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Comment by ArtDev | Hacker News Reader

As my chemisty professor explained to me many years ago, its not the glyphosate that makes Roundup dangerous, its the byproducts and accidental ingredients.

Roundup is made from recycled chemicals. Every batch is different and some of it has lots of heavy metals.

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> Every batch is different and some of it has lots of heavy metals.

This part may have been confused with glyphosate's ability to chelate metals? [1] ... I doubt any large company that's strictly regulated, and who employs professional chemists/chemical engineers, would have toxic impurity issues.

But it's possible that it's concentrating metals in the environment.

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945589/

Interesting.

Heavy metals are a problem with sewage based fertilizers.

Your explanation is appealing because it fits Hanlon's razor: "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." If you're right, then we're putting chemicals of unknown toxicity in homes everywhere. Do you have anything else to back up this assertion?

Unfortunately, no. Just what my distinguished chemistry professor told me almost twenty years ago.

This is much more interesting than the article. Is there anywhere that explains how roundup is made and highlights this fact?

I haven't looked into it, but I have always been curious about it. I would imagine that many chemical processes from industry have byproducts that are recycled and used in different ways. Putting them into cheap products like Roundup makes sense, from a pure business perspective.

It would make the MSDS fucking useless. Since these are regulated (at least, in the EU) I find it hard to believe that monsanto puts any of shit into a barrel, and some glyphosate, and then puts a Roundup label on it.

I do. It is dirt cheap. Maybe you can trust the safety standards in Europe but here in the US, government regulation for food safety is notoriously bad. The FDA has been broken for years.

You stated "I was a biology major" in another part of the thread as justification for your claims, but you indicate that you got this information from your chemistry professor, not a biology professor. I'd say that's a bit deceptive in itself. On top of this, you can't seem to cite anything, and you are the only one here claiming this.

I challenge you to buy some Roundup and test it for heavy metals, then make the results available. Otherwise please do cite equivalent research.

I agree that her/she needs to cite evidence. But biology majors can take chemistry, right?

It is required. You can't graduate with a biology degree without at least a year of chemistry.

No way.

I don't have access to a gas spectrometer.

You would think that someone would have tested it, but I cannot find the information anywhere. An MSDS sheet will not list trace ingredients.

If you Google this, mostly you only get junk results. Its not easy to find this out. As I said, all I have is what my chemistry professor told me.

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