Weed Killer Glyphosate Found In Most Americans' Urine - Slashdot

Weed Killer Glyphosate Found In Most Americans' Urine

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• It doesn't target only weeds. It kills a lot of plants. Farmers who use it generally also use crops that were bred or engineered to be glyphosate tolerant. But it is very selective to a plant enzyme, and there's no known mechanism for it to cause health problems in mammals. (The evidence for carcinogenicity is mixed at best, and national health authorities mostly do not share the WHO assessment cited in TFS.)

  On the other hand, a lot of weeds have developed glyphosate tolerance now too.

  • Obligatory YouTube video [youtube.com].
    
    Journalist asks lobbyist whether he would drink a glass of Roundup, the lobbyist agrees, the journalist actually HAS Roundup for him to drink, and the lobbyist freaks out.

    • Re:

      The best part of this video is that the lobbyist in question is one of the founders of Greenpeace.
      He's gone rogue a long time ago and is now representing some immoral corporations through lobbying.

    • Re:

      Pretty lame video that "proves" nothing, IMHO.

      a) The guy is a lobbyist, not a scientist, so he has no privileged secret knowledge about it really being safe / not-safe. So him refusing to drink it is not evidence of anything.
      b) Even if it were completely safe in quantities found in food- should he or anyone be expected to drink a whole glass of it? Vegetable oil is perfectly safe to consume - I still wouldn't drink a glass of it under any circumstances.

      The closest thing to a "gotcha" in the video is when he

      • • Re:

          Just because something is safe in certain doses, doesn't mean it's safe in any dose.

  • The evidence for it being carcinogenic seems to apply to very large quantities of it. Meaning you literally have to come into direct contact with it in its purified form over long periods of time. For trace amounts, as you said there isn't any strong connection.

    I'd wager that it's a very weak carcinogen, and if that's the case then there are far bigger things to be concerned with that we encounter all the time. For example, cooking vegetables often results in them having acrylamide, which is a VERY strong carcinogen. It likewise shows up in everything from coffee to baked potatoes. If we're going to try to eliminate every possible carcinogen from our diets, there are much higher priorities than glyphosate.

    A lot of people hate glyphosate simply because it's strongly associated with GMO, which they hate even more, and the rationale for hating either is indistinguishable from a religious viewpoint. In fact, we actually have some GMO plants already developed that can virtually eliminate acrylamide from our diet, but they aren't being commercially produced because A) they don't increase crop yields, so farmers aren't interested, B) they're going to be targeted for boycotts by the food religion, so grocery stores aren't interested. C) even if you could get the A and B to agree to sell them, few consumers will actively buy them. More than that, I bet most consumers refuse to believe that you can even get cancer from vegetables, so they'd likely choose the cheaper option when given a choice. So there's basically no market for them at all.

    • Re:

      Do you believe that tobacco doesn't cause cancer, too? You're using the same reasoning.

      • Tobacco is a bit different

        This is a bit like worrying about LED lights giving you sunburn as opposed to the sun.

        Yes, the right LED lights can induce tanning, at least a little of it, and theoretically might give you skin cancer, but the Sun is such as bigger source...

        Tobacco is an incredibly strong carcinogen, as opposed to glyphosate being presumed to be a weak one. If it wasn't a weak one, we'd be seeing a lot more cases of cancer from it.

        • Re:

          Also, I wouldn't recommend vaping glyphosate.

          • Re:

            I might.

            But I wouldn't recommend vaping (neat) Glyphosate to some random dude I met on the street. It would be for a certain select few people who I know personally. So they can feel the privilege. Doing harm all the way down, like a good crucible of Syrian Panther Sweat.

          • smoke and mirrors

            Okay, so we detect weed killer in people's urine, but how much weed do we detect in the urine of people who believe the industry lobbyist here?

        • Re:

          Tanning beds do increase cancer rates.

        • • They've just proven in a court of law that Roundup caused at least one person's cancer & there are many more cases waiting to be heard. What was that about LEDs again?

            Ah yes, a court of law being the highest of scientific authorities. I'm sure the jury and everyone else involved had multiple, relevant advanced degrees, with rigorous scientific principles used to come to that conclusion.

      • Do you believe vaping nicotine is worse than smoking tobacco? You're using the same reasoning.

        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov] is a good overview of the processes that the IARC used to reach the "probable human carcinogen" label, and how those are different from the processes used by the European Food Safety Agency, which disagrees about glyphosate's carcinogenicity.

        For example:

        Positive evidence regarding an association between exposure to glyphosate and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, observed in some case-control studies but not confirmed by cohort studies, was considered sufficient by IARC to conclude on âoelimited evidenceâ in humans.
        [...]
        Considering causality, the majority of the [EFSA] experts concluded that the epidemiological evidence was very limited, and insufficient for classification.

        The US EPA made an assessment similar to EFSA, concluding that glyphosate is unlikely to be carcinogenic in humans.

        It's possible that some other ingredients in some formulations do cause cancer, but it's hard to tease that out for reasons identified in that article. (Only known carcinogens have to be listed on the label, not all biologically active ingredients like adjuvants, so scientists don't know what is in the herbicide mixtures; and it's impractical for retrospective studies to identify exactly which herbicides were used, especially after Monsanto's last Roundup patents expired in 2000.)

      • Re: I predicted this in the 80's.

        No that's not what I'm saying. Actually your reaction here is pretty typical of somebody who has all of zero understanding of the topic.

        Recall when the WHO classified nitrate cured meat as being enough of a confirmed carcinogen that they classified it on the same level of certainty that they have of tobacco being carcinogenic.

        Media headlines everywhere were then claiming that the WHO claimed that nitrate cured meats were as carcinogenic as tobacco. It got bad enough that the WHO had to clarify that nitrate

    • Re:

      Yup. And "probably carcinogenic" is an incredibly broad category that covers pretty much everything that isn't an actual known carcinogen.

    • Re:

      Food religionists should consider moving to Sri Lanka, they banned synthetic fertilisers and pesticides more than a year ago, the place must be an absolute paradise by now.

    • Re:

      "Meaning you literally have to come into direct contact with it in its purified form over long periods of time."

      As with just about everything in the real world, there's a probability distribution involved. You still may or may not become ill.

    • Re:

      I shouldn't be surprised your post got nuked with, "Overrated," mods, but I still am. As of typing this, it's -1 with 2 overrated, yet your points seem properly reasoned and acknowledged valid points (although I don't know about the acrylamide statement), but you're going against the food religionists.

      • Re: I predicted this in the 80's.

        Yeah I'm used to it, it's pretty typical on slashdot. It's also telling that the guy who compared my post to defending tobacco is rated insightful when I didn't do anything of the sort.

  • Re:

    Yes, there is. Endocrine disruption [wikipedia.org]. There is some debate about whether it is an endocrine disruptor [sciencedirect.com], but the evidence is mounting that it's a bingo.

    • Re:

      https://www.epa.gov/ingredient... [epa.gov]

      No indication that glyphosate is an endocrine disruptor. Glyphosate has undergone Tier I screening under EPAâ(TM)s Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program. Based on all available information, EPA concluded, using a weight-of-evidence approach, that the existing data do not indicate that glyphosate has the potential to interact with the estrogen, androgen or thyroid signaling pathways. The screening program did not indicate the need for additional testing for glyphosate.

  • Re:

    I thought his comment was a joke based on the word "weed" being pejorative term for weak people, as-in an alternative to "wimp".

  • Re:

    We should just genetically engineer ourselves to be glyphosate tolerant. Problem solved.

  • Re:

    Are you suggesting that a civil jury in California is somehow not a medical/scientific authority?

  • Re:

    The evidence for carcinogenicity looks a lot like this: XKCD [uab.edu]
    
    The total cancer rate does not increase, it is nearly exactly the same. So they looked at many different kinds of cancer. And for one type of cancer they found that the cancer rate increased with 95% confidence. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, to be specific.
    When looking at 20 cancer rates one of them will look increased with 95% confidence just by chance. That is all that happened.

  • Re:

    So I can kill my lawn by peeing on it?

    • Re:

      Yes, if you pee enough. But that's because of other stuff in your urine, not glyphosate.

  • • It's also by Monsanto. A company that we know in filling the pockets of even more politicians than the tobacco companies.

      • • Re:

          They exist, they are just called "Bayer" now.

          • Re:

            Kind of, but not really. When one company buys [bayer.com] another company, you don't usually say that the purchased company "changed its name". In the wreckage of failing companies, there are still scraps of value that another company will be happy to scavenge.

  • • Re:

      There are three important parts to evaluating cancer risk: whether a substance is carcinogenic, the risk from various levels and types of exposure, and the benefits we get from whatever causes those exposures.

      The IARC clarification of glyphosate as a "probable carcinogen", like the classification of alcoholic beverages as known carcinogens, only addresses the first factor.

• It's not about 'targeting weeds', these herbicides interact with structures in plant cells that non-plants literally don't have. This stands in contrast to things like insecticides.. insects are close enough to humans that most of the things that are toxic to them are toxic to people too on some level.

  Glycophosphate is an interesting case. It's been almost ubiquitous for about 60 years in the western world. There have not been obvious observed population level effects, we've looked. It's not clear what mechanism of action glycophostphate could cause problems by. Studies that have claimed to find carcinogenic links have found very weak evidence, the most compelling of which has been forms of leukemia rare enough you wouldn't see it in the general population if you tried.

  That's all to say the whole issue is very far from clear cut. A lot of the argument seems to boil down to "well its a chemical, so it probably causes cancer." Heck that's pretty much the rationale of California's carcinogen warnings.

  What bothers me most is this is basically being decided in the court of public opinion at this point, instead of by technical experts. The idea that you can just pull a dozen random people off the street and say "hey, decide this incredibly technical question you have no expertise in, and on which the government regulator in charge has already made a decision" bothers me. It's done in a lot of different fields, and it seems ridiculous. Civil suits feel out of control.

  • Re:

    So the claims that it messes with microbes are false?

    I thought the fact that it messed with bee gut bacteria was established (but the ramifications not necessarily).

    • Re:

      It's possible, depends on the microbe.

      • Re:

        So it's toxic to at least some non-plants?

        • Re:

          Why do so many people struggle with basic logic?

          "It's possible" does not mean "there is at least one" or "there are some". It means "there could be, we can't rule it out".

        • Re:

          Glyphosate is often applied with surfactants that cause it to adhere better to leaves. These surfactants can be toxic to fish.

          This can be a problem when it is applied excessively with no control of runoff.

          You'd think farmers would have enough sense not to spray expensive chemicals on their crops just before a big rain, but like in all professions, there are dumb farmers too.

          • Re:

            Glyphosate is often applied with surfactants

            "Surfactant" is an extremely broad term - it's anything that can alter the surface tension of a fluid. Since all organisms on Earth that we know of have a fatty acid/ phospholipid cell wall that keeps their cell contents inside and the rest of the universe outside, then something that is an effective surfactant is likely to affect a broad range of organisms outside the ones you're intending to affect.

            Use them carefully. Expect side-effects.

            Caveat - there is at

      • • Re: I predicted this in the 80's.

          No but that is among one of the two natural sciences I studied in college, the other being chemistry, so I know a thing or two but I'm not an expert.

          You don't need to be an expert to understand that microbes are the precursors to both flora and fauna, (as well as others) likewise they can have traits of one or both. Although you may occasionally hear gut bacteria being referred to as gut flora, it's falling out of use because it's a misnomer.

    • Re:

      So the claims that it messes with microbes are false?

      If that claim is true (I'm not taking a position on that point, at all) then that only contradicts other statements that it affects plant but not animals if you assume that "microbe" includes some, or includes exclusively "animals".

      The last I looked, "microbe" was a size category (needs microscope to see it), not a phylogenetic grouping of any evolutionary or biochemical significance.

      Plants and animals are both members of the small, restricted grouping

    • Re:

      A few important caveats with that:

      1) They study showed glyphosate could affect the be gut bacteria, though I don't think it definitively established that it was happening in the wild.

      2) Assuming it was happening in the wild negative health effects are likely... but not validated.

      3) Unlike humans, bees don't wash their flowers first.

      4) Even when humans don't wash the veggies first the herbicides have broken down significantly before harvest [mbcropalliance.ca]:
      The product label for every herbicide has a pre-harvest interval es

  • What bothers me most is this is basically being decided in the court of public opinion at this point, instead of by technical experts.

    This is very similar to the "cellphone causes cancer" meme that was so popular since before 2000 until around 2010, probably because people got distracted with the subprime disaster.

    If Glyphosate or cellphone really do causes cancer, it would have been very easy to track increases in cancer cases that correlates with their introduction around the world. The obvious absence on that front, while may not be conclusive, did provide a strong support that either of these things aren't that harmful.

    Doesn't mean it is wise to eat Glyphosate needlessly, but rather than fear mongering, a better solution is to regulate its uses to less remain on the food we eat.

  • Re:

    [quote]What bothers me most is this is basically being decided in the court of public opinion at this point, instead of by technical experts. The idea that you can just pull a dozen random people off the street and say "hey, decide this incredibly technical question you have no expertise in, and on which the government regulator in charge has already made a decision" bothers me. It's done in a lot of different fields, and it seems ridiculous. Civil suits feel out of control.[/quote]
    
    That's the hallmark of