Thread: Is - or should - this be a concern??

Is - or should - this be a concern??

Yes.

file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Owner/My%20Documents/Downloads/Roundup%20Ready%20To%20Use%201%20Litre%20Herbicide-datasheet.pdf

This is from just one of the Roundup variants.

Depends. If you generally trust numerous peer reviewed studies conducted by people who generally know what they are doing, start here:

Safety evaluation and risk assessment of the herbicide Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, for humans. - PubMed - NCBI

More recent work indicates that occupational exposure may put Roundup in the 2A 'probable carcinogens' category, along with wood fire smoke, frying, non-arsenic insecticides and being a hairdresser or barber, but there are still arguments going on about this research.


If you think the UN are conspiring to form a world government for the reptilian aliens, the moon landing was a hoax, fluoride is a mind-control drug, aluminium will give you old-timers disease, and vaccines are giving children autism (or some combination of the above statements thereof), start here:

Scientist Exposes Damage of Glyphosate & Aluminum | Natural Society

When you're on your way out of that particular rabbit hole, please tell Elvis - when you walk past him - that I hate his music.

Originally Posted by Master Splinter

When you're on your way out of that particular rabbit hole, please tell Elvis - when you walk past him - that I hate his music.

Yes it should be of great concern
Most of the food we consume from the supermarkets is 'dead' per say
Little wonder folk are full of disease and cancer
As for the 'experts' who'll tell you its all safe...don't listen to any of them
They have their own agenda!
Eat fresh and chemical free food and guess what?....your health will certainly improve and your taste buds will come alive again...MM

For a long time Roundup, which we should really refer to as glyphosate as Roundup is to glyphosate as Hoover is to vacuum cleaners, was regarded as a safe chemical.

There were numerous stories abounding including the ability of the human to drink it. The owner of a local nursery said she witnessed somebody demonstrating this act.

Don't do it!

I recall contacting Monsanto and asking about the longevity factor of Roundup and was told that within a quite short period of time after contact with water (think rain) or contact with the ground, Roundup became inert or at least that was implied.

However, more recently it has become apparent that glyphosate, along with many other chemicals, is more insidious than is evident at first glance. For example, we have a patch of ground where we had previously applied glyphosate. A small patch of garlic we tried to grow failed miserably: I couldn't understand what had gone wrong bearing in mind in a previous life I had grown an acre of garlic commercially.

SWMBO was speaking to a local farmer about this. He asked if the soil was sandy, which it was. He said that his experience was that glyphosate seemed to remain in sandy soil for an extended period of time and had an adverse effect on subsequent plantings.

So this was a wake up call that glyphosate may not be as friendly as first thought. So at this point I suppose we head to the internet and start doing the research. Trouble here is that everybody has an agenda so you really have to look closely at the source.

The other problem is that research itself is expensive. The companies themselves are not going to cough up money to fund a study that will prove detrimental to their product. Anybody else doesn't have the money.

On the subject of Elvis, as a child I grew up disliking him intensely. It was only in later life I appreciated what a musical talent he was and how he had the skill to turn an ordinary song into something special. As a person, however he was a victim of the disease that strikes so many of the famous flung into the public eye: Excess. In that regard he was ultimately a failure.

Returning to Artme's query, anything that is used for a purpose outside the original intent should be vigorously questioned and particularly if there are question marks about the prime function as well.

Regards
Paul

Rather concerning, as are a lot of supermarket products, Just have a look at the artificial sweetener sucralose and how it was derived.

As I understand it, glyphosate quickly becomes inert on contact with clay. However, I'm not surprised that this isn't the case with sand. Also, while the herbicide may be neutralised, it, along with most herbicides, contains a wetting agent. It is suspected that this has contributed to the fungal infections that many frog populations are subject to, by removing their protective slimy coat.

The surfactant in Roundup is derived from tallow... so really, should vegans avoid eating fruit and vegetables?

It is interesting to read that Roundup remains active within sand. I use roundup as a lawn mower. if it dares grow in my backyard, i kill it with roundup, same goes for my naturestrip. in the backyard its just clay soil, never been landscaped. on the naturestrip it is clay soil with a layer of granitic sand on top. The weeds and grass in the backyard grow back quickly. The weeds on the sand naturestrip dont really grow back, the odd one pops up here n there but its pretty good. So after reading this, im gonna mix up a strong mix of roundup and smother the naturestrip with it. hopefully that will solve the issue of the odd weed popping up here n there.

Originally Posted by Master Splinter

Depends. If you generally trust numerous peer reviewed studies conducted by people who generally know what they are doing, start here:

Safety evaluation and risk assessment of the herbicide Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, for humans. - PubMed - NCBI

More recent work indicates that occupational exposure may put Roundup in the 2A 'probable carcinogens' category, along with wood fire smoke, frying, non-arsenic insecticides and being a hairdresser or barber, but there are still arguments going on about this research.


If you think the UN are conspiring to form a world government for the reptilian aliens, the moon landing was a hoax, fluoride is a mind-control drug, aluminium will give you old-timers disease, and vaccines are giving children autism (or some combination of the above statements thereof), start here:

Scientist Exposes Damage of Glyphosate & Aluminum | Natural Society

When you're on your way out of that particular rabbit hole, please tell Elvis - when you walk past him - that I hate his music.

This.

Anecdotal evidence is not evidence

Originally Posted by Master Splinter

Depends. If you generally trust numerous peer reviewed studies conducted by people who generally know what they are doing, start here:

Safety evaluation and risk assessment of the herbicide Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, for humans. - PubMed - NCBI

More recent work indicates that occupational exposure may put Roundup in the 2A 'probable carcinogens' category, along with wood fire smoke, frying, non-arsenic insecticides and being a hairdresser or barber, but there are still arguments going on about this research.


If you think the UN are conspiring to form a world government for the reptilian aliens, the moon landing was a hoax, fluoride is a mind-control drug, aluminium will give you old-timers disease, and vaccines are giving children autism (or some combination of the above statements thereof), start here:

It all depends, doesn't it. Are those peer reviewed scientists the same ones who claimed, for decades after the risks of smoking had become manifest, that smoking was not damaging to your health? Or are they in the group who get paid to declaim that climate change is a UN conspiracy to let the little green men take over the World Government?

I'll go at it from another angle: I know farmers - having been in the industry for the last 30 years. Do farmers read the instructions on the packaging? Do they stick to the instructions?
Heck, no. We had a couple of idiots who used organophosphate insecticides as pour-on delousing agent on cattle, thus torpedoing the whole beef exports to Korea from NZ for a period of months. I know how farmers use herbicides and insecticides. Some are so tight, they only use half the recommended concentration, thereby fostering resistance, others go hell for leather and double up 'to make sure'. The sensible ones are actually a minority.

So: if Monsanto puts out a GM crop that is designed so it can be sprayed 'safely' with glyphosate then I know that the resulting foodstuffs may contain a much higher concentrate of poison than anticipated.

Furthermore, poison is poison. Anybody who claims you can drink the stuff is a dangerous lunatic. I don't buy into the "organic" vegan new age conspiracy theories any more than I buy into the redneck 'stick their head in the sand' attitudes. I avoid GM stuff not because it's GM, but because I have a damn good idea what the farmers have done with it. That's the 'resistant' crops. And don't even get me started on the crops that have the glyphosate built in via GM. Thanks, but no thanks. I don't eat datura, I don't eat death caps, 'organic' will kill you just as happily as 'not organic', but I don't have to push it by eating poison, right? I would encourage you to read Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring". A book that came out in the 50s iirc -- some American farmers see her as National enemy #1 (green men, UN, world government, etc) .... and she was a damn good scientist.

Anecdotal evidence is a curse. It's a curse if it is wrong and it's a curse if it is right, because either way it will be damned. On the other hand, well researched evidence is more reliable, but not incontrovertible: As I said before, check out who funded the research. I am not casting aspersions: Just check .

The thing to my mind that is the fly in the ointment is the exception that proves the rule. (Did I just mix up my metaphors?) For example, Joe Public drinks like a fish, has smoked a packet of cigarettes every day since he was fifteen and dies at the ripe old age of ninety five thus defying the odds of life expectancy. Ergo smoking does not damage your health.

We can always find some sort of exception to any trend, but must be wary of using that to justify our point of view.

I was told an interesting analogy the other day at work. We had a guy come in to test our hearing and do a spirometry test. That's the one where you take a deep breath and then blow out until you think you are going to pass out. Then he says "keep going" and you develop a coughing fit and he says "keep going" and just as you start looking for the blinding light he says "Ok, that's good."

Anyhow that has nothing to do with the analogy. He said if you line up one hundred frogs on the side of a major highway with water on the other side one or two will likely make it across unharmed. That does not mean it is a safe crossing for a frog.

Regards
Paul

I generally work on the theory that there are enough researchers in "the establishment" (mainstream, not woo-woo science) these days who are only too happy to make a name for themselves by proving someone else's research wrong.

The research environment is also significantly different now to how it was back in the days of the tobacco lobby funded 'health' research (thanks to things like tobacco funded 'health' research). To take that as an example, many journals these days won't even touch research that smells even slightly of tobacco industry funding, so I think the awareness of these conflicts of interest are stronger than ever.

Andrew Wakefield, who fabricated the evidence for his "vaccines cause autism" study only got away with that for two years till doubts were being raised about its validity, so on a contentious subject like Roundup poisoning, where reputations could be made overnight, I generally feel safe in positioning it lower on my priority list than worrying about being hit by a car, winning the lottery or choking to death on a carrot while climbing a ladder holding a running 9" angle grinder with no safety shield.

But I do get the point about not trusting farmers to dose things correctly.