/dam/Documents/Stu...

(All members of the EU Parliament from 13 countries, excrete glyphophosphate in their urine).

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-18110-0

(Quantifable urine glyphosate levels detected in 99% of the French population, with higher values in men, in younger people, and in farmers)

The wiki summary says two important things.

Glyphosate is the "penicillin of agriculture," a foundational discovery that has revolutionized the industry.

Glyphosate alone has not been found to be a strong carcinogen in scientific studies, but testing with the surfactants, adjuvents, and other additives with which it is normally used may increase the carcinogenicity.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate

username checks out ;)

It's safe to drink, here have some:

https://youtu.be/ovKw6YjqSfM

This comment contains allegations known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.

Boy, the Monsanto shills are out tonight.

The real question is why there is herbicide in your urine. Everything else is a smoke curtain.

Why if it does not cause cancer but is behind the obesity epidemic?, or related with the autism increase starting at exactly the same years?.

"Not causes cancer" does not mean "is harmless". This stuff shouldn't be there

As far as I’m concerned Bayer and Monsanto are like evil incarnate and last time I brought up this lawsuit on HN I was shocked people were defending them. We’re talking about the company that intentionally sold HIV infected blood to people. If it was legal and they could increase profits by lighting people on fire they would do it. Yet people trust corrupt research that they paid for showing their product is safe.

Well their crap poison is on almost all the produce in every grocery store in the country so I guess they get the last laugh.

> Bayer [...] intentionally sold HIV infected blood to people.

I had no idea about this. For anyone else that's curious:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/may/23/aids.suzannego... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood...

Not only impressively cynical but seems pretty reckless.

Jesus Christ.. Imagine being in jail for selling weed to someone who wanted it, meanwhile everyone that orchestrated this is still relaxing on their yachts. Unbelievable.

I love the fact that Beyer retired the Monsanto brand. It's a real bad sign when a company whose most famous product is Zyklon B tells you that your brand is toxic.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jun/04/monsanto-to...

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

>people were defending them.

I believe that some company monitors websites like reddit and twitter for talk about Monsanto or Big Oil (fracking) and that company pays shills to defend them.

I mean, it would be strange that in 2022 HN would not be included in continuous campaigns to maintain good PR and keep getting baseless positive opinions, seed doubt and confusion to any criticism.

I would expect any big multinational corp to have few permanent people / external agency on permanent contract just for this. And considering how these corps in discussion are almost cartoonishly evil, there is probably a lot of work being done constantly.

Someone on reddit claimed he was on a US presidential campaign doing exactly that. Respond to posts with pre-made replies, if things got hairy, distract with humor or memes. Interestingly, they were aware when they were dealing with another paid shill from the opposing side.

After all those years on the internet I think I can also feel the impact of systematic forum activity; controversial topics that get swift, well articulated replies with links and upvotes. Another comment, declaring the winner of the debate!

Is it individual experts who weigh in, organically? Groups who are passionate about the topic and organize via Discord? Or professional shitposters and memers? Who can tell. But a few internet-addicted Reddit aficionados could cover a lot of topics in a lot of communities for a small salary and huge impact.

Hillary Clinton had a super PAC that did so openly:

"In April 2016, Correct the Record announced that it would be spending $1 million to find and confront social media users who post unflattering messages about Clinton in a "task force" called "Barrier Breakers 2016".[1][5] In addition to this, the task force aimed to encourage Sanders supporters to support Clinton and to thank both "prominent supporters and committed superdelegates".[6] The organization's president, Brad Woodhouse, said they had "about a dozen people engaged in [producing] nothing but positive content on Hillary Clinton" and had a team distributing information "particularly of interest to women".[7]"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record

If you watched r/politics and political humor back that it went from organic looking to the consent manufacturing factories they are today.

I don't know why you're singling HRC (it also wasn't her but David Brock, which is ironically the kind of misinformation designed to make her seem ultra-nefarious that CTR was formed to combat) out here; literally every issue and political campaign has activists doing this. They're called messaging and persuasion campaigns, and they include everything from yard signs to forum posters to ad buys. Do you have an issue with conservatives or pro-life activists doing this?

Your sort of low effort knee jerk response to a well researched informative comment is precisely why it's so hard to have rational discussion online. Can you not stay on topic and refrain from instigating polarisation for one minute? Do you have an opinion on these "persuasion campaigns"?

It's not well-researched; it has a single Wikipedia link, which it doesn't even represent properly (literally the first thing it says is CTR was founded by David Brock). It's also not informative; it presents a slanted, highly selective case against Clinton and Democratic/liberal/progressive politics. It's the Fox News of comments. It's also not on topic; how is CTR relevant to glyphosate?

I do have an opinion: Citizens United should be overturned, or we should have an Amendment clarifying that money isn't speech, so we can get rid of Super PACs. I also think the advertising industry should be regulated such that it's a shadow of what it is today.

It's a Wikipedia link with 7 references that is utterly neutrally formulated. If you think that's even close to how Fox News presents their abhorrent lies you can count yourself lucky to have not watched it ever.

In the meanwhile you apparently hold an opinion that is perfectly in line with the argument of the parent that you somehow assume is in support of Republican/regressive politics for no good reason. If you've got a better example of a SPAC that funded internet trolls you could just post a single Wikipedia link to that instead of making vague statements about slant.

There's one thing that the republicans are right about, and that's that Wikipedia, HN and most of reddit are biased against them, and that's because they're biased towards the truth and the whole republican platform is based around denying reality.

I think the Wikipedia article is great; no issues with it. What I take issue with is what I pointed out: parent is singling out HRC for founding something she didn't even found, even when the first sentence of his source says someone else founded it, in an effort to make her look nefarious despite the fact that Super PACs are something both sides (first Republicans, then Democrats in order to keep up in this race to the bottom) do as SOP, and as all issue campaigns have done since there have been issue campaigns.

> If you've got a better example of a SPAC that funded internet trolls you could just post a single Wikipedia link to that instead of making vague statements about slant.

Sure, let me introduce you to the Willkies [0] and anti-abortion PACs [1]. Both examples of people pushing their issue opinions into the public square (with doctored content and a lot of money I might add) or directly into getting people elected to make policies they'd like.

> reality is biased against republicans

100% agree. My only thing here was taking HRC's campaign totally out of context. This is how US politics works since Citizens United (ironically also a case where a group of people wanted to release a super negative video about her in the political ad blackout period [3]).

0: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/fetal-photos-jac...

1: https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs...

2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary:_The_Movie

Lots of companies provide that kind of monitoring as a service.

https://www.g2.com/products/dataminr/competitors/alternative...

Not sure if any of them also include PR/shilling, though.

This is a bigger problem than most realize.

I mean, it’s what I’d do. The cost is quite modest compared to the ability to sway public opinion. I’m seeing aggressive defense of nuclear power too. Either I’m underestimating the number of pro nuclear evangelists or there’s a paid lobby.

I don’t know which thread it was but I have seen the same thing. Apparently considering a company’s past actions when judging their current actions is “childish” because all the bad people left after they got in trouble and everyone there is good now. What a load of crap!

Yeah it’s a tough one. A “company” is just a box with people inside. Or maybe a “separating the artist from the art” type exercise. Bayer is a bit more nuanced for me than Monsanto

There was a dutch researcher that claimed that their weed killer was responsible for the wiping out of many insects, notably bees and bumblebees, but possibly others.

The man was ridiculed by his professional peers, whom later turned out to be bribed. The researcher was fully correct.

>As far as I’m concerned Bayer and Monsanto are like evil incarnate

Especially so when they were a subsidiary of IG Farben.

>The company had ties in the 1920s to the liberal German People's Party and was accused by the Nazis of being an "international capitalist Jewish company".[8] A decade later, it was a Nazi Party donor and, after the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933, a major government contractor, providing significant material for the German war effort. Throughout that decade it purged itself of its Jewish employees; the remainder left in 1938.[9] Described as "the most notorious German industrial concern during the Third Reich"[10] in the 1940s the company relied on slave labour from concentration camps, including 30,000 from Auschwitz,[11] and was involved in medical experiments on inmates at both Auschwitz and the Mauthausen concentration camp.[12][13] One of its subsidiaries supplied the poison gas, Zyklon B, that killed over one million people in gas chambers during the Holocaust.[b][15]

The Allies seized the company at the end of the war in 1945[a] and the US authorities put its directors on trial. Held from 1947 to 1948 as one of the subsequent Nuremberg trials, the IG Farben trial saw 23 IG Farben directors tried for war crimes and 13 convicted.[16]

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

There’s more than glyphosate in roundup. Also if glyphosate increased the risk of cancer, we would see cancer increase when it started to get widely used. Cancer rates except for skin cancer keep falling.

It’s possible that rates would have fallen further if glyphosate wasn’t present.

Sure. Anything's possible. This is a fully generalizable argument. Maybe you, personally, cause 10% of the world's cancer, but other factors have caused an overall falling cancer rate, but when you, personally, die or turn off your magical cancer-causing powers, rates will fall even further.

As far as I can tell the lawsuits they've lost have concerned non-Hodgkin's lymphoma where the picture looks a bit more mixed. https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/nhl.html

Virtually everyone who eats food has been exposed to glyphosate at this point. You could use the same logic to conclude water is a carcinogen. Every case of cancer is clearly linked to water exposure.

It also works the other way: people who stop consuming water almost never die of cancer.

>A man got a court to rule in his favour for 289 million dollars, after the jury saw this evidence: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/10/monsanto-tr...

You seem to be presenting this fact as some sort of that bayer is guilty, but it's not really convincing. For one, it's a 8 person jury in san francisco. I'd expect them to rule against bayer on ideological grounds (ie. little guy vs multi bililon dollar multinational corporation) alone. Second, if there's no scientific consensus on the effects of glysophate, I doubt a panel of laypersons would do better.

If the jurors all just ruled against Bayer "on ideological grounds" then their counsel was asleep at the wheel.

Perhaps, but there's also a reason most lawyers do their best to make sure their case is heard in a favorable jurisdiction. You can only strike so many jurors for something as banal as "doesn't like large multinational corporations", which it's not obvious that would entirely bias them.

It's not to say that every juror walked in already decided on it, but I'd somewhat expect a panel of urban CA citizens to be at least 60/40 in favor of a person against a big corp, and so if the evidence is already somewhat in that direction, then that's how it goes.

Why would that be? Lawyers aren't magicians, if the jury is predisposed to rule in certain way, the lawyer can flap their lips as long as they wanted, and change nothing. Ingrained convictions are remarkably hard to change, even if presented with undeniable contradicting evidence - see example of apocalyptic cults surviving failed prophecy repeatedly. Councils aren't wizards, and they can reject only so many potential jurors. If there are none to be found that would listen, then council can't do much.

Even in San Francisco I don't think your pool of potential jurors will be so single-mindedly anti-corporate that this is likely.

This is an absurd assertion. Also you’re literally quoting “Thank you for smoking” with your follow up defense.

>This is an absurd assertion

Wow thanks for the thorough refutation! I have now realized my error and totally changed my mind!

>Also you’re literally quoting “Thank you for smoking” with your follow up defense.

So your idea of a refutation is to reference a fictional novel? I'm at a loss for words.

The jury believed that surfactants added to the product sold under the Roundup brand, not glyphosate itself, was the cause of cancer in that case.

This article a carefully crafted piece of propaganda disguising itself as journalism. This is part (banning herbicides and pesticides) of the green movement. Of course, they forget why we use them in the first place.

"We" use them in the first place because agribusiness wants to grow as much crops as cheaply as possible and consequences be damned as long as it cuts down on their expenses.

Monsanto also pushed the sterile lawn image in american culture. Cover your lawn in our herbicides and fertilizers and you can be a proud american lawn mower. Who cares if that means carcinogenic runoff into your lakes and rivers.

Here's the right wing response

R: If we didn't people would starve!

L: people are starving right now anyways, less would starve if we raised taxes on meat

R: I don't care if they starve

Monsanto settled a batch of civil cases regarding Roundup for $10bn. No one settle’s for that sum unless they’re guilty.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/business/roundup-settleme...

Evidently they had internal communications coaching employees on how to communicate about glyphosate, knowing that it’s dangerous and that they can’t claim that it’s safe.

That’s just one damning factor, but there are more. For example, in multiple cases juries agreed that Monsanto has manipulated writing and data from studies of their products. Essentially Ghost writing studies to suit their needs.

Behind a paywall so I can't see the details, but note that nowadays when you buy Roundup it has a lot more then glyphosate in it, and I trust that "a lot more" far less than if it was just glyphosate.

Archived copy: https://archive.today/qfCEV

That’s not how lawsuits work. At all.

You do have to have a dim outlook on your prospects of winning to agree to pay out 10 billion.

What if you're sure that there are going to be quite a lot of plaintiffs and expect to win a mere 99% of the time?

Winning or losing a lawsuit of this type is not necessarily proof of guilt, or proof that roundup causes cancer. what it proves is that a jury was convinced that it does.

Funny we execute people based on that standard, but yet it’s somehow lesser here…

In the US, criminal trials have a higher bar (beyond a reasonable doubt) than civil trials (preponderance of the evidence).

For executions there are additional things as well beyond the regular criminal trial.

No we don't. In criminal law the burden of proof is "beyond reasonable doubt". The bar is set much lower in civil law with the plaintiff only needing to demonstrate a "preponderance of evidence".

And we get guilt wrong in criminal trials all the time (see the number of people the Innocence Project has gotten off of death row because the person didn't do it). A jury saying one thing doesn't make it objective truth.

The overwhelming majority of convicted criminals really did the deed. The existence of black swans doesn’t mean most aren’t white.

Roughly 90% accuracy. And the burden of proof is lower in civil cases.

Which isn't to say that a civil trial verdict isn't accurate to some extent - it just isn't absolute proof. There's some evidence in scientific literature about roundup's carcinogenicity at high doses (like what a farmer or landscaper would commonly encounter) and other various health issues at high dose. The big question is what happens at low doses and if it's impactful. The science is still out on that (and the alternative of lower agricultural output per unit of land area isn't really palatable from both a starvation risk perspective and a climate perspective).

While Monsanto was guilty, many companies and people settle for large amounts of money even when not guilty. Settling is often about cost not guilt. A company settles to reduce future risks and to stop unbounded lawsuit costs.

Show me an example of that where the payment was over $1bn.

It took me less than 10 seconds to find.

"Companies Finalize $26 Billion Deal With States and Cities to End Opioid Lawsuits" [1]

"Judge approves $1 billion settlement for victims of deadly Florida condo collapse" [2]

"39 State Attorneys General Announce $1.85 Billion Settlement with Student Loan Servicer Navient" [3]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/health/opioids-settlement...

[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/judge-approves-1-billion...

[3] https://www.navientagsettlement.com/Home/portalid/0

wait are you suggesting this companies were not guilty? are we reading the same settlements?

Not quoting any of these articles, but "settled with no admission of guilt"

The claim was about companies that are actually not guilty, and while sometimes that's ambiguous it's up to IncRnd to cite an example where it actually is ambiguous or better for the company, with a payment of a billion or more.

In each case you’ve listed the companies are clearly guilty. You’re proving my point for me.

Not really, 10B just isn't very much. 95,000 cases are being settled for $25-250k a person, where individual cases are 9 digit awards and only require convincing a jury. 100, max 1000, out of those 95,000 people getting awards at jury trials is enough to make that cheaper. It'll be interesting to see what/if 3M settles earplug liability for. Talc powder liability has already cost JNJ over 5 billion, and that's with the Texas two-step.

Also, there's this:

> Part of the $1.25 billion will be used to establish an independent expert panel to resolve two critical questions about glyphosate: Does it cause cancer, and if so, what is the minimum dosage or exposure level that is dangerous?

> If the panel concludes that glyphosate is a carcinogen, Bayer will not be able to argue otherwise in future cases — and if the experts reach the opposite conclusion, the class action’s lawyers will be similarly bound.

I believe they mean it's a lot of money to the company, not the plaintiffs. $10B is a lot of money to any company. You should see what Chevron has been doing to Steven Donziger for winning the $9.5B case against them for massively polluting the Amazon.

> The tribunal unanimously held that a $9.5 billion pollution judgment by Ecuador’s Supreme Court against Chevron “was procured through fraud, bribery and corruption and was based on claims that had been already settled and released by the Republic of Ecuador years earlier.”

That case?

Bayer settled the class action for 3 orders of magnitude less than some jury awards. They don't have to believe it causes cancer, just that a low percentage of juries can be convinced that making Bayer pay up is a good idea. Straightforward math. They still have 10s of thousands of other court cases to deal with, too.

They put him under house arrest and Chevron appointed their own judge in the case. It was all kinds of messed. That's just how powerful oil companies are. I mean, there's no question they've polluted to a massive degree in the Amazon.

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

It’s actually a bit different. It’s more expected value:

Cost of settling is X

Potential cost of losing is Y

Risk of losing is Z

If X < Z*Y, then you settle; often a trial continues until Z and Y are sufficiently known, then X is offered to the opposing party.

In this case, Y could have bankrupted the company (hundreds of billions in real damages). So, even if risk (Z) was 10-20%, $10B is a deal.

The civil plaintiffs wouldn't have settled for that sum unless they felt they couldn't prove their case in court.

Settlement goes both ways, so I don't think your argument is sound.

The back and forth with regulatory agencies is so frustrating.

Another user here pointed out a while back that the better regulatory model, when it comes to health, is to put the onus on the supplier. We must scientifically prove the thing is safe to use, not have to prove it is unsafe to be removed.

>We must scientifically prove the thing is safe to use, not have to prove it is unsafe to be removed.

Wait... so every restaurant has to show scientific proof that each of their ingredients are safe to use?

I'm pretty sure that is an impossible standard to meet.

You're overthinking this a little. If Monsanto comes up with a new weedkiller, they have to prove that its safe for humans before its put into use. It has nothing to do with restaurants. Obviously stuff would be grandfathered in as well. But its a fantastic idea going forward.

That would pretty much mean no new chemicals could be used for anything ever.

yup

Well that's a feature if we can't come up with chemicals that aren't harmful at industrial scale

"Not proven harmless" and "harmful" are very different things.

Of course they could, you just have to prove that they are harmless (at least in their expected usage and dosage)

How do you do that?

Great, so we're just going to need a few long term clinical trials assessing the impacts of each of ingestion, skin contact, inhalation, eye exposure, etc. separately for childhood exposure, adult exposure, exposure during pregnancy, acute exposure, chronic exposure, and so on. 100 billion dollars and thirty years later, maybe you can start provisionally selling your slightly better scotch tape.

That’s a little disingenuous. Something like an herbicide that’s broadly applied to fruits and vegetables that millions of people are eating should be under far higher scrutiny than a niche product that has limited human contact.

Things that don't have much human contact in the general population can have significant human contact during the manufacturing process of products containing or processed with them.

Some would consider that a good tradeoff for stopping cancerous forever chemicals from being in 80% of pee. And it will be less, not no.

They probably haven't thought through all the good chemicals have done. If we stopped all progress in chemicals 100 years ago our world would like a very different place.

A less wealthy place where more people died of starvation.

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

If you require farmers to use "approved" processes for farming, but you don't require grocery stores and restaurants to use those farmers, then they will simply buy food from farmers that don't follow those principles.

If we're talking about domestic farmers, they're going to get caught at the same rate regardless of what you tell grocery stores and restaurants to do.

If you mean international farmers, I think it's obvious you'd have to apply the same rules to imported food, so no they won't simply buy food that doesn't follow the rules.

But also, even if we did require grocery stores and restaurants to use certified farmers in some way, that wouldn't be hard at all! That's not even in the same ballpark as requiring scientific proof of chemical safety.

Proving a negative is trivial.

This is essentially the model that we have with the FDA, right? And we have a bunch of problems with that too. I don't think there's a simple solution that just makes all scenarios better/easier/safer/whatever.

Perhaps we do have problems with that model. But are the problems of the "tens of millions of humans have potentially been exposed to this harmful compound and the result seems disastrous" variety? Or are the problems of the "it takes longer than normal" variety?

Because both are "problems". But I know which one I'd rather have as a society.

Do the results seem disastrous? https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/update-on-cancer-de... Cancer death rates in the US are going down. The primary one is lung cancer, though, and cigarette usage has been declining... so would love to see more incidence rates broken out into types, too. But it seems at least non-disastrous in death outcomes, so far, unless you have those other numbers handy and are going off of that.

Sometimes the result actually results in millions of humans getting cancer as a result of inaction.

In most of the world (Canada, EU, Korea, Japan, etc.) sunscreen is regulated as a cosmetic, but in the US the FDA regulates it as an OTC drug. The last time an ingredient was approved for sunscreen use was in 1999, and in other countries there are more active ingredients with better properties than what is currently approved for use in the US.

The problem is that a good deal of the US approved list is basically off limits because they've since been shown to be unhealthy, and what's left on the list has challenging cosmetic properties to the point where people can't be convinced to apply sunscreen every day, because formulations do things like become oily and don't play nice with other cosmetics, or show up as chalky white pigment on any remotely dark skintones. https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/new-sunscreens-for-uva-...

A difficult task indeed: red dye no. 2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranth_(dye)

This writing looks like the child of a million different high paid corporate attorneys.

> the European Food Safety Authority determined that glyphosate is unlikely to be a carcinogen

Yet Europe has banned glyphosate (it is allowed in the US). Curious

Just to play devil’s advocate for a second: the fact that the EU has banned glyphosate does not mean that it’s a confirmed carcinogen. It only means that it’s considered harmful, which it can be in many other ways apart from causing cancer.

The EU was concerned about marine toxicity and the potential for the concentrated forms to cause serious eye damage!

Status of glyphosate in the EU:

> "Glyphosate is currently approved in the EU until 15 December 2022."

https://food.ec.europa.eu/plants/pesticides/approval-active-...

The ECHA's (European Chemical Agency) assessment:

> "...the existing classifications for glyphosate as a substance that causes serious eye damage and is toxic to aquatic life with long lasting effects should be retained.

> The committee found that the available scientific evidence did not meet the criteria to classify glyphosate for specific target organ toxicity, or as a carcinogenic, mutagenic or reprotoxic substance. "

https://www.echa.europa.eu/-/glyphosate-no-change-proposed-t...

One thing I've noticed with regard to all of the safety claims made about glyphosate is that it only claims that it's safe with respect to humans directly.

They never discuss what it might do to your gut biome. That seems like a curious omission, to me, for a substance like this.

Shouldn't that be a standard part of the risk analysis?

Yes that should be part of the full regulatory analysis, but then you're talking about active effect concentrations, which are generally going to be much higher than possible carcinogen concentrations.

>Shouldn't that be a standard part of the risk analysis?

To be fair all this stuff about "gut biome" causing everything from depression to obesity only got popular around the last few years, not a decade or two ago when the bulk of the studies were being done.

I've been in the field for many years and I see the EU on the forefront of public chemical safety, both in terms of legislation and enforcement. ECHA is transparent about glyphosate [1]. It is not even labelled as CMR on REACH Annex III [2], and that's saying a lot. If you follow the developments, you will find that there is no way to prove a chemical as "safe". All it takes is one bloke on record to develop any health condition which can be linked to a chemical, and it will be scrutinized six ways to Sundays. Often leading to the introduction or decrease of an OEL, or a classification of this substance. As new humans are born all of the time, and diagnostics and analysis methods are still being improved, the likelihood of any given chemical to be "harmless" asymptotically approaches zero. 1 in 2 people develop cancer during their lives [3]. There are currently > 23000 chemicals on the EEA market at >= 1 t/a [4].

1 https://echa.europa.eu/hot-topics/glyphosate 2 https://www.echa.europa.eu/information-on-chemicals/annex-ii... 3 https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/cancer/ 4 https://echa.europa.eu/registration-statistics

US regulators seemingly subscribe to the "three monkeys" approach where they assume everything being added to your food is safe and don't ask too many questions unless compelled.

However, there are people in the EU, who prolonged glyphosat usage for another few years, against the principles of the EU to only allow proven safe products.

And they are still pushing CETA, which supposedly weakens standards for food and gives companies more rights to sue countries, when new protective laws are made.

EU does many good things, but is far from always being on the lookout for the wellbeing of its people.

Pretty standard shilling here. This comment is designed to induce apathy by making the problem seem insurmountable and so convince you that it's impossible to know anything so why bother trying [to remove cancer inducing chemicals from the food supply].

Society loves to make fun of those who choose organic produce, but avoiding glysophate is the main reason I do so, and it works:

> Organic diet intervention significantly reduces urinary glyphosate levels in U.S. children and adults > https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001393512...

There’s no question it would be better if it were true but how sure can we be that it’s not just the same food with different labels?

Because the FDA exists?? Because that would be fraud to claim otherwise, and fruit/veg sources are easily traceable back to their source, particularly at quantity?

The FDA does not regulate the use of the term “organic” on food labels.

Further, if something isn’t 100% organic how do you know which part isn’t?

USDA regulates that, at least for products with its seal.

https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/organic/organic-s...

Thank you for the correction

I think organic is great. I just wish we didn’t put non-GMO in the same bucket. Give me GMO foods without pesticides.

Isn't part of the benefit of GMO foods that you can make them tolerant to various pesticides? There are other ways to use GMO to make more productive crops, but my understanding was that one of the big reasons is that you can make crops that ignore pesticides that wipe out existing pests.

> Isn't part of the benefit of GMO foods that you can make them tolerant to various pesticides?

and diseases and parasites and weather etc etc

um... how do you think plants become tolerant to diseases and parasites? pesticides

and altering their DNA

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5422515/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5488630/

I'm not sure the relevance of this fact to the GP's request?

You're right, but I think what they are saying is that they would like to see new GMO crops developed for consumer benefit instead of herbicide resistance.

Doesn’t sound too profitable

Focused on the wrong target.

... to pesticide manufacturers, no. But say, a GM tomato[1] that had added nutrients seems like it could make someone rich? I'd be happy to throw a few in my salad.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_tomato#Im...

There's a lot of reasons. That is one large one, but you can also integrate natural pesticides into the genome of the plant, ie. Bt corn.

Which could be equally dangerous as external pesticides like glyphosate.

What's your source that's an outrageous claim

More self-evident than outrageous but alright.

Every single plant and fungi in the world contains natural pesticides to fend off pests and pathogens. E.g. caffeine, nicotine.

I wish they would look at flavor, texture and other things that matter when doing GMOs...

That would be counterproductive. GMO crops have a lower yield than non-GMOs without the application of pesticides.

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/gmo-faq/can-genetic-engin...

The linked article says that GMO crops produce higher yields and use less pesticides than non-GMO crops.

the pesticides used in organic farming are about as bad for you as the pesticides used in non organic farming, and used in higher quantities, since they are worse at being pesticides.

This is just blatantly false on every account. Especially the part where things like non-organic wheat are sprayed with weed-killer in the days before it's harvested because it increases the yield and protein as the wheat goes into turbo-mode because it knows it's dying.

But what does it do to the levels of organic pesticides?

This is a valid point; just because something is naturally-derived, doesn't make it safe. For example, permethrin is approved for organic use but it's also a neurotoxin: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5598406/

Obviously the dosages are low in foods treated with it, but you're still ingesting a neurotoxin, yet the food can be legally labelled organic.

My solution is to list the pesticides on the packaging like they do the nutritional content.

Additional info here: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogs...

How far off are we from having drones that mechanically remove weeds at a reasonable cost? It's ridiculous that we put up with spraying sketchy chemicals on our food. We can build loyal wingman drones to kill enemy aircraft but we can't kill weeds??

Edit: I'm talking about farming, not lawns. RTFA

Why do you need to kill weeds? Adapt and stop having lawns.

Lawns are awful for the environment, and lawn care is a large part of this. Why we still have golf courses in any area that is regularly in drought is beyond me.

A lot of golf courses use grey water.

Their water usage is only part of the problem. Extensive over-use of fertilizers which then end up in water ways is just as bad, if not worse.

Swimming pools are worse. Let’s ban those first.

What's wrong with swimming pools? Or do you mean just in drought areas?

Most swimming pools (in ground) are filled once with water and rarely need additional water added. They use much less water than the average sprinkler system. They do require energy (pump and filter systems) and chemicals to keep things balanced but it designed as a closed loop system other than unusual circumstances.

Indoor or outdoor?

Both. Once filled, they don't generally need additional water unless there is a leak, some evaporates or the pool is drained for maintenance.

We had a pool growing up, and we actually had to regularly drain the water because it rained much more than it evaporated. We didn't live in a dessert though, so YMMV.

Please show some sources or math that swimming pools are worse than gold courses

Farm weeds steal nutrients and sunlight from the crops.

I believe the conversation is more about agriculture than landscaping

Lawns are less important. We would have no agricultural output if we didn’t weed.

Farming existed before weed killing. It's extremely useful but output doesn't drop to zero without it.

> Farming existed before weed killing

Farming existed before pesticide.

Farming existed before people.

Humanity has gotten very good at it and weedkilling is a big part of it. But, wild plants propagate quite well on their own, spending seeds of things you want more of results in more of that species. Preparing the environment and selecting seeds ca push that much further but the absolute minimum threshold is very low. Toss eaten apples into your yard, and eventually you get apple trees.

I think your definition of farming might be a wee bit broad.

What in your mind is the clear cut separation between ants cultivating fungus, people tossing specific seeds on the ground 20,000 years ago, and whatever you think of as farming?

Okay I was wondering if you were going to bring ants up because I think that is a good point.

> people tossing specific seeds on the ground 20,000 years ago

This seems irrelevant to whether farming occurred before people.

I don't think the line is very clear cut at all, but it does involve intentional intervention by a species not the plant.

> > people tossing specific seeds on the ground 20,000 years ago

> This seems irrelevant to whether farming occurred before people.

It gets to if for example squirrels storing seeds underground is possibly farming or not. It's an intentional activity, but takes too long for a specific squirrel to see much benefit from it. IMO, it’s kind of a mind bender when you really dig into it.

I think a reassemble argument is squirrels as a species farm though individuals don’t.

And I am to assume that these animals also do no form of weed killing?

https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/32461-fungusfarming-ants...

Squirrels don’t.

As to ants, do you think they evolved that trait before or after they started farming.

Farming without pesticides existed before we needed to feed 9 billion people.

The world is vastly overproducing food and the industry is optimized for profit, not number of people being fed.

Additionally, billions face food uncertainty. Not because the food is not enough.

> Farming existed before weed killing.

Weed killing has been integral to farming since it's inception.^1 Chemical herbicides were popularized in the 19th century, which necessarily coincided with the modern population explosion.

^1 https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=1759....

“The earliest evidence of small-scale cultivation of edible grasses is from around 21,000 BC with the Ohalo II people on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.”

“The earliest known weed control technology in 8000 BCE was the plow and hand-weeding (which includes hand-pulling, cutting with a knife, hoes and mattocks).”

That's a very long gap till 8,000 BC.

It's implied that @21000BC, they were pulling weeds by hand. Weed killing is part of cultivation. No offense, but you seem completely out of touch with reality, on this topic. I'm not sure you can make a compelling argument without experiencing the simple world of gardening.

https://imgur.com/a/Bly85h8 - these are 2 weeds that have taken over and killed a simple flowering plant from our yard. You can see there are 2 plots that we have spliced from our healthy flowers, where we have been testing weed control methodology, since the neighbors have let these weeds become their lawn. The simple solution seems to be wait until the weed is big enough to have a solid rootball and pull it up manually. This is both the common way for small gardens to be managed AND the only solution for certain invasive species like the Himalayan blackberry which can regrow from stalks or leaves after being mulched and buried - they are resilient to pretty much every pesticide, but they aren't our problem after moving out of WA.

In farmland, you can go over every inch of your acreage and try to spot treat (which won't stop proliferation) or you can uniformly treat, as modern farming currently does.

That’s a logical assumption without direct archaeological support.

Remember we started with wild plants so a significant energy investments beyond throwing seeds may simply have been wasted effort because it’s less needed and has lower rewards. Further removing competitors is a non obvious behavor.

The benefits of a possible harvest increased after destination so the time lag between just tossing seeds and active farming could have been a very long period.

> That’s a logical assumption without direct archaeological support.

It's what people do without any training. It's not necessary to have archaeological support for instinctive behavior. There's no archaeological support people swatted at flies during that time period. Again, this is rather pointless when you're arguing that early man was less capable than a child. GL with whatever.

Children don’t clear weeds instinctivly, it’s learned behavior.

Tossing seeds around can however be accidental, you can easily do it without intention.

> Children don’t clear weeds instinctivly, it’s learned behavior.

It's not clear what you mean by "learned" here. You have plants. Other plants grow next to them and they die. It's observed learning (as I showed in the photos), similar to learning fire is hot. You have been implying it's more than that and are flat wrong on this simple understanding of reality. There's nobody that can help you with that.

You just described a relationship that didn't apply to native species before domestocsrion. In effect they where growing weeds.

Second you described learning and ignored culture showing children this relationship. Looking at a prepared area doesn't exist without someone preparing the area.

Clearly you don't understand what’s going on.

> You just described a relationship that didn't apply to native species before domestocsrion.

> Second you described learning and ignored culture showing children this relationship.

You're ascribing some definition of "culture" when the behavior is intuitive. I can understand if you're making an assumption about how stupid ancient man was, but that is simply a bias within your own imagination.

> In effect they where growing weeds.

Weeds are competing plant life, compared to the cultivation of specific species. The dictionary doesn't do anyone a lot of favors here, but that's the common parlance.

We were talking about Farming, then cultivation, which are strictly different things. Now you've moved to "domestication" all the while leaning on some strange alternate definition, or you're trolling. I don't think I can help you any more.

That is not the major use of glyphosate.

"More than 200 million pounds of glyphosate are used annually by US farmers on their fields. The weedkiller is sprayed directly over genetically engineered crops such as corn and soybeans, and also over non-genetically engineered crops such as wheat and oats as a desiccant to dry crops out prior to harvest. Many farmers also use it on fields before the growing season, including spinach growers and almond producers. It is considered the most widely used herbicide in history."

A yard full of Japanese Knotweed is not lawn, but it is a big problem. Sadly, glyphosphate is one of the more effective treatments, but even it won't get rid of the stuff alone.

If you put glyphosate on your lawn, you will stop having a lawn. Glyphosate kills grass. Nobody uses it on lawns.

Can confirm, after spilling some on my lawn while mixing a sprayer batch.

No, but many use it (selectively) on mulch beds. I’m assuming that’s what that means by using it on lawns (vs. farms).

> Why do you need to kill weeds? Adapt and stop having lawns.

If people spray glophysate on their lawns, that is what will happen. Their lawns will die. It's very easy to test, and many people have done this by accident.

Deere bought the startup Blue River for $300M. Drones to identify and specifically spray just them. Not quite mechanical removal, but closer than spraying the whole field:

https://medium.com/@dcvc/john-deere-acquires-blue-river-tech...

Blue River doesn’t use drones.

There were so many layers to that medium post. It’s like an incestuous orgy in a glyphosate teacup.

First..There once was a company called Climate corp..that sold a neat little box called Fieldview that was slapped under a tractor. When the farmer harvested corn, Fieldview harvested data. All kinds of data. Useless data that the farmer didn’t need and know that he had. Climate was amassing crap ton of data from thousands of acres of American fields.

This caught the eye of John Deere. They wanted Climate. But what Climate had was nothing short of a treasure chest. Monsanto wanted that too. At the end, Monsanto got the prize. They purchased Climate.

Climate under Monsanto went on to create Precision Planting and they were going to sell that arm to John Deere. But due to anti trust concerns, the courts put several road blocks. As if Monsanto and John Deere already don’t control American Ag..

So finally Bayer purchased Monsanto but not all parts of it. Climate was spun off and Monsanto’s investment arm Monsanto Growth Ventures was shut down and the portfolio went on to populate DCVC.

Blue River Tech was a small company that came up with a ‘See and Spray’ tech to identify weeds in the lettuce fields of California with AI and sprayed it with an organic fertilizer high N concentration that burnt emerging thread stage weeds. DCVC was investor in Blue River.

John Deere bought out Blue River because they gave up on buying Climate from Monsanto for $305 million. Blue River tech that was using its See and Spray AI in organic lettuce fields now uses the tech for GM cotton etc and is part of JD’s Agtech offerings as AI full stack.

And yes, they use glyphosate. I will tell the fairytale of how Monsanto used to sell seeds, fertilizer, herbicides. Sterile GMO seeds that can only grow with Monsanto inputs and need their magic sauce with glyphosate.

But for now..Blue River doesn’t use drones.

Likely very far off. Mechanical removal would be very hard to pull off, especially given how reliably and quickly it’ll have to work for a large farm.

Tensorfield Agriculture make robots that kill weeds with hot canola oil: https://tensorfield.ag/

That is amazing. I do not know anything about plants - is this approach generically applicable for all crops or are there limitations on what kinds of weeds are likely to grow in a field? For example: weeds in wheat fields are too visually similar/closely spaced/different life cycle than the cash crop for this to work?

The further you let them grow the more differentiated they become. So time could be leaned on as a predictor. But even at the very young cotlydon phase you can differentiate between certain species, even at the level of seeds. It depends how closely related things are of course but with time every plant identifies itself pretty much.

carbon robotics makes a diesel powered rig that identifies leaf shapes with ML and burns the non-crops with a laser.

Steam looks promising too: https://www.weedtechnics.com/does-steam-weed-control-actuall...

Bees won't survive until it (if ever) happens. We are likely too.

It is like relying on aliens to bring peace on Earth.

Outlawing glyphosate would fix it (people did agriculture before 1974 (without drones)). Though it is almost as unlikely as aliens.

>people did agriculture before 1974 (without drones)

We've added about 3.8 billion people to the planet since then.

I'm not saying that we can't feed the world without glyphosate, but "Let's just do it like we did in '74!" doesn't account for the fact that we need a lot more food today.

All the chemical inputs to farms make them unprofitable. Each year takes more input to make the farm work. We broke the ecosystem, nitrogen cycle and phosphate cycle by tilling, monocropping, and chemical input. The way we farm kills the soil.

We can support the population without chemical inputs if we manage the land differently. It takes about 3 years to transition to a regenerative management style. That is how long it takes to bring the soil back to life. After the transition period inputs are minimal and yields are similar to chemical farming.

Tell that to Sri Lanka. There is massive unrest, because people will starve. The farmers were not the ones saying, "don't use chemical fertilizer", the ex-government was.

That's not a fault of regenerative farming but rather green washing - reduce chemical inputs but have no plan to implement anything else

You have to have an alternative management plan in place, obviously.

The transition can't be forced. It is a paradigm shift in land management and an entirely different skill set. You can't just tell all farmers they cant use fertilizer anymore without teaching how to do without. That is how you get famine.

Regenerative management is more profitable for farmers so it is going to happen regardless of what governments want. You just can't force it.

That's extremely misleading. The (still current, power is mainly in the president who is refusing to leave) government banned chemical fertilizers on an extremely short notice, with no planning. That's just incredibly stupid.

Had it been planned, with subsidies, education, multi-year transition, it probably wouldn't have ended in a disaster as it did. But anyways, that's not the only reason for Sri Lanka's demise (lots of stupid money wasting in useless infrastructure, lots of corruption, and Covid). It was just lots of incompetence from very stupid people.

Child labor was allowed back then too, which solved both child obesity AND weeds

Verdant Robotics (https://www.verdantrobotics.com/) does targeted herbicide applications using weed detection and a two-axis turret, with a laser-based variant in the works.

https://carbonrobotics.com/ identifies weeds and kills them with lasers - so no chemicals at all.

I just had to see this in action.

Pretty cool demo here: https://youtu.be/lLaV15vpSJM

Robotic weed-zapping lasers.[1] Can't make this stuff up.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/11/02/self-dr...

I thought weed and bugs are the least of the problems. It's more disease and the fact that you are farming the same monoculture extremely dense on the same plot over and over again.

Are weeds so bad they warrant this cancer risk?

Depends on the weed, really. Nuke Toxicodendron from orbit.

Oncosiphon piluliferum as well.

It's about profits, so for the greedy it's definitely worth the cancer risk. Weeds take resources from the crop yield. Conventional farming is not designed to handle weeds, or the way they do handle them is nearly exclusively through spraying. In contrast more whole system approaches like permaculture employ ways of purposefully planting good weeds, as one simple example, and a variety of other integrated approaches.

The consequence of weeds and the consequence of using roundup accrue to different parties.

There are many ways that don't require that much more effort. For instance plastic covering the field will clean up a field. But that's a tiny bit more work then just spraying and poisoning everything. Of course the GMO crops that are bred to be glysophate resistant are even more convenient

In Japan I was surprised to see that for large fruit like apples etc. they actually put a bag over the fruit when it is young, so the fruit stays protected from all manner of pests for its entire lifetime, up until retail purchase in cases.

That’s not a tiny amount of work. We are talking about hundreds and thousands of acres. That is not feasible for covering with plastic.

Covering with plastic is exactly what happens in strawberry fields every season. There is no other commercially feasible way to grow them.

There is no healthy way to long-term grow thousands and thousands of acres with a monocrop. You have to chemically spray everything to death and chemically try to uplift the soil, but it's just not sustainable over a few decades. And completely unhealthy both for the farmers and consumers. The bottom line is only better off if you ignore all the societal and long-term costs.

I was shocked to learn that many farms are using the chemical to spray the entire field in order to not just kill weeds, but also to increase bud yield / weight.

Similar to the rohip whatever chemical is given to some beef when it close to slaughter to magically make it gain weight.

Apparently when you spray this stuff on the plants a couple days before harvest, they know they are being killed / dieing - so they put all their energy in to the buds to give the seeds / fruits a better chance at living - so the sell weight is higher.

So it's not just being used to kill weeds, it's actually being used to cover the food a short time before it's cut and sold.

Wow that's incredibly depressing. Yeah glyphosate kills weeds by inducing unsustainable growth and forcing the plant to overextend itself and die as a result. So it makes sense that if you apply it to a crop you're going to harvest anyway you'll get a bit more yield out of it.

I guess tech+ban is the only way to go, unless we're okay forcing ourselves to play the cancer lottery with worse odds.

2,4-D is the widely used growth accelerator.

Glyphosate blocks the action of an enzyme that is necessary for plants to grow.

Crops are frequently sprayed with desiccants to speed harvest once they are mature. Glyphosate is used that way.

I got them mixed up, thanks for the correction.

We do have lasers that shoot and kill weeds using computer vision.

Weeds are largely a symptom of monoculture, an algricultural practice that's ecologically destructive. Besides, there are diverse solutions to controlling weeds: mulching, association planting, green cover...

> It's ridiculous that we put up with spraying sketchy chemicals on our food.

Yes, but it's also ridiculous to treat the symptom instead of the disease.

There is very basic, simple reason for it and has nothing to do with the company being evil. I believe it is possible to use Roundup safely and the reason it gets into our food is misuse.

(disclamier: "possible to use safely" does not mean it is reasonable to expect people to do so on their own)

Roundup kills plants. It does it by breaking roots of the plant which causes the entire plant to dry out.

For some crops (like wheat), it is very beneficial to harvest the crop after it dried out. But plants do not care about calendar and do not necessarily all dry out at the same time.

So what farmers do, is to spray their crop just before harvest. It all dries out nicely and uniformly and can be harvested all together at the same time with minimum spoilage. It can also let them schedule harvest on various plots to happen at different times rather than all at the same time. It can also allow to force harvest earlier if you, for example, predict bad weather. Or if you want to go for vacation.

This is not how Roundup is supposed to be used but this is very popular "hack".

This is bad journalism. Glyphosate is not “linked” to cancer. Sone groups think it is “probably” a carcinogen but most every governing body around the world says it is not as there’s no proof of the link at all.

This is probably not journalism but rather propaganda designed to rally public support around glyphosate bans which we have seen in Germany and now the Netherlands. Farmers can still use it of course, but the ban is for home use. Even though it is safe to use when following the label.

just to generalized bad health and possibly celiac disease

I'd say that part of the problem is that this chemical makes the gut flora sick, not the human... but given as the gut bacteria are symbiotic with us, we also suffer negative consequces which are harder to explain with strictly reductionist biomechanics

also I keep in mind the economic incentives and the sorry state of academic funding

Is having celiac correlated with this?

This is bad thinking. Glyphosate has seen billions of USD in settlements and is tied to decreased liver function.

"Most every governing body says..." what is this poor appeal to authority?

Like the other commenter says, even if it is not directly effecting on humans, if it affects our gut flora then it ends up affecting. The reductionist approach does not work much in biology, one has to consider the whole system.

> Glyphosate has seen billions of USD in settlements

In my country some scientists have been found guilty of "not predicting an earthquake"[1], so I would be careful to believe to what a court can prove or disprove and the scientific value of their decisions...

[1] https://blog.ucsusa.org/michael-halpern/italian-scientists-j....

A home ban seems backwards. I'm more worried about ingesting glyphosate from corn products than spraying it on weeds. I don't eat weeds.

The risk is larger for home usage because those concentrations are more carcinogenic.

If we're counting red flags toss "found in X% of Y" onto the heap as well.

Any report about 'detecting' something without mentioning safe levels or how amazingly sensitive some types of detection are should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

I quit a job in the industry during the era the studies started coming out when I found out about the bosses ties to Monsanto. The real kicker for me was during my digging into them, although largely due to corporate buyout name games, they were the ones responsible for agent orange, with Nam vets in my family I couldn't stay.

Use the most natural chemicals you can for crop/yard control. The same warning applies to the neurotoxins that are bug killers.

Natural doesn’t mean anything when it comes to safety of a substance. There are quite a few dangerous substances used for “organic” weed and pest control. Well controlled synthetics can indeed be safer.

Or if it’s your yard, don’t do anything to it. You don’t need to.

Least-toxic would probably ve the correct terminology, you are correct.

I would encourage everyone to take a look at the glyphosphate toxicity report done by experts on toxicology: https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp214.pdf

Most other summaries of glyphosphate toxicity are not by toxicity experts, are more politically influenced (today's agriculture relies on glyphosphate), and set the bar of evidence very high and otherwise assume glyphosphate is okay instead of taking a precautionary approach.

The US sprays this all over Colombia to get rid of Coca but it ends up getting into the water and other crops https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/03/20/biden-pushes-co...

Maybe you linked to the wrong article, that article mentions "Duque’s spraying campaign" - fairly sure that Duque is not US.

Also Biden is the most progressive president in history, and I think with Colombia's track record when it comes to black and trans bodies you should maybe look in the mirror before pointing fingers.

"Tied to cancer" in the sense of "if you torture data long enough, it will confess."

that's ridiculous it also messes up digestive systems, gluten intolerance. the chemical is BAD and does cause cancer.

Let me express my utter lack of confidence in your statement's connection to reality. The "gluten intolerance" should be a strong warning sign of Woo.

Not-so-hot take: Both of you are wrong to state with certainty whether this discovery of glyphosate in our urine is good or bad for us, or whether we should discard this because of "data torture". From the article:

>Cynthia Curl, Boise State University assistant professor of community and environmental health, said it was “obviously concerning” that a large percentage of the US population is exposed to glyphosate, but said it is still unclear how that translates to human health.

Only one of these people is wrong because only one is making or implying a statement of fact concerning a causal link that isn't shown in this paper and has never been shown in the past. Neither tried to make the claim that glyphosate in urine is a good thing.

Don't see any citations on either side of this discussion.

WHO says yes [0] while EPA says "not likely" [1]. Until the experts agree people can decide for themselves what risks they consider acceptable. Or at least they can if they can afford buying from farmers who don't yet use the chemical.

[0] https://www.iarc.fr/featured-news/media-centre-iarc-news-gly...

[1] https://www.epa.gov/pesticides/epa-releases-draft-risk-asses...

Just a nit (thanks for sources!!) it’ll be stronger with a peer reviewed citation rather than a regulatory notice. There’s a lot of skepticism about the neutrality of regulators in this topic. Sadly with regulatory capture so rampant and regulators being political footballs they’re poor sources of information.

WHO doesn't say "yes" they say "probably". Same category as very hot water (65c).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IARC_group_2A

To be fair, being submerged in hot water for long enough might cause cancer, if you somehow survive.

From what I can tell, the WHO only categorises a single chemical as "Group 4: the agent (mixture) is probably not carcinogenic to humans".

How come? Is it not true that ~0.75% of Americans have celiac disease?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeliac_disease

How can that be relevant? I mean, this is just the grossest of correlations "Americans have X, and are also exposed to Y, therefore Y causes X"? If anything, it means actually establishing a causal relationship (assuming one existed) would be difficult because the background rate of this disease is so high.

I was responding to the parent commenter’s claim that “gluten intolerance” (quotes theirs) was a “strong warning sign of woo”.

We know that environmental factors contribute to the development of celiac disease, so we should understand the degree to which glyphosate may be one of those.

It's a strong sign of woo because it's very trendy and brought up for all sorts of environmental effects with little actual evidence. Most of those claims must be false.

It’s also true that 12% of Americans are left handed. But that doesn’t mean it’s caused by Roundup.

While I understand your view, and shared it, I was recently diagnosed with exactly that and have had to reevaluate my position.

I don’t know WHY it happened or what caused it, but it’s absolutely a real thing. It’s also absolutely miserable; trying to navigate all of this without the woo and without others telling you that you are crazy or peddling woo is a hell of a needle to thread.

There’s not a well established link between gluten intolerance and glyphosate, but:

> Fish exposed to glyphosate develop digestive problems that are reminiscent of celiac disease. Celiac disease is associated with imbalances in gut bacteria that can be fully explained by the known effects of glyphosate on gut bacteria

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945755/

This isn’t made up woo. It’s a real potential link that needs to be fully explored not dismissed.

> It’s a ... potential link that needs to be fully explored not dismissed

Sure. Explore/research away but that doesn't justify the comment...

> that's ridiculous it also messes up digestive systems, gluten intolerance.

Anyone making a definitive statement on a causal link between glyphosate and cancer is not being informed by science. There might be a link, I don't really care. If there is, I'd definitely support getting it out of food. I really don't have an opinion on glyphosate/monsanto/miscellanious megacorp/chemical but what I do care about is people not perverting science to do their bidding.

It's further frustrating because these arguments all originate from the same mindset as all the other nonsense that you may or may not believe depending on various cultural influences (anti-vax, homeopathy, chiropracty, global warming, "supplements", etc).

> global warming

Don't lump this in with those others. It totally spoils your credibility.

Going off about not perverting science, but then in the next breath lumping global warming in with homeopathy? Yikes.

Which seems like a really good reason to verify that tie is an artifact as you imply it must be. It may be, but the fact nearly every human is ingesting it regularly means we might want to be certain, no?

In a sense of here mister lobbyist this is a glass of perfectly safe glyphosate, drink it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWM_PgnoAtA

Salt isn't a carcinogen but if you drink a glass of salt water you'll vomit.

Mister organic farmer, here is a plate of cow manure, eat it.

Safer than eating glyphosate (people actually do this).

"Safer" oh boy...

That's why it's hard to take some "nature is perfect" people seriously

(of course it's dose dependant, but don't eat manure. period)

Here's a good writeup https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3880910/

Safer depends how much cow manure is eaten vs how much glyphosate.

Although cow manure also has various microorganisms in it so if you got really unlucky with the wrong type of even one of those in the manure a little bit of shit could make you very sick (edit: as you point out, but my point is eating more shit exposes you to more of these on average).

Don’t eat shit or drink 1000x or 1000000x doses of something that’s safe at 1x people.

no idea where glyphosate exposure sits but even if it’s safe at normal exposure, don’t just drink it ok?

That's the point, though. From the article, the urine of 80% of the people was laced with glyphosate. It's not about a single ingestion but about it building up in the body.

Dose dependence is still a thing for long term exposure. There’s a lot of crap in urine. Knowing someone is pissing something doesn’t mean it’s toxic. We already know they’re exposed because they eat it. There is very little new information gained just by knowing people urinate it. You’d need to know how much of it they urinate compared to the amount they are exposed to and for how long to start figuring out if there is a long term build up. And even if there was no long term build up it may or may not be long term toxic. Like drinking alcohol. There is no long term build up of ethanol in the body but long term consumption of enough alcohol is still dangerous.

That's stupid. But I will definitely drink some compost tea if it will shut you up.

subgroup analysis showed that increase in consumption of three cups of black tea per day was a significant risk factor for breast cancer (RR, 1.18; 95% CI, 1.05-1.32).

The dose makes the poison. It’s possible for a chemical to be perfectly safe if ingested in low quantities but dangerous in extremely high quantities. The duration of exposure for the same dose matters a lot too. Drinking glyphosate could be a much larger acute exposure so it’s perfectly reasonable to say it’s safe as normally used but not want to drink it. For example, you need trace amounts of copper to live, but very large doses can damage the liver. You’d need to take actual measurements to determine at what dose glyphosate becomes dangerous, and compare that to actual use. The whole “I could drink it” thing is just bullshitting, but so is the reverse.

this is outdated thinking. LD50 is a measure of poison in testing, but since then it is acknowledged that there are cumulative over a lifetime effects, there are endocrine disrupting effects, and there may be effects from small doses that tip balancing systems in the body significantly.. those are from memory, not a specialist here.

Water also has an LD50 but you wouldn't say there are cumulative over lifetime harms from drinking water.

water tainted with lead may be more to the point

Alcohol has cumulative effects too. The long term effects are still dose dependent. My point is you can’t just eyeball it by being like “well that guy bullshitted then refused to drink it”. You need to do a bunch of hard work taking measurements. You know it’s not super toxic as typically used or huge swathes of people would be keeling over dead. But it could be long term toxic at the doses a farmer or landscaper is exposed too. It could have small absolute effects on everyone that could be detected in mass population statistics although that’s much much harder to untangle.

> Drinking glyphosate could be a much larger acute exposure so it’s perfectly reasonable to say it’s safe as normally used but not want to drink it.

It's a short video. But, you are commenting without even having watched it.

The executive said that glyphosate is so safe that it is safe to drink. When the interviewer then said that they have a glass of glyphosate and asked if the exec would like to drink it, the executive replied, "No. I'm not stupid." He said that twice.

? I don't see how that in any way diminishes what the GP said.

He is refuting what was said in the video but in the process has completely mistated what was said in that same video.

No. I did watch the video before I posted. Thus the last sentence of my first post about drinking it (or not) being bullshitting in both directions. You are the one not reading or understanding.

Did you read the last sentence of my post? I literally said the executive was bullshitting when he said he could drink it…

I dare you to ingest small amount of Caesium-137 every day if you truly stand by your reasoning.

I can argue with list of names of firemen that didn't die from radiation poisoning while putting off fire in Chernobyl.

People already do take in small amounts of Caesium-137 every day and it is harmless.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2015934/

Different chemicals have different dangerous doses. What’s your point? I specifically said that I don’t know what the toxic dose of glyphosate is. My point is whether or not you can literally drink a highly concentrated version of it doesn’t tell you much.

olive oil is great and I could not live without it, but I would not drink a glass of it it for no reason!

If I got paid by Big Olive as a lobbyist I'd at least take a swig. (I believe that lobbyist made a claim about drinking a spoonful.)

Then I'd probably cough and pivot to how to tell the difference between high quality olive oil and what the fraudsters are pushing. I'd celebrate the good work of my good friends at the California Olive Oil Council and many others to address the growing problem of fake olive oils. Let's protect our small olive farmers!

In short: if I instead turned red, started freaking out and stormed out of the interview, it would probably be wise to stay away from olive oil until you figured out exactly what happened there.

Edit: clarification

A spoon is good for your health, a glass will make you run to the toilet if not worse.

It's also very hard to swallow even in modest quantities.

Not surprisingly it was one of the most popular forms of punishment and humiliation fascist blackshirts used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor_oil#Punishment

Monsanto knows this, they have known it for a while. It's a similar case to the teflon "issue".

Prove it.

Maybe one day we can skip plants and weedkillers by using artificial process to make food. Photosynthesis is not very efficient either. Less land for farms and more forests.

Eat meat like our ancestors did perhaps? Fat is only dangerous if it can stick to sugar. Sugar molecules are like little daggers that attach to arteries.

Processed sugar. And it could be better said the other way around: processed sugar is more dangerous coupled with high fat intake.

Sugars bound in fiber are fine. No one got heart disease or diabetes from eating too many apples with a diet of otherwise moderate fat intake.

Maybe if it's lab meat. Otherwise it seems inefficient to grow food for animals instead of just growing food for humans

Yet another reason to avoid grains, soy, and processed foods.

I would love to see some meat tested to see if it’s still detected in the meat after the animals eat the tainted corn.

Is there some indication it is more prevalent in processed foods? That wasn't indicated in the article afaict. Also, they mention it's used across a wider range of crops than just soy and grains sadly.

Glyphosate is sprayed on some grain crops prior to harvest to force a whole field into senescence at the same time.

Which species of crops? Because I have never seen that with winter wheat, common oats, #2 dent corn, soybeans or sorghum.

They grow all of that within 300’ of my home.

It may be that the farms near me are worked by smaller operators and they are not paying professional harvesting to bring in the crops in on a schedule. But not letting the grain mature on its own seems like a good way to take less money when sold at the elevator.

Sounds like you are much closer to production than me. Pre-harvest spraying is only something I have read about. Around here we talk about grades of seafood not crops. Here are a few sources I found recommending pre-harvest spraying and one talking about ending the practice in Canada.

US:

https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/glyphosate-use-as-...

https://extension.umn.edu/small-grains-harvest-and-storage/m...

UK:

https://ahdb.org.uk/knowledge-library/pre-harvest-glyphosate...

Australia:

https://grdc.com.au/resources-and-publications/all-publicati...

Canada:

https://non-gmoreport.com/articles/days-are-numbered-for-pre...

meat is a known carcinogenic in itself.

EDIT: spare the stupid downvotes. Here: https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/can...

Hot water is a known carcinogenic.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2...

It's there, in the statistics. The thing is, the risks of eating meat or drinking hot espressos are like national lottery kind of probabilities. Not like asbestos or carbon particles, wich have more like rock paper scissor kind of probabilities.

You are trying to make a strawman by phrasing it as an exaggerated risk.

You can instead go check the probabilities or read scientific documentation and you'll find that both fluid intake at very high temperature and meat consumption have been reported as significant carcinogenics in many papers on publications with high impact factors.

You can search on Scholar or ask your GP. No need to be dishonest on HN.

There are a few references that say glyphosate doesn't bioaccumulate well due to the chemical's "ionized state, its low octanol-water partition coefficient"[1]. However there are others that suggest glyphosate may bioaccumulate in biofilm consuming invertebrates, where biofilms concentrate glyphosate and prevent the chemical from being retained in surrounding water[2].

Personally, these concepts are newer to me and I'm not sure what to make of it all yet.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6827263/ [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.03.234856v1....

It's been in global use for almost 50 years. I don't doubt that it may produce some negative effects, but it wouldn't concern me even a little bit to discover that some of it could be detected in my urine. If the impacts were that severe I expect that they would have shown up in force by now.

What do you mean by "severe effects" and how are you sure they haven't shown up in force?

Let's say the incidence rate of certain types of cancer triples. You still might never meet someone with one of these types of cancer, and you might not even know if you did whether their cancer was caused by glyphosate.

But still sounds like a severe effect to me if you're the guy with cancer, right?

I'm most directly referring to the implication in the article: cancer. It wouldn't surprise me if it tripled the odds of rare cancer, but even taking this claim at face value triple a tiny amount is still a tiny amount. And I do believe I'd still think of it that way if I happened to roll snake eyes.

But isn't there a similar concern with microplastics?

Plastics have been around for decades, but they're being used in greater volume every year, and we've been finding them in odd places, and we aren't sure it's safe for them to be in those places.

The last 50 years has seen significant increases in the rates of obesity, severe allergies, celiac, heart disease, alzheimer's, depression, etc.

There are plenty of other (demonstrated and theoretical) reasons behind that, but it seems a little hasty to say we haven't seen severe health impacts. It might just be that we haven't figured out the link yet.

I'd expect a severe link to be apparent in its deployment, i.e., that regions with earlier and more significant uptake would experience earlier and more significant [problems]. The article and my reply refer to cancer, but I would extend the offer to other subjects.

While most are focusing on glyphosate's debated status as a carcinogen, it was approved by the FDA as as an herbicide, in part, because it does not interact with any human metabolic pathways. We may be missing the forest for the trees talking about cancer when we could be exploring glyphosates negative impact on gut microbiome and bacterial/fungal metabolic pathway inhibition.

Anecdotally, I know a lot of folks who have GI-distress from eating wheat (99% of which is sprayed with RoundUp to allow for faster harvesting time), but are fine when eating a non-commoditized grain like Farro. Notably, both contain plenty of gluten, however, Farro is harvested without RoundUp (fact-check required...) in a much less efficient way (hence the higher price tag).

I live in a very rural area, and have never seen winter wheat sprayed with Roundup to speed up harvest time.

I have seen it sprayed in the early spring, but never when kernels are on the plant.

Given that a majority of wheat is winter wheat harvested in the heat of summer, I just can’t see how spraying it with Roundup speeds up anything.

Soybeans? That gets blasted with Roundup. Frequently.

"said it was “obviously concerning” that a large percentage of the US population is exposed to glyphosate, but said it is still unclear how that translates to human health"

That last line pretty much sums up the article. Lots more questions than answers.

Aren’t there side effects of this stuff killing other microorganisms in the soil? Like it’s not just the cancer aspect, or the gmo crop aspect. It’s, as I understand it, contributing to arable land loss

Monsanto has poisoned the world..not just the US. Now that it sold out to Bayer, most of the world is fed by the same powers that made Agent Orange and Napalm.

Our food is grown with fossil fuels and chemicals. It’s chemical warfare on soil and water.

Glyphosate gets into us due to runoff’s into the water system and the aquifers. This is food grown as fodder and it gets into animals and then into us. It’s hideously obscene.

Most of the problem would be solved if we adopted eesponsible animal husbandry. Which means less meat and animal based foods. But that’s only one part of the solution.

Meat is good for you

It is not good for the planet.

Add I kid I watched people who worked with the spray coups/planes work with zero safety equipment.

They would reach right into tanks full of weed killer with bare hands to try to fix something. No masks worn, no gloves.

We’ve learned a lot since the 70s/80s/90s.

I would imagine direct substained contact with the stuff is different than the minimal amounts in food.

Like how asbestos is never good for you, but if you're a shipbreaker working with asbestos for 40 years, it's definitely worse than if you're a homeowner and accidentally knock some asbestos out of your ceiling.

But in the same lines, I'm still more worried about glyphosate showing up in food from the supermarket than if I spray it around my house

The world react very slow. I posted a similar news 6 years ago about te same issues in Argentina https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11544254

It doesn't really require a deep study when you see values outside the normal range.

"tied to cancer" Bullshit. I've looked this up and researched it extensively as I was looking at different chemicals to use for weed control

The science isn't settled, this is just more news media garbage fear mongering

> The science isn't settled

I'm with you on this. Time for a science experiment then, put a drop of Roundup into each of your meal everyday, do let us know your body check results in a year's time.

GMO skepticism is pretty much the same as anti-vax. Lots of talk about big corporations and a fetish for “natural” as well as a litany of vague syndromes without a clearly elucidated biological mechanism.

Your confidence in big Agri and big Pharma would be hilarious, if it wasn't so dangerous.

Do you have any idea what all the chemicals we're pumping into the lakes and rivers and earth and ocean are doing to the biosphere?

Seriously! How many species above the background rate are going extinct every year?! The blame for that lies squarely and undeniably at the industries you have such blind confidence in.

"Man is quite insane. He wouldn't know how to create a maggot, and he creates Gods by the dozen." —Michel de Montaigne

I always thought GMO was used to make plants resistant to diseases and pests but in reality these plants are resistant to one thing only. Monsanto's chemicals.

Some genetic modification does make plants pest resistant. For instance, Bt corn is pest resistant without the need of additional pesticides.

GMO is also used for improving yields, drought tolerance, and temperature tolerance, among other things.

> a finding scientists have called “disturbing” and “concerning”.

What were they expecting; that stuff sprayed onto crops will magically not end up in people?

In 1961, 13 years prior to being sold by Monsanto to kill weeds, Glyphosate was patented in the U.S. as a Descaling and Chelating Agent by the Stauffer Chemical Co.

In 2010, Monsanto patented Glyphosate as an antibiotic.

Take a moment to consider that if CLR (a brand name that removes Calcium and Lime from metal pipes) were discovered to be a weedkiller, your sons or daughters would have this same conversation in a decade or two about CLR in their urine.

You can substitute trace plutonium, anthrax, or anything else for CLR in the above paragraph.

> were discovered to be a weedkiller

coke is a potent weedkiller

people love to drink it

or to put it in another way: some things we eat and drink are great to kill weeds, just not selective enough or too destructive

an example: salt

Does organic food really not carry glyphosate?

It shouldn't if handled properly.

If you're eating anything with oats grown in the US, especially things like Cheerios, you're likely getting a big dose of glyphosate. They spray this on the oats to kill and dessicate them prior to harvest to prevent the crop from being ruined by rain.

Does that include organic oats?

It's not supposed to, however, most brands are not certified or tested in any way.

https://www.ewg.org/childrenshealth/monsanto-weedkiller-stil...

Even reputable brands like Bob's Red Mill have had issues. After some of their products tested positive, they apparently took some measures:

https://www.bobsredmill.com/blog/healthy-living/bobs-red-mil...

Is this a case of:

-no cancer -no famine -low cost

Choose two?

This previous HN post, which refers to Monsanto's astroturfing efforts, relates.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17043836

Maybe we should just pee on the weeds.

Brawndo works really well too. Toilet water, not so much.

My dog is 3 steps ahead of you there.

They didn't check mine.

Remember this guy? https://youtu.be/ovKw6YjqSfM

Well, if it truly is tied to cancer, I'll be sure to let Hacker News know.

Back in college I was paid $50 to wear a backpack sprayer loaded with the stuff and go nuclear on a guy's weed-infested garden. Backpack sprayers leak, so I got glyphosate all over my skin, my back in particular.

It's been a little more than 10 years, so nothing, but then again, I'm also only 32, live a fairly healthy lifestyle, and have no family history of cancer, so maybe it just sort of cancels itself out.

Exposure to carcinogens doesn't guarantee that you will get cancer.

I smoked a pack of cigs back in my teens and I don’t have cancer.

The skin is designed to protect you from foreign substances.

The intestines are designed to absorb foreign substances.

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