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Comment by rawgabbit | Hacker News Reader

Glyphosate was the active ingredient in Roundup weed killer. Nowadays they have less toxic formulations. However glyphosate is the only herbicide I know of that kills Dallisgrass. Some of my neighbors had an infestation that they decided to resod their entire lawn.

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We'll see if the new formulation is still "less toxic" after 20 years of further research. At one point even DDT was less toxic, until we found out it wasn't.

And at one point glyphosate was less toxic as well.

Reminds me of the arsenic seed covers they had in wartimes. Oh, wait that was the old good stuff, it was mercury.

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quecksilberbeizen

So the toxicity of glyphosate changes with time? That would be an interesting chemical property! I can see that there might be unusual presumably complex reasons as to how that might have occurred but what is your evidence?

Is like when bisphenol A (BPA)[1] was found to be toxic in many studies, and manufacturers started advertising baby bottles and other childcare items as "BPA Free", while replacing it with bisphenol F (BPF)[2], chemically very similar and probably just as toxic, but less studied. Toxicity does not necessarily change with time, but our knowledge about it does.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_F

I suspect the intended meaning of the comment you're responding to is that it was thought to be less toxic when it was first introduced, not that the actual toxicity has changed.

They are saying that glyphosate was considered to be a less toxic pesticide

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