Comment by kup0 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kup0 | Hacker News Reader

This is one of those controversial topics that really tends to go off the rails because of all the Monsanto history and polarizing beliefs concerning the substance. Also, notably, this is only being pulled from the market to "manage litigation risk" according to Bayer

I am no Monsanto/Bayer fan or defender, necessarily, and as much as I've found it easy to jump on the anti-glyphosate bandwagon in the past - glyphosate doesn't seem to have any strong evidence for risk for low-exposure uses like home gardening? Doesn't the (weak, but present) evidence so far mostly point to the risk really only being when exposed to large amounts of glyphosate?

Or does the personal risk come from it being present in agricultural products it is sprayed on, that we then consume?

The key thing (even in the lymphoma studies) seems to be "high cumulative exposure"

I lean towards "this seems like it's potentially hazardous for all uses" but does the evidence really bear that out? I want to block out the noise of opinion on this issue and purely look at evidence- something that seems to be coming increasingly rare- but something we need to be willing to do, even if it's painful to our ego and bias to do so

How many "low-level" exposures does it take before it graduates to a "risky" exposure?

The other major effect is wide-range poisoning of insects that just happen to be passing through the garden.

Does glyphosate poison insects at all? It targets a pathway specific to plants, and generally is non-toxic to everything else.

Farmers (and gardeners and homeowners) use a whole lot of other pesticides to kill insects, which will affect non-targeted species. Slug baits sometimes are mixed with other broad-spectrum insectisides, and Raid is persistent (part of it's design is to kill the wasps that return to the nest later!)

Roundup is glyphosate plus a surfactant. The surfactant is use to strip the waxy coating on plant leaves so the glyphosate can act. I've read the surfactant is the bigger issue for insects.

Are herbicides really needed in the consumer lawn and market? Weeding the garden can be done manually, or even now robotically: https://tertill.com/

I can only assume you've never dealt with a quackgrass infestation... pulling that stuff out of an established lawn or garden by hand is the definition of a Sisyphean task.

There are some plants like mint that can spread like crazy if you don't maintain it. I had mint spread from my neighbors fence one spring and it just started blanketing my backyard. I had no choice but to use herbicides. Also with age I find it hard to bend down to pull weeds. I mostly resort to string trimmers, some root puller tools and once in the spring some roundup to get me a head start for the year. Longterm I need to add more mulch but I need to fix the yard drainage first since I can't raise the elevation much.

They really not needed in commercial agriculture either. Farmers know their craft and would do well without it, and wouldn’t have the additional finance burden.

Also Roundup doesn’t particularly work that well anymore. Ask anyone who uses Roundup in a commercial setting about it.

>They really not needed in commercial agriculture either. Farmers know their craft and would do well without it, and wouldn’t have the additional finance burden.

This could not be further from the truth. Farmers do everything to increase their margins. If they could just stop spraying their crops they would.

>Farmers know their craft and would do well without it

Unfortunately knowledge of a problem doesn't make that problem disappear. They know their craft which is why they spray their crops.

Ugh, you seriously sound like a lawyer from Bayer’s legal department.

Search pubmed for glyphosate for a small taste. Then realize that most of those studies were done ONLY on glyphosate, the solvents and surfactants that glyphosate is mixed with to make Roundup are excluded. Post some studies if you find any juicy ones!

>Ugh, you seriously sound like a lawyer from Bayer’s legal department.

>Search pubmed for glyphosate for a small taste. Then realize that most of those studies were done ONLY on glyphosate, the solvents and surfactants that glyphosate is mixed with to make Roundup are excluded. Post some studies if you find any juicy ones!

But you haven't provided any sources to support your dissent. You are right in that there have been many studies on glyphosate and products which include it but nothing so far to conclusively characterize it as a carcinogen or otherwise harmful to human life outside of exposure in large quantities.

Does that mean it's not harmful? No. Might we find it harmful in the future? Maybe. But we've nothing conclusive yet.

I have searched and been given links to numerous studies in the past, none of which seem to contradict anything I've said- but that's all I will say in reply- your first sentence is enough for me to know this will not be a fruitful exchange worth continuing.

I was once emotionally involved in glyphosate discussion and I understand people will have a visceral response to someone questioning the anti-glyphosate hype - I used to be part of that hype. (Monsanto was involved in Agent Orange production for f's sake, so this is anything but a defense of the company or its practices in general, or a defense of Bayer or its acquisition.)

So I've tried to approach the topic purely without an emotional run to a particular viewpoint without considering the current state of evidence, I'm just hoping more can do the same.

That, and I am taking into consideration other posts here which are going more into detail about other things to think about concerning glyphosate exposure that may not have occurred to me- I appreciate that level of conversation, not your unnecessary condescension.

ad hominem

Reply on news.ycombinator.com