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Comment by technotony | Hacker News Reader

Yes, and they can be just as dangerous to health. People seem to fail to realize that natural isn't synonymous with harmless, plenty of natural things will kill you so we shouldn't be surprised that 'natural' pesticides are also dangerous, maybe more so as they haven't been through the same safety studies synthetic ones have to go through. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/pesticide...

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Some organic pesticides are dangerous. These seem to mostly be problematic when natural ingredients are industrially concentrated. Also, seems some companies sell synthetics that can be derived from plants, but aren't for economic reasons, and still call them "organic". (Personally, I think calling an substance derived from plants but which is extracted with a number of synthetic and toxic chemicals is kind of stretching the meaning of the term 'organic' to the breaking point).

There are many that are much more safe: neem oil, citrus oil, tobacco, salt water, baking soda water, chili powder, soap.

I think that the presumption of danger from pesticides derived from plants humans have been living alongside for millennia should be less than novel synthetics that may have only existed for a decade or two.

What's the basis for that presumption? Are you arguing humans evolved during that period to be less affected by the natural chemicals? Are you invoking some kind of gaia hypothesis? A chemical is a chemical whether it's natural or synthetic, there are plenty of natural chemicals which will easily kill you. If anything novel synthetics that have been through a rigorous regulatory review process should seem safer than natural chemicals whose toxicity has been less well studied.

The basis of the presumption is that if humans have been to exposed to something for 1000 years and we haven't noticed an effect yet, its less likely that we'll notice an effect in the future vs a substance for which we have no data about human exposure.

Certainly many 'all-natural' chemicals can be highly toxic, but because we have a history of interacting with the plants that produce them, most of these harmful chemicals we already have some idea that they may be dangerous.

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