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Comment by pfdietz | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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).

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

Prove it.

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?

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...

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".

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.

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.

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.

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