I work in agriculture as an agronomist, and did some time putting out small plots sprays.
I absolutely fucking hate the drinking roundup meme. Yeah sure, pure Glyphosate has an acute toxicity similar to that of table salt (in rodents). So if you’re a rodent you can drink a solution of it similar to what you could tolerate with a salt water solution. But this says nothing of long term effects and is not a realistic situation and is fucking stupid.
Glyphosate on its own is completely ineffective, it requires adjuvants in order to do its work, for the same reason you use dish soap when washing plates. You will never see pure glyphosate used unless you’re working in research where you’re intending to mix it with something. It’s like all that research that equivocates coffee with caffeine, but even worse.
Roundup is always glyphosate plus surfactants, in fact the water/surfactant mix will typically be the majority of the bottle. Not only will these surfactants strip the protective mucus from your gut, it’s help the gylphsate cross barriers it would never be able to on its own, where it causes all sorts of havoc.
If someone drinks undiluted roundup, they will die in a painful way, though that requires managing to get it down, which typically only happens in suicide attempts. A fully diluted solution intended for spraying is much, much safer, but still likely to make you very sick on ingestion or significant skin exposure like if you get drenched in it.
Any study on the short or long term safety of pure glyphosate is worse than worthless, it’s outright misleading because Glyphosate is not Roundup.
Bonus: most adjuvants (which often make up the majority of the chemicals we actually spray out) are exempted from the types of registration and safety trials we typically apply to pesticides. Only a few states are starting to make changes to that (California and Oregon or Washington I think, been a while since I’ve looked at it).
That is a fundamentally incorrect way to think about things, there is no such thing as a safe pesticide. If it was safe, it wouldn't have any usable detrimental effect.
On the list of things I worry about when it comes to acute chemical exposure (eye danger, lung danger, absorption through skin), the various kinds of Roundup and associated generic formulations is personally down at the bottom as "least concern" at all levels of exposure. If I had to be drenched in a pesticide, this is the one I would choose offhand. It'd still be bad, chemical concentrate is not a joke.
I cannot speak to it's potential long term effects like cancer, as I neither have the skill, time, or desire to search through and evaluate the mess of biased literature available. Given my religious use of PPE and the short 3 year period of applicating small plot trials, my current level of concern for it's potential cancer effects is also "least concern". What's actually going to kill me is a heart attack/stroke given my family history, so I spend my limited mental and physical energy on maintaining a healthy weight and exercise.
> In 2022, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) carried out a hazard assessment of glyphosate and concluded that it did not meet the scientific criteria to be classified as a carcinogenic, mutagenic or reprotoxic substance. EFSA used ECHA’s hazard classification for the purposes of the EU risk assessment on glyphosate.
Assessments by EFSA/ECHA are mainly based on studies and reports collected by the manufacturers. They rely in those being complete and honest.
Monsantos internal email correspondence was rather explicit on how they would rather reach out to their contacts and kill any study they did not approve of before it could become problematic.
Salt saturated water is also dangerous and lethal to drink. Does that mean that eating a little bit of salt, or any regular portion you'd usually come across in food, would be unsafe and lethal?
Sure... but Roundup definitely causes cancer in humans. It's well established at this point.
"One international scientific organization, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), classified glyphosate in Group 2A, "probably carcinogenic to humans" in 2015. In 2017, California environmental regulators listed glyphosate as “known to the state to cause cancer.”"
That's not to mention the strong-arming, harassment, and threats towards researchers publishing papers that paint Monsanto and Bayer in a negative light. [1]
> To the extent glyphosphate is problematic, it's in being toxi [2], not carcinogenic.
This is a fair assessment based on the published scientific literature. But you have to take into account the fact that the owners of glyphosate have
1) surveilled, harassed, defamed, and threatened individual scientists and
2) paid millions of dollars to ethically dubious scientists to publish articles in favor of the safety of glyphosate
3) paid billions of dollars to victims of glyphosate exposure because they were found liable (or thought they would be) of causing them harm
Given those facts, I think it's reasonable to assume that glyphosate is pretty f*cking bad for you and it's truly mind boggling that people feel the need to defend it.
It feels like everyone you talk to on the topic is a bureaucrat in the Soviet Union engaging in doublespeak. Clearly, the people harassing, threatening, surveilling, defaming, and bribing are the baddies. Clearly, they have something to hide.
> you have to take into account the fact that the owners of glyphosate have...
Monsanto was absolutely shady. That doesn't change the biochemistry of glyphosphate.
> it's reasonable to assume that glyphosate is pretty f-cking bad for you
Almost every industry has someone being shady. Concluding adversely from that is not reasonable. (It's literally ad hominem, concluding an argument by way of the speaker's character and motives.)
You said "Roundup definitely causes cancer in humans" and then provided sources. Your sources don't support that assertion beyond a very weak definition of causation, at which point we're back to it being similarly carcinogenic to widely-consumed foodstuffs.
Sure, there aren't many sources on my side of the argument because everyone who tried to publish was either threatened, harassed, surveilled, or bribed.
> there aren't many sources on my side of the argument because everyone who tried to publish was either threatened, harassed, surveilled, or bribed
Right, a global conspiracy despite the repeated attempts by scientists who were being funded by interests opposite to Monsanto's trying to find evidence.
If you want a conspiracy, try this one: focus people on the provably-weak claims around carcinogenicity to distract from the stronger ones around toxicity.
False equivalence and straw man [1][2]. You claimed "everyone who tried to publish was either threatened, harassed, surveilled, or bribed." You're trying to conclude that argument by showing some people were threatened, harassed, surveilled or bribed.
Going back to your first post, you made a claim and provided sources that don't support it. Now you're backing up into, essentially, "trust me." This isn't arguing in good faith.
> We know the threats, harassment, surveillance, and bribery happened. We know the specific people, the specific threats, the specific dollar amounts
Sure. These actions apply to plenty of things. That doesn't prove the inverse.
The bottom line is there is a multi-billion dollar pay-out for anyone who can show Roundup causes cancer. As a $50bn company, Monsanto has weight, but it's in the low tier among the heavyweights.
Hell, if someone has convincing research and is scared, hit me up. I'll indemnify you against civil claims, finance the litigation and even pay for personal security and countersurveillance (if they're caught illegally surveilling, it adds to the damages). In exchange, I want my costs back first plus 51% of the damages.
I mean, I agree with your claims about my logical fallacies.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: If we could magically determine the truthiness of all these statements and I had to bet money, I would take my side.
I admittedly get annoyed when people link to video and audio, but in this case, the best source I can think of for information about how IARC classification works is a Stronger By Science podcast episode about Aspartame: https://www.strongerbyscience.com/podcast-episode-116/
If you ever have five hours to listen to someone geek out over esoteric history and regulatory state stuff, in a way that is presumably somewhat tangential to your political bents (presuming you have no strong opinions about strength training), this is a very good non-political source of information. JumpCrissCross gives the short version, but IARC's class 2 is probably not what you think it is. It's not just that it contains a whole lot of stuff I guarantee you ingest regularly without thinking about it. It's not meant to be an advisory to consumers at all. It's a recommendation to researchers about what sorts of compounds are worth putting further research into. The way the media reports about it is wrong and misleading to the people it scares.
The thing about that fact pattern is I would expect the same thing if the chemical was completely inert. This makes it very difficult to infer guilt or innocence based on Behavior alone
There's actually a list, but it's really big and includes possible exposure to toast (acrylamide) and beer (ethanol). There's also no compensation or incentive for doing any work to prove that a warning isn't justified, so everyone errs on the side of spamming them everywhere.
Because glyphosphate is almost certainly toxic. We have evidence for that. (Roundup is more toxic than glyphosphate alone [1].)
That doesn't mean it's carcinogenic in a colloquial sense--we don't have evidence for that, again, beyond the carcinogenic capacity of commonly-eaten foods.
I mean what do you make of the threats towards researchers? Surely that has limited the amount of scientific evidence published against the safety of Bayer's products, no?
It's also a damning piece of evidence in and of itself, at least stochastically speaking.
Skimming the first few parts, since the linked article is long and I'd like to avoid engaging in a gish gallop:
>when Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, her scientific analysis of the harms of DDT, Monsanto engaged in targeted personal attacks to try to undermine her research
They said mean things, but calling it a "threat" seems like a stretch. Moreover after clicking through some of the links I still have no idea what they actually said aside from some well chosen quotes.
>In the lead up to IARC’s report, Monsanto rolled out an “an unprecedented and harsh strategy” to discredit experts, wrote Colorado School of Public Health Dean Jonathan Samet. Monsanto’s attacks, he said, amounted to an “attack on expert review” itself.
I skimmed the linked article and it doesn't offer specifics about what the "attacks" actually were.
>Journalists at France’s largest newspaper Le Monde, in their award-winning series about the Monsanto Papers, described the Monsanto-led attack on IARC as “an effort to destroy the United Nations’ cancer agency by any means possible.”
Skimming the linked source, it looks like the "attacks" in question are FOIA requests.
>Following that email exchange, GLP went on to publish dozens of articles critical of the cancer agency — many of them personal attacks on the scientists involved in the glyphosate review, and some of them written by former chemical industry lobbyists and climate science skeptics.
See first reply in this comment.
>Engaging climate science denialists
bad/questionable, not exactly "threatening"
>Another document reveals that Monsanto consultants drafted at least one letter calling for an investigation of the “flawed” IARC process — and designed to look like it was written by a member of Congress.
1. The process is arguably flawed, as other commenters have mentioned. I think it's fair game to criticize them for that
2. I looked at the linked document and I can't imagine how anyone thinks it "look like it was written by a member of Congress". Nowhere does it claim that it's written by a congressman, and the signature block just says "NAME"? Is this even a real letter that was sent to Dr. Collins, or a draft letter that they wanted an actual congressman to send?
I can't help but think of the movie Erin Brockovich:
Erin Brockovich: By the way, we had that water brought in specially for you folks. Came from a well in Hinkley.
Ms. Sanchez: [Puts down the glass, without drinking] I think this meeting is over.
Ed Masry: Damn right it is.
Would you personally spray Roundup directly on your skin?
Because if you've ever treated a large area of your plot with weed killer with a spray indicator, it's clear as day that stuff is getting all over you with the slightest breeze.
Fair. I don't believe the company that bribed the head of the EPA gives a sh*t about "science" or the health of their customers. This affects my view of how safe their product is.
This is the real world, not a philosophical sandbox. I understand that a person's character should be ontologically castrated from their argument in a philosophical sandbox. But 99% of the time that a company does evil shit like this in the real world, they have very strong reason to do so. It's increasingly likely that Monsanto/Bayer don't want the scientific process to run its natural course. They feel the need to intervene. Why?
> hand-held household application is different to indiscriminate spraying from a pumped tank on the back of a truck
Critically, it appears the surfactants in Roundup are the nasty bit, not glyphosphate. To my knowledge, they don't permeate the skin. But if you're inhaling it, it's in your blood stream. It shouldn't be shocking that a chemical your body isn't used to designed to keep organic compounds apart messes with at least some of your biochemistry.
A few years later the that big cancer lawsuit hit the news.