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Comment by illys | Hacker News Reader

I saw on one of the illustrations that the spray is made of acetic acid. Pretty natural product, aka vinegar at low concentration.

Well targeted as they seem to do, I guess it is a good product to preserve the soil and wanted plants with no harmful residues.

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> I saw on one of the illustrations that the spray is made of acetic acid.

The cynic in me wants to point out that this is basically a commerce, so of course they use the best sounding chemical possible. Will they still use that by the time it becomes a commercial product? I guess only time will tell.

Vinegar is more toxic to humans than roundup. And you need a lot more of it to be effective.

Could you develop? Kind of toxicity? As traces in food? Source?

I put vinegar in my salad sauce, I would not dare with glyphosate.

Check the SDS for details, you can easily goggle it, though reading them is harder. You put dilute vinegar on your salad. You don't do that for glyphosate because it doesn't add any flavor, but if you put as much on your salad as you do vinegar it would harmless.

That's really cool, so glad to hear it!

I wonder about the effects of acidification after long term use. Perhaps some alkaline filler can be added to balance.

That's cool, yeah, precise targeting should remove the need for highly toxic herbicide.

That seems opposite to me. Precise targeting would allow the use of highly toxic herbicides in minute quantities.

Do the least harm possible!

The reason herbicides have to be highly toxic is that they are sprayed indiscriminately, so only small quantities actually get on the target. Farmers don't prefer highly toxic things. They would prefer to use less toxic things, applied directly in large quantities to the target and not elsewhere.

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