Brief Note from Kip Hansen
On December 18, 2017, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a paper titled “Revised Glyphosate Issue Paper: Evaluation of Carcinogenic Potential” as part of a larger release of its latest findings on glyphosate, the main active ingredient in the world’s most used weed killer, Monsanto’s Roundup.
The revised issue paper was part of a larger timed release of a number of EPA statements on the 18th December.
The finding?
“For cancer descriptors, the available data and weight-of-evidence clearly do not support the descriptors “carcinogenic to humans”, “likely to be carcinogenic to humans”, or “inadequate information to assess carcinogenic potential”. For the “suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential” descriptor, considerations could be looked at in isolation; however, following a thorough integrative weight-of-evidence evaluation of the available data, the database would not support this cancer descriptor. The strongest support is for “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans”.
The reaction of the American press was astonishing — almost complete silence. The major “Newspaper of Record” for the United States, The NY Times, did not mention the report at all — not a single line, anywhere in the paper. Of major US papers, based on a search for mention of the report in each of the following, these papers and news outlets did not mention the new finding: NY Times, Washington Post, Portland Tribune, Seattle Times, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, Associated Press, UPI and CNN.
My online search only turned up three (3) Main Stream Media outlets that carried the news: the LA Times [and here on Twitter](my lifetime, hometown paper), the St Louis Post-Dispatch, and Reuters.
[Personal Disclosure: In my youth, I delivered the LA Times seven days a week for several years, including the Sunday edition, weighing several pounds.]
As a measure of interest in the general topic, a Google search for “news Monsanto’s Roundup” returns 3,820,000 results — there has been a lot of news about Monsanto’s Roundup product — yet when the US EPA finally issues the results of if oft-delayed findings (delays which were reported by all major US news outlets) — the majority of US news sources remained silent. The EPA made public announcements of the release of the reports, including advanced copies to the press with an embargo date of 18 December.
There is no more powerful way to bias news coverage than this: simply to not report the news at all.
I have my opinion on why this non-event happened. What’s yours?
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Author’s Comment Policy:
Always glad to engage in civil conversation about the topic at hand — in this case the non-coverage of this major and long-awaited EPA report by MSM in the United States.
I will reveal my personal opinion later on in my usual Epilogue in the comment section, after I feel that most of you have had your say.
If you expect a reply from me, please address you comment to “Kip …” so I can see it.
I don’t intend to argue the case for or against Roundup and I will not entertain general discussion of Monsanto-hating conspiracy theories.
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Just more evidence of the massive Obama war on science with his dishonest, distorted and deceptive efforts to make all “science” nothing but his politicalized propaganda supported by a liberal and science ignorant main stream media.
Science is in bad shape. Most published research findings are wrong and can’t even be reproduced let alone replicated.
Here’s a link in which the author points out that the evidence on what foods we shouldn’t eat is very weak. He puts the blame on cherry picking. It’s a lot like climate science.
Scholars have to publish. To get published they have to produce interesting results. There’s no penalty for being wrong. Only the most blatant fraud is punished. What ensues (ie. the replication crisis) is entirely predictable.
I’m no fan of Obama but he can’t take the blame for a crap fest that has been going on for decades.
You’re quite right. This has been going on for many decades. Too many Government organizations benefitted from it.
Commie ==> Anything written by Dr. Aaron Carroll is worth reading. I don’t always agree with him though — but at least one gets straight science well written.
The problem you point out isn’t the result of lack of scientific integrity, it’s a problem with how things are reported by the media. Whether it’s about food, chemicals or climate, the media are the alarmists, not the scientists. The media are directly dependent on high readership for advertising revenues. Research is funded because it answers a question, not to spread a message.
‘Science is in bad shape. Most published research findings are wrong and can’t even be reproduced let alone replicated.” This is an assertion without evidence, and it’s absurd. In the context of the discussion alone, about a paper in which much science is being evaluated, it suggests that the conclusion are unreliable – if this is true, then why should the MSM report it anyway?
While it is true in science that “negative” findings (those that don’t reject the null hypothesis – what you would call “uninteresting”) have in some fields often gone unpublished, the scientific community is aware of this problem, and it is changing. It’s particularly bad in pharmacology.
“There’s no penalty for being wrong.” No, there is no penalty for being wrong, nor should there be. Some studies are wrong simply by statistical chance. That’s why science never “proves” anything – it is always open to revision, and because of the way science works, most often the wrong studies are identified by ensuing research. The general message of a whole body of research that replicates findings and “fits together” well (a theoretical treatment agreeing with empirical results, for instance) is rarely wrong. This is one reason that the antrhropogenic climate change research is so compelling.
“Only the most blatant fraud is punished.” ANY fraud is punished! Fraud is not acceptable under any circumstances. Simple errors and mistakes in judgment are not (though depending on the magnitude, reputations can be destroyed). Scientists are not gods.
Folks share your opinion. Here’s an example …
Science is fine.
Academic scientists and the way they organise themselves are in trouble.
@Kristi Silber:
Did you overstate your position there or do you actually believe that scientists make no alarmist pronouncements?
Do I need to repeat here the well known evidence to the contrary? I hope not.
Well if the scientists were indeed interested in pushing the science, they would publish only in journals that are read by specialists in that field, and they would never give any abstract or press release to the media to the masses. For what purpose would they tell the media to the masses stuff they are not competent to comprehend ?
Well of course to get the paying public (taxpayers) to grant funding for further study.
The mass media are going to edit it / translate it / rewrite it /whatever to make it sound important.
I was once asked by a popularly read electronics monthly journal, well actually of that very name to write a specific paper on a specific subject, so I did that; it was a tutorial paper, and I sent the manuscript to the editor.
He edited it as editors do, and a technical term that appeared frequently throughout the manuscript, appeared only once in the edited draft which he sent back to me to check for “technical correctness”.
Well the problem was that everywhere else that word was to be, he replaced it with a synonym from some thesaurus; that is a …. different …. synonym for each instance.
None of those synonyms from colloquial spoken English meant the same thing as the original word, as a word in a scientific tutorial about the very subject of that word.
so the entire manuscript was reduced to total bullsh*t.
Check it for scientific accuracy he said.
So I scribbled across it: “It WAS technically correct and accurate when I sent it to you; now it isn’t. ”
So he published my original manuscript verbatim, and never changed a word.
Later he apologized, and we got along famously from that time forward.
G
The MSM’s response was about like their reporting when butter and eggs were declared healthy foods after the “consensus” of scientists insisted for 40 years they were sure killers.
As it happened, I worked at Monsanto Chemical’s Central Research Laboratories in St Louis County MO for three years, mid 1964 to mid 1967. Not on any chemical things, but digital electronics, and also LED devices and materials . OK so GaAs is a chemical. I’m not sure that it is toxic, but both Gallium and Arsenic are. I worked only on the optics of LEDs, the material was just a necessary part of getting light out of something.
Back then, Monsanto also made Aspirin, which has a specific chemical formula so Aspirin is just Aspirin, and Monsanto is a principal supplier to the world. They also make the active detergent ingredient in most house hold laundry products, so no matter what colored bottle all of your dashed washing machine powders or liquids some in from P&G or elsewhere, the part that works is made by Monsanto, and the label on the box tells you to use about five times as much as it takes to wash your clothes. I bought a bag of the part that works before they add the colored dust to it, from the company store, and it lasted us for the three years we lived in MO.
And let’s not forget Skydrol, the non flammable hydraulic fluid used in just about every aero-plane thy flies with Hydraulic controls on it.
I don’t think I have ever worked for a big company that acted more ethically than Monsanto. I have no idea how they are today; just how they were back then. And I am planning on dousing my back yard with round up as soon as the freezing weather abates.
G
No so far as I know, I have no investments in Monsanto, although I can’t guarantee that some of my funds don’t.
G
George E. ==> Thanks for the personal report on your experience with Monsanto.
I too have a serious Round-Up roundup to accomplish in the spring — an invasive little bugger of a plant that has taken over my wife’s shade garden in the 13 years of our absence (we were in the Caribbean) and the old brick roofing tile kiln (a relic of the past) that is covered in poison ivy vine.
Monsanto of course invented “Astroturf “, and while I was working there Monsanto wanted to make a movie of a cricket match being played on a pitch of Astroturf just to get a 30 second clip to show to share holders at the Annual General meeting of shareholders.
So being a colonial, but having very little playing time on the cricket field, I was drafted into a Monsanto Cricket team, to practice up for the movie. So they outfitted a bunch of us, some Aussies and a couple of Indian chaps, with all the correct white cricket togs, and they gave us paid time off work to go out to a park (might have been St Louis Forest Park) and polish up our cricket skills.
Then on a weekend, we went out and on a cricket pitch of Astroturf we played a four hour cricket match against a Team from the Washington University (?) in St Louis (izzat a medical school?), and Monsanto video-taped the whole four hours, to find that 30 second clip for the AGM. I’m pretty sure we played cricket for about two full months before the movie was shot.
They’ve had their bad moments. There was a terrible fire and explosion at a dock in Texas City Texas, where Monsanto fertilizer was stored and was being loaded onto a freighter when the fire happened, and the explosion wiped out a huge area. That and some other unfortunate accidents were a part of their employee safety folklore.
It could get you fired if you drank your coffee out of a beaker in your office or laboratory.
A top high paid woman Chemical Research engineer came into her lab and picked up her beaker of hot coffee that was warming over a Bunsen Burner, and took a gulp
OOoops That’s not my coffee. Well those were not her words; she said nothing, but dropped to the floor, and died. The beaker was not her coffee but Potassium Ferricycanide that somebody was heating up for some test. All of this folklore was recited to me the day I reported for work in my safety indoctrination by the corporate safety engineer. It was a very good three years of my industrial career, which I gave up only to come back to the West coast to work at Fairchild Semiconductor, when all of the Intel founders were still at Fairchild.
G
George ==> Great stories…..
george, you wrote: ” And I am planning on dousing my back yard with round up as soon as the freezing weather abates.”
Why do you want to kill your back yard? Maybe you live in a desert climate where weeds have invaded the sand and rocks? Just curious.
“””””….. Rod Everson
December 28, 2017 at 7:30 am …..”””””
Rod, the back yard had accumulated over time the seeds of weeds that have not yet been identified by botanists, all of which blow over from surrounding areas, including bamboo, and ivy which (the ivy) was strangling every tree in the yard. some of these weeds grow up to four feet tall, and there are grasses in there that get three feet tall, including the kind of grain stalks that get in your clothing and then burrow through it and you can’t pull them out backwards. My wife told me she was going to plant vegetables out there so I stopped weed whacking the yard and waited to see her garden grow.
Well the weeds kept growing until I couldn’t see the yard, nor the sliding glass patio door that the ivy had engulfed long before we moved in.
So I once mowed it down to an inch of stubble and then covered the whole yard in a black plastic sheet, and that stopped the weeds, but only for about two years by which time the solar photons had performed radiochemistry on the plastic sheet, so it was slowly evaporating.
So then I waited for it to get about nine inches deep, and I rounded it up, with the correct dilution from concentrate, and that did it magically till there was nothing short of 700 microns wavelength out there in the yard. But the ivy started to eat the house.
So my wife paid a contractor who came out with a team and in eight hours they had every last ivy leaf and shoot out of there along with all of the trees that had been slaughtered by the vine. I was impressed; never seen a bunch work so efficiently and they carted four 3/4 ton piled up truck loads of junk out of that yard. It’s like a miracle to see plain old dirt ground again, so I want to keep it that pristine brown color that goes all mushy when it rains. Nothing like a good mud back yard.
Well I wouldn’t mind a nice slab of green concrete instead.
G
what can the MSM bitch about now?
About how the Trump Administration’s EPA is obviously lying to the American Public /sarc
I don’t know why you used the “sarc” tag. It was true. That IS what they will say.
+1 to Leghorn.
Clearly a study by the gutted, Trump-filled EPA puppet agency. How now can anyone trust a thing the EPA has to say?
/sarc
A quick search of the website of Canada’s state broadcaster, the CBC (which receives over $1 billion from the taxpayer each year) shows no articles about Monsanto’s Roundup or Glyphosate more recent than November 9 of this year, and nothing about this EPA report.
The ABC, the Aussie equivalent, neglected to cover the topic as well. A general search [not google] gave one result in the “Insurance Journal”.
Paul it’s know $1.5 Billion thanks to PM Trudeau he just loves going into debt to pay his cronies in the CBC.
I see no sign of this story from Britain’s esteemed Bolshevik Brainwashing Company. But they do report Prince Charles’s views that we’re all doomed.
As mentioned above the CBC gets a lot more than $1B from the Feds. It is an unseemly amount for a biased organization. I am not surprised that the CBC has said nothing, as that does not fit into its bias, which is to regurgitate everything David Suzuki says without question and promote the point of view that can only arise from the Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal elites who continue to control this once great country.
Reuters, which is hardly a paid mouthpiece for Monsanto, reported extensively on the U.N./WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer report on glyphosate. Reuters obtained a draft of the report and compared it with the final version. They found that all exculpating evidence was suppressed or removed. A detailed report may be found at
http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/who-iarc-glyphosate/
This panel appears to operate with a level of scientific integrity that is comparable to the IPCC and the UNFCC.
RayG ==> Yes, Reuters has been running a series of exposés on the UN IARC finding. You provide one link, here is another.
@ Kip Hansen December 27, 2017 at 12:28 pm
Now if only Reuters would devote some serious investigative resources at the egregious manipulation of the various so-called temperature data bases but I think that is far beyond anything that Santa will leave under my CO2 absorbing Christmas tree.
What do you expect? WHO is not John Galt…
There is a law firm advertising for clients in Roundup suits on cable TV, claiming that the “World Health Organization” has called glyphosate a human carcinogen. A bit more founded than the baby powder causes ovarian cancer claims, but not much.
The talcum powder stuff should not survive appeal. The biggest jury award has already been reversed. This is just silicone breast implants junk science on steroiods. Cervival/uterine cancer is usually HPV. Hence the new vaccines. Externsl Talcum powder does not even get into the anatomical proximity.
But, …. but, …. but, ….. external cigarette smoke gets into the anatomical proximity and causes cervical cancers.
think little scientifically Samuel C Cogar. Anything that gets into the lungs has an excellent environment for getting absorbed into the cell or the bloodstream. The lungs are evolved for absorption. Anything sprinkled on the skin is very unlikely to get absorbed. The skin is evolved to not absorb things. It takes a number of tricks with chemistry to get “absorption patches” to work safely, and then only for some drugs.
Talc often has a very small amount of asbestos mixed in because the two materials are closely associated geologically. Any pharmaceutical manufacturer of talc body powder takes extreme measures to ensure that no asbestos gets incorporated. A single lawsuit could wipe out all the years of modest profit from baby powder.
Get your daily “jollies” by making such comments, philohippous?
“DUH”, getta clue, …… philohippous, …… Homo sapiens sapiens and/or their hominoid ancestors have been inhaling the smoke being emitted from the burning of dead biomass for the past 200,000 to 2 million years, or to be more specifically, ….. ever since they learned to use fire for cooking and keeping warm.
And given the fact that our species in the Family of Great Apes did not go extinct due to the claimed cancerous effects of inhaling smoke particulate from burning biomass is proof that the breathing of biomass “smoke” has never been harmful to humans ….. or proof that our early human ancestors evolved an immunity to any ill effects of biomass smoke ….. which now would be classified as an Inherited Survival Trait.
And philohippous, don’t you be fergettin the FACT that the majority of the world’s human population was still breathing “tons” of biomass smoke …. up until the early 20th Century when central heating became fashionable and affordable.
Tom…..that would be the firm of Brown and Crouppen. They are local (St. Louis) ambulance chasers and the WHO says glyphosate might be a POTENTIAL carcinogen……which seems to be close enough for them.
Quite simple really,
The lack of reporting is most likely due to the fact that the information was released from the Trump Administration’s EPA rather than the Obama EPA … and the media can’t/won’t do anything to cast a better light on President Trump especially when the news from His EPA is diametrically opposed to that of the prior administration Sphere of Influence
…if it were the democrats…they would be talking about yields going up…feeding the poor….to a background of singing angels
Actually, Lat, it was liberals that didn’t like the “modified” crops being developed that were a bit resistant to Roundup. So yields were going up.
It was the same sort of fear that the anti-nuke folks successfuly waged.
Bryan A ==> The Obama EPA came to the same conclusion but refused to issue it….EPA pulled down a report on its website of the ruling in May 2016 in one of the many delays on the ruling.
Sept. 12, 2016 – EPA issued the first version of this paper, with the same conclusions. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-09/documents/glyphosate_issue_paper_evaluation_of_carcincogenic_potential.pdf I have no idea whether the MSM covered it, but at any rate you can’t blame the Obama administration for not issuing its conclusions, nor would anyone with any sense blame the Trump administration for altering this scientific assessment, one that has been in the works since far longer than Trump has been in office. Maybe this revised version wasn’t reported because it’s not really new at all, but only included data from a few more studies.
Kristi ==> This is the version that was removed shortly after, according to the press, from the EPA website, with an announcement that it would be re-done in the future — which is now here and the revision issued.
I provided several links about the 2016 pull-down.
Dems LOVE Bernie’s tax cuts …
https://youtu.be/FYAClOv3px4
No, just a revised version of an Obama-era report reaching the same conclusions.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-09/documents/glyphosate_issue_paper_evaluation_of_carcincogenic_potential.pdf
My guess is that Trump’s EPA wanted credit for issuing such a report, since as far as I can tell it’s virtually the same as the earlier version, only including a few more studies that don’t alter the conclusions.
Kristi ==> You’ve got your timeline wrong… EPA pulled the 2016 report in May 2016…..no one ever thought Trump would win the election (certainly not in May!…the NY Times still had Clinton an 85% favorite the day before the elections).
There is really no two-party politics story here.
There was a great deal of criticism over the pulling of the report, but now the revised report is out —
Plaster the link all over the Greenpi$$ Facebook pages.
It’s very simple. The EPA finding is wrong, which is why it will not get reported.
Glyphosate is a chemical. Everyone knows that ‘chemicals’ are toxic, and those that Monsanto make are especially so. So the finding MUST be wrong – by definition.If it were right it would be hugely embarrassing to all the MSM which have been frightening people for years with warnings about ‘chemicals’.
The US need to follow the much esteemed technique which the European Commission has been pioneering with political issues. When a country gets a political answer wrong – a referendum, for instance – they are invited to redo the vote again and again until they get it right. This is what the EPA should do with their study….
Dodgy ==> Even the EU was forced by the weight of scientific evidence to rule glyphosate could be continued to be used for another five years…a little short of admitting that it doesn’t cause cancer, but far short of the expected ban.
…Even the EU was forced by the weight of scientific evidence to rule glyphosate could be continued to be used for another five years…
Scientific evidence? I am not sure that you understand what ‘scientific evidence’ is! let me explain the Scientific Method to you…
You start with a hypothesis – your guess at a possible explanation of a natural phenomenon which will generate the best newspaper headlines.
Then comes the hard work of investigating possible support for your hypothesis. It is a good idea to find supporting substance from a widely diverse a set of fields as possible – this will render the hypothesis much more secure. So you should look for activist endorsements, inclusion in well-established forums and think-tanks, and, of course, the best field for support – government approvals.
Having thus proven your hypothesis, you then offer it out for peer review. This comprises phoning around your circle of colleagues so that a united front can be put up to a tame journal editor. It helps if you can add one (or more) of the big names in your research area to your paper’s author list – everyone will then know that the paper MUST be completely trustworthy, without even reading it. Most of your work here will actually not be on the paper, but on the press release, anyway…
Having thus proven your postulate, it only remains to cite the paper in a round of applications for grants. If you achieve these, take them to the nearest University Dean, and start up a research chair with the proceeds. All you then need to do for the next 10 years is recycle the original paper in a succession of conference presentations while travelling widely across the globe with your new chums…
Excellent, Dodgy, excellent!
Dodgy, don’t forget stage two.
Hire a bunch of psychologists to (mis)use statistics to demonstrate that any one who doesn’t agree with you is akin to a Holocaust denier, a racist, and also believes the earth is 6,000 years old and the moon landing was faked, and that the contrary opinion was paid for by the Koch brothers.
I wish my comment was satire; but of course the evidence is out there for all to see.
Dodgy Geezer comments (with a sarc tag) that the US should follow the EU technique of repeating democracy until you get the result you want. To avoid any ‘holier than thou’ thoughts I suggest everyone looks at the multiple referendums the US imposed on Palau on the Compact of Free Association proposal (eventually agreed on 1986). Funnily enough there have been no referenda on the topic since.
Ricco ==> There were multiple referendums about independence and Free Association status, see the Wiki here. History reads a bit different there. If there is a point to your comment, please feel free to clarify.
Reporting that it is not carcinogenic does not support the narrative that industry is evil, that “chemicals” are evil, and that the people need to be saved from these evils. By the brave journalists who run the MSM, and their supporters. Mencken was right. Politics is all about frightening people and offering them shelter from the scary stuff that you have made up.
rxc ==> “does not support the narrative that industry is evil, that “chemicals” are evil,” yes, I think you are getting there …. doesn’t support the narrative…..
Reporting that it is not carcinogenic does not support the narrative that old out of patent chemicals are unsafe and must be replaced by the new in patent and much more expensive chemicals sanctioned by whoever has been paid to sanction them
The left loves science, except when it doesn’t. They slander “deniers” and withhold evidence that disrupts a chemo-phobic narrative. This final outcome just doesn’t comport with the expectations of major news organizations.
We live in a time of unparalleled wealth and ease, made possible by technology and the spread of freedom and opportunity. It is obviously absolutely necessary to identify true sheisters, reali hazards and to correct well-meaning mistakes; but there is more risk in the near all-out war on technology, freedom and reasonably-regulated capitalism as engines for good.
“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.” – Carl Sagan
Paul P ==> I would be happy if the general public understood the basics of math, physics, biology, physiology and chemistry their teachers tried to pound into their heads in high school — just that much would make he very happy.
I would be over the Moon if 4-year college grads understood even half of the science they were intended to understand from their liberal arts curriculum.
Round-up is a huge greenie issue here in Portland, OR – you should hear the sanctimony.
save the bees
i don’t care, save the bees
Roundup is an herbicide, not an insecticide.
see above
Unfortunately bad news sells copy. That a chemical is really just harmless, sells zero copy. Almost everybody knows and admits it, except when their living depends on it.
Most of us do occasionally like to look at the crash on the other carriageway, even though it means we are taking our eyes off the road and our hands are less secure at the wheel. I don’t have a ready solution for this aspect of the human condition.
Michael Hart – Kip’s point is that, given prior msm coverage that gave support to anti-Monsanto rhetoric, maybe one brave msm participant would at least be interested in setting the record straight.
The view that Monsanto is a big evil corporation out to victimize the little guy will persist partly because the NYT and their world-view cohorts didn’t have the gonads all these years to say clearly that Roundup is not only a miracle for farmers but also appears harmless to humans. The latter was the truth of the matter and is more so now that the EPA has cleared the product after crawling through the issue for years.
scraft1 ==> Only Reuters has been straight with the Monsanto/Roundup issue…..
KIp,
Do any studies demonstrate a cancer risk due to the frequency of herbicide and other chemical exposure over time? Compare someone like me who hobby farms dry cattle vs full time agriculture employees?
Craig ==> See the links in the pdf of the EPA “Revised Glyphosate Issue Paper: Evaluation of Carcinogenic Potential” report here. They discuss much, if not all, of the evidence on all sides of the issue.
In my opinion, if you follow the instructions diligently, neither you nor your livestock have anything to worry about — only your poison ivy need worry.
Lomborg covered pesticides in his book, the Skeptical Environmentalist. All pesticide use in the US amounts to about 2 cases of cancer per year. Stopping all pesticide use would actually see a large INCREASE in cancer, as people, especially the poor, would no longer be able to afford most fruit or vegetables.
Craig, I don’t hobby farm. Real farm. Organophosphate Insecticides are more dangerous than herbicides. Both classes are perfectly safe after years of testing (else not approved) when used as directed. Also, precautions like eye protection and impervious gloves are recommended when handling/diluting the concentrates.
The epidemiological support is that me, my farm hands, and many many thousands of others like us show no cancer upticks of any sort compared to city folk who never saw a farm or ever got close to farm concentration pre-dilution pesticides. Those concentrates are not even available to city slicker gardeners. Yiu can probably access the concentrates as a hobby farmer through chains like Farm and Fleet or Tractor Supply. Not HomeDepot or Lowes.
Ristvan – I’m not a farmer but I spend a lot of time maintaining my property and trying to keep out certain plants, particularly invasive weeds. I buy Roundup from Lowes and find it very effective, particularly if you dilute it a bit less that the instructions recommend. My experience is that herbicides you can buy at garden center are overly conservative in their dilution rates but are otherwise as advertised.
Thanks guys
“Dry cattle?” That sounds terrible. Poor Bessie.
roundup found in fetal cord blood samples enough? in city dwellers.
advice for farmers in aus is workclothes to be washed in seperate machines from home laundry because of cancer clusters in farm families, pretty stupid cos the clothes are still going to be toxic to the wearer..throwing them away would be safest option.
fairly high cancer and nervous system diseases in older male farmers in victoria Aus have been documented. organophosphates probably the main cuplrits
but you couldnt pay me enough to even use roundup on my land. id rather do 3 rounds with slasher n tiller or more than open a bottle of any weedkiller.
So you don’t want to use actual data.
Well if you live near any full time agriculture farms you will quickly learn that virtually all farming chemicals, including herbicides or pesticides are way too expensive to spray on either the farm employees or on the farm products, so they are only sprayed on the pests whether weed pests of animalia.
Most farm crops grow in rows, where they haven’t planted any weeds, and the weeds grow in between the rows, where they haven’t planted any crops. Also both weeds, and crops contain Chlorophyll which reflects IR better than green, whereas dirt and soil are both brown and hardly reflect green at all, so it is a very simple algorithm that even silicon valley immigrants could encode.
1 … if it is in a row, don’t spray ….If it is in between rows, keep looking …. if it looks green , it’s a weed …. spray the damn weed … jump to … 1
G
I live in Florida and use a lot of Roundup.
I hope they have a sale on it to “reintroduce” it to the public.
I’ll buy & use even more.
A little bit of Dawn or Palmolive makes it work better……
Message received; I’ll definitely give that a shot (so to speak).
Roundup is already naturally easily absorbed by plant tissue, but even more so when the targeted plants are in dry soil and getting dehydrated.
Good point. The anionic surfactant causes it to better cover leaf surface for absorption. We use surfacant enhanced glyphosate on the Wisconsin dairy farm. Only takes a little bit.
Sunsettommy ==> The surfactant included in the Roundup formula is to help it spread evenly on the surface of the plant instead of bead up (like dew does).
Kip, this is why I said it, since it is designed to be readily absorbed, but doesn’t really need to cover entire leaf to make it effective, as the chemical translocate well inside plant tissue.
I used to apply the stuff by a home made wiper onto parts of Cocklebur leaves (a VERY nasty weed when it is big) which wipes them out easily. Rarely did 50% of any leaves get chemical on it.
Best applied when plant is wilting a little, which makes plant tissue absorb it faster.
ST, what you say and observe from personal experience is absolutely true. But a farmer spraying hundreds of acres wants to minimize cost, so maximize leaf area per spray droplet. Fully Wetting leaves is very expensive.
I sincerely hope that the initial efforts for a class action suit based on Round-up will have cost those lawyers a few million.
A nice fantasy outcome would be that the people that responded to the TV solicitation would all get together under a class action and sue the lawyers for wasting their time.
Anybody have an info on class actions over Roundup and whether any of them have been successful?
scraft1 ==> See Googling Round-Up class action suits.
None have been, or will be, successful in the US — the big study that everyone was waiting for, and which was excluded from the IARC finding, pretty much puts the kabosh on the suits.
This most inconvenient finding cannot be allowed to pollute the public’s mind. It could lead to all sorts of problems for the Gang. Someone might ask questions about DDT or the Ozone Hole, two cherished Eco-Doomsday poster children, and we wouldn’t want that!
makes me wonder if the Trump EPA might revisit DDT and do some true studies. But then I guess there is no one pushing for this as no one has a vested interest in it being made legal again for household use. Maybe if the Bed Bug epidemic reaches plague levels?
Peter, if malaria makes a return to the USA, you can count on it.
EPA has already done a study that basically exonerated DDT. It was handed to the then director of the EPA who ignored the study’s findings and recommendations. Instead he recommended the ban.
The problem with DDT is not that it is unsafe, it is a problem with resistance in target insects, e.g., malaria mosquitoes. yellow fever mosquitoes, etc. During the 1940s,1950s, and early 1960s DDT was grossly overused. It was used as a larvicide, pupacide, adulticide, and as a surface spray. Most target insects developed resistance to DDT and then other related pesticides. It was from DDT that we ultimately learned resistant mechanism in insects. Resistance doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t use the pesticide at all but that the amount required to get 95% mortality is so high it is not worth the effort. DDT does still make a very good surface spray for around entry doors and windows. However, so much DDT was used for so many different things and is so long lived it is still ubiquitous in the environment. However, bed bug return, the resurgence of malaria, yellow fever, and other arthropod vectored diseases is a directed result of the overreaction to pesticides lead by the organized environmental community and technocrats in government. Today professional in entomological health worry about resistance especially in light of re-emerging diseases. Because of the government and environmental zealots mosquito control have very few pesticides left in their arsenal. To get a older chemical re-labeled cost tens of millions and that cost is used by EPA and zealots to eliminate pesticides from the market place. Ironically China now manufactures most of the pesticides we have banned or made uneconomical to re-label.
I read somewhere that DDT has been used effectively and safely in some African countries, but that politics and persistence of fear of the chemical has prevented use elsewhere. Comments?
scraft1 ==> DDT is in current use in most of Africa, recommended by the UN WHO, mostly for indoor spraying (applied to walls) and for bed nets soaking.
Some countries still cling to the pseudo-ban and disallow its use.
They should do a study on the impacts of aging on cancer risk, and then ban aging. That would definitely reduce cancer rates.
Sounds dandy. But then, of course, the sick liberals would have to find and punish those found guilty of aging.
Then some college professor from a state college could go on a talk show and talk about how age is a symbol for toxic masculinity and everyone over a certain age is, by nature, a perpetrator of unspeakable acts against the healthy intersectional youth culture.
Then some activist will start a campaign, paid for by Soros, that all old people are agists and that college age students should be the only ones allowed to participate in societal functions like voting or even, say, breathing because old age is a function of Nazi symbolism.
What is really sad……I’m want to be saying this tongue in cheek, but I’m not.
EH ==> If you are genetically male, then your two biggest risk factors will be gender and age — risks increasing with age. The same is true for heart disease, heart attacks, obesity, diabetes, and about a dozen other things that will kill you…..but not for glyphosate-induced cancer — a non-existent risk.
If you are genetically male; then how does which of the 57 gender varieties you choose for yourself be a risk factor, unless you are hermaphrodite, which is not included in the sacred 57, so you are screwed anyhow .
g
Why do I picture carousel from the film logans run. They didn’t get cancer.
“[Personal Disclosure: In my youth, I delivered the LA Times seven days a week for several years, including the Sunday edition, weighing several pounds.]”
Geez, you were once a paperboy? A blatant conflict of interest!! How can anything you write be trusted since you are obviously shill for the Leftist MSM!!! /sarc (and then some)
SMC ==> Yeah…but if I didn’t reveal it myself, some muck-racker like Sadsack Sou in Australia would dig it out and beat me to death with it.
My understanding is that for people who chose to be informed about glyphosate at all, the concern was with a surfactant used with it, not the primary active ingredient. I remember speculation from a long time ago that the surfactant was more effective than the glyphosate. The EU has available glyphosate with different additives than what we get in N.A. I don’t know whether or not the concerns with the surfactant were valid, but I don’t think any realistic research showed concerns with the active ingredient (can’t speak for junk science though)- any concern we had was with the wetting agent.
BCBill…………….that was my underswtanding also.
BCBill & Kokoda ==> Surfactants can themselves be used as both pesticides and herbicides — Safer soap concentrate is still sold as an insecticide — and other strong soaps (which are basically surfacants) will kill many plants as well, mostly by dissolving the waxy substances on the plant surface causing the plant to dehydrate.
Personally, I hadn’t heard Roundup’s surfactant criticized — though it would probably aqffect insect populations if sprayed on them.
A quick search shows many articles of varying reliability about the surfactants used in glyphosate. For example http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GTARW.php
BCBill ==> The link to to a known “nutty fruit-cakery” site — no science there.
MSM is also silent on this really big news:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-27/new-trump-executive-order-targets-lobbyists-clinton-linked-individuals-and-perhaps-u
The media might be changing direction , if very slowly, extrapolating from 2 comments from the BBC a few days ago . No-one hates Trump more than the BBC but a few days ago , on an item about the tax bill there was a slight reference to the possibility that Trump might actually be achieving things- spoken through gritted teeth of course , but still.
Then there was another comment that was so unBBC that I could not believe it : a story that US pollsters now consider a Trump second term not impossible.
Reality eventually sinks in. The impending results of that story I linked to will be IMPOSSIBLE for the MSM and the willfully blinded portion of the public to ignore. Big things ahead.
I bet the BBC does not report this. I will keep an eye on “Farming Today” to see if they mention it.
Are you kidding me? The very word “Roundup” implies subjugation and enslavement. This is a racist, white-supremacist dog-whistle product. Does Trump have no shame??!!
I subscribe to the theory that a large enough amount of anything over a long enough period of time can cause cancer….simply because it’s a substance that’s constantly irritating something
It only takes five times normal Oxygen to give you ersatz lung cancer, which usually morphs into pneumonia, so you eventually drown; in any case it is fatal.
As far as I know Calcium is the only chemical that is absolutely safe, specially if consumed along with vitamin C.
g
Try dropping a block of it on your head. ;*)
Hi, Kip
The EPA study is important in its own right, especially for us here in Europe, where Roundup is a big issue right now, but the main thrust of your piece seems to be the NON-REPORTING by the MSM
You say –
” The revised issue paper was part of a larger timed release of a number of EPA statements on the 18th December…”
Did any of the Dec. 18th releases get more notice? Seems I don’t have permission to access the relevant EPA server, so I can’t even see easily what they were. Maybe MSM doesn’t normally pay too much attention to this stuff, unless something relevant somewhere else catches their eye.
mothcatcher ==> Try this link for the other documents. If no good, they may be restricted to Us IPs or something (wouldn’t have thought so). All the documents were on the same topic — glyphosate (Roundup).
In 2016, when the EPA delayed the release of this data, nearly every MSM in the US carried articles expressing outrage…. Google reports 3,820,000 results on ghe search phrase “EPA glyphosate news” — the US MSM simply did not report the news.
Thanks, Kip. I had assumed that the other releases would be on a range of subjects, and therefore MSM’s differential response could be examined.
Trial lawyers are known to lean left just like the msm. Don’t want to piss off the ambulance chasers. They might pull some of their tv adds.
The War against Leftist anti-science and propaganda has to be fought report by report, page by page and line by line until these is nowhere for the corruption and distortion to exist. It is a War of Attrition. It is time to revisit DDT and undo some of the massive damage done by its brainless banning.
But unfortunately… “The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.” – Alberto Brandolini
If you drink it in concentrate it will probably kill you and it will do a LOT of damage to your tissues.
If you drink it in ready-to-use application rate it will likely put you in the hospital.
If you consume the amount normally applied to a plant or weed your body might notice.
If you consume the amount that remains in a plant 90 days after application nothing will happen.
If you consume the amount that happens to enter a fruit/grain/nut/tuber that began to form AFTER 90 days after application it will literally be undetectable in your bodily fluids.
If you consume foods prepared by cooking that were sourced from fruit/grain/nut/tuber that was exposed to (or directly applied with) Glyphosate then there is ZERO chance of glyphosate entering your body.
The mechanism(chemichism?) that Round-Up uses is chemical conversion on ingestion by the plant, it breaks off one way when it enters a living FLORAL organism and a different way when it TOUCHES dirt and yet another way when it is ingested into the human stomach. With a storage temp of about 120F max there’s no way it isn’t turning into an inert crystal when heated to 200F or above.
The one that remains biologically active is the one inside the plant.
So when asking if Round-Up causes cancer…. you’re asking the wrong goddamned question because once it enters your body OR a plant it is no longer “glyphosate” to begin with.
If glyphosate caused cancer then Doritos would have a California warning, its been more than THIRTY YEARS and there’s been no spike in cancer from the food products that Round-Up is used to protect.
The GROUNDWATER issue has yet to be fully resolved, it looks like the combination of a hundred years of atmospheric pollution and the overspray onto soil may be producing a groundwater pollutant OTHER THAN the one we know about (since the molecule literally breaks up on dirt).
But in the end, we know that said groundwater pollutant is also not carcenogenic, just toxic.
prjindigo, Just toxic? the Chelate ability of Glyphosate is an issue. We [1000 tradesman] were inhaling a Chelate used to remove heavy metals from Pulp Fibre. It diminished our Nutritional Minerals except for Potassium and Manganese that we were inhaling in the emissions from 27 Vents and Chimneys. The imbalances were noted in comparative Hair Samples Vs length of Exposure. Dr Harada from Japan who helped the people from Grassy Narrows with their mercury contamination from eating fish downriver of the same Pulp Mill suggested we get Hair Samples. The toll of cardiac issues from elevated potassium was quite high, with diminished Electrolyte’s, the following months were a battle with severe cramping with full body arcing from head to toe, chemically induced neuropathy and neurotoxic issues.
The following Journal Article describing health impacts from farming areas in India is a caution for Western farmers that have shallow wells for drinking and ponds for watering livestock.
I suspect the Indian farmers working in Rice Paddies had IDI routes from dermal absorption from possibly being barefooted. If they were hand spraying with backpacks inhalation would be likely from [evaporation] spray drift, then Ingestion from contaminated drinking wells.
I would also question the Uptake in potato tubers when Glyphosate is used as a Desiccant to dry the vines pre-harvest here in North America. So prjindingo, your statement that “you’re asking the wrong goddamned question because once it enters your body OR a plant it is no longer “glyphosate” to begin with”. I have lived the cellular impacts of inhaling a Chelate. I was fortunate to survive the following months of Electrolyte imbalance.
Glyphosate, Hard Water and Nephrotoxic Metals: Are They the Culprits …
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945589/
by C Jayasumana – 2014 – Cited by 111 – Related articles
Feb 20, 2014 – Furthermore, it may explain similar kidney disease epidemics observed in Andra Pradesh (India) and Central America. Although glyphosate alone does not cause an epidemic of chronic kidney disease, it seems to have acquired the ability to destroy the renal tissues of thousands of farmers when it forms …
I think the reason behind a lack of response is really simple. For the MSM a ‘not carcinogenic’ finding is not news. Will the finding frighten people? Will the finding expose a great scandal? Will the finding cause hysteria among ‘celebrities’? Will the finding provide information to lambast someone’s, anyone’s reputation among industry or Trump aligned politicians? If they think of a way to spin it so that any of those questions answers yes it will be front page news, if not, for them it simply isn’t news.
I just offered to my wife, we will see this in the MSM only if they can attach a headline such as “Trump’s EPA Approves Sales of Baby-Killing Chemical”. Then it will be front page news!
Red ==> LOL…probably right.
The 11th issue of Merck Index (1989) for DDT–“This substance may reasonably be anticipated to be a carcinogen.” Haven’t checked later, but this sounds like another hypothetical so common now. Chlorinated hydrocarbons can be toxic, Round-Up not so much. Advisory not to use around tree roots valid, but not too effective based on my one attempt with sprouting Laurel Oaks. Interesting book definition for word ‘affective.’– “relating to, arising from, or influencing feelings or emotions.”
Merck Index listed Glyphosate orally with LD50, 4873 mg/kg for rats, 1568 for mice. Nothing about cancer. It has the amino acid glycine in its structure.
Course I used to teach a little toxicology in taken over by someone who ignored my materials, changed it to something like Sustainability and Biodiversity. In my course these were taken for granted, we taught real stuff. Like everything can be toxic, some necessary for life. I hope people researching cancer don’t come out of courses like that. Back in the 1980s “Environmental Science” textbooks were all the rage, often with lots of good information but political, refused to use them.
So, if we extrapolate the toxic threshold for mice to a 70-kg (154 lb) human, a person would have to drink about 110 grams (about 3.9 oz) of pure glyphosate to have a 50% chance of dying. This would justify putting a child-proof cap on Roundup to prevent toddlers from drinking it, but since the glyphosate is diluted in water in weed-killer, it’s highly unlikely that a farmer using Roundup could accidentally ingest anywhere near 110 grams of pure glyphosate.
But the main story here is media bias. When there was some suspicion that glyphosate “may” be carcinogenic, the mass-media were all-too ready to jump to conclusions and demonize the manufacturers of Roundup. But when a government (EPA) study concludes that it is NOT carcinogenic and safe to use as directed, the media offer no apologies to Monsanto for the economic damage they inflicted by falsely causing potential customers to fear using the product for its intended purpose.
Steve ==> There’s an idea — Monsanto sues Greenpeace, EDF, NRDC, and a dozen newspapers.
Can we expect a similar admission soon that GMO is safe? I believe the risks are over-hyped but that is way beyond my pay grade.
BillT ==> There has never been any reason to even think that GMOs are NOT safe.
It miggt be possible to create an “unsafe for human consumption” GMO — maybe by splicing in a gene for a known toxic substance — but I don’t know of anyone working in that direction.
starlink corn ONLY licensed for animal feed. got into human chain people had adverse reactions.
csiro developed a pea in aus that had unexpected side effects and got halted.
hybrid strains tend to be great for one yr. most gmos are hybrids with tinkering for tolerance.
waste of money and time.
grow old varieties that are suited to the area and save your seed
the cost on NOT paying for the new seed the chemicals it requires etc is worth the.. maybe…lesser harvest total.
Overhyped risk is an understatement. A little science goes a long way here. The GM in GMO are almost always proteins coded by inserted genes (usually but not always the protein subset enzymes). As a pertinent example, Roundup Ready maize, soybean, and canola are created by inserting two genes from different bacteria that code for the enzymes EPSPS and GOX. That is all. Just two genes for two enzymes.
Now, mammalian immune systems will immediately attack and destroy any ‘non-self’ proteins in the blood stream. Nature solved that “food is not-self” dilemma very handily. All proteins are comprised of just 20 amino acids. The digestive tract breaks down all proteins into the constituent amino acids, and only the amino acids are absorbed by the gut and transported by the bloodstream to nourish the rest of the body. So literally NOTHING of any protein, of any sort, in any food, gets anywhere it can do anyone harm.
GMO fear is based in irrational ignorance of basic biology.
“All proteins are comprised of just 20 amino acids.”
…
That is not true. You are neglecting selenocysteine.
ristvan ==> True that…almost all “fear of science” is based on near total ignorance of basic science.
RDF, true yet not true. There is no genetic code for selenocystine, a ‘21st’amino variant of cystine where selenium substitutes for sulfur. Nor is there any biological pool of selenocysteine within cells—too reactive. So I look at it as a metabolic product rather than a basic life building block.
“Prion” proteins are a little scary. Somehow they retain their scariness, even after/through digestion)
Yeah. My whitetails on the farm now occasionally have CWD prion disease. So you make an excellent point countering my general standard protein biology. Butceot prion disease does not spread thru ruminant stomachs, but rather other more direct exposures such as saliva from livking. Does not change protein amino acids. Does change their biological rear rangement outcomes. Knew it since circa 2000 on my farm near original Wisconsin CDW ground zero at the state park, yet did not think it. Point conceded.
Well stated. Same thing with carbohydrates and triglycerides although a few diglycerides make it into the blood.
This is why snake venom can be consumed if one doesn’t have any ulceration or other open wounds in the digestive tract.
On cancer, the number one cause is oxygen. Specifically, free radical oxygen damage to genetic material.
Glyphosate is safe to drink. Patrick Moore says so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovKw6YjqSfM
The EPA also says so. The MSDS for RoundUp has about the same LD50 (lethal dose for 50% of population) as that of beer.
Though I doubt that RoundUp will make you “dance better”, “wittier”, or the opposite sex more attractive, like beer does.
DDT was safe to eat
Carbon monoxide is not carcinogenic, nor is hydrogen cyanide.
RDW ==> Better check that with the IARC — they’ve only met one substance that they decided wasn’t carcinogenic.
“The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) began categorizing substances based on their likelihood of causing cancer in 1970.
Since then, they’ve categorized 989 different substances — and only one has made it into Group 4, the “probably not carcinogenic to humans” category.
That one that is probably not a carcinogenic substance? Caprolactam. The chemical is a precursor to nylon and “used in stretchy yoga pants and toothbrush bristles,”
[ http://www.businessinsider.com/almost-everything-causes-cancer-2016-5 ]
Kip, I know one substance that isn’t carcinogenic….. dihydrogen monoxide.
Not if the dihydrogen is the tritium isotope rather than proteum isotope. Then the beta particles from radioactive decay with half life 12.3 years can kill directly or indirectly via cancer. Former KGB agent Litvinenko was assassinated in Londen by tea spiked with polonium 210,which also radioactively decays by emitting beta particles. More radioactive than tritium, and killed him by radiation poisoning in less than a month.
Don’t worry, ristvan its so rare in nature, background radiation swamps beta from tritium. Oh, and another thing, your body will dilute and pass any tritium you consume unlike how it will retain polonium.
PS ristvan, I forgot to thank you for noting that Litvinenko died of acute radiation poisoning, and not from cancer.
RDW ==> Yeah, so YOU say! Dihydrogen monoxide is found in every cancer cell…that’s got to mean something!
Kip, you just might have found one of the root causes…..but how will you deal with the fact that non cancerous cells ALSO have dihydrogen monoxide in them???
Sorry, Ralph, It’s been on the internet for a decade or more. (Maybe before the “World Wide Web”?)
http://www.dhmo.org/cancer.html
It must be true.
The internet is settled.
Dihydrogen Monoxide should be banned!
RDW ==> …non cancerous cells ALSO have dihydrogen monoxide in them…” Mere Coincidence, of course.
Well Hydrogen Hydroxide isn’t toxic either but it can give you a bad case of pneumonia.
But back to the Tritium or the Polonium 210. The latter is really bad because it has the temerity to crystalize is a simple cubic lattice, instead of belonging to either the face centered or body centered clan. I believe Polonium is also chemically toxic.
But as to the beta emission, is it the charged electron that kills, or is it the accompanying gamma radiation. The betas would hardly make it through any cell walls to do much damage. I know for example that a Polonium/Beryllium neutron source emits around 10^4 gammas per neutron, and those can only come from the Polonium.
G
george e. smith
From wikipedia, about Polonium/Beryllium neutron sources
From my old nuclear radiation safety classes, you’re correct about the “harmless” effects of normal beta radiation: The high speed electrons hit the dead layer of skin cells, are absorbed, and have no real effect on the body. (Internal beta-emitters inside the body are much more dangerous, because they dump all of their energy into a limited area around the embedded beta-emitter. That damage (broken cell structure and broken DNA and physical damage) can be very real. )
But there is usually only one high-energy gamma ray from each reaction that emits a neutron, but many gamma rays coming from “failed” (non-neutron events). So, a neutron source that emits that many gamma rays per second is emitting few neutrons. But the gammas are not coming on a “per neutron reaction” basis, but on a “per neutron source basis” (per gram per second measured outside the source). Subtle difference.
Kip, I’m quite sure that when the two above mentioned substances were tested on subjects, no cancer developed.
RDW ==> yeah..but … but …but …. if the subjects hadn’t died, they would have developed cancer! for sure !
😉
I think this boils down to how you name them. If you call them pre-cancerous cells, as all must be, then you can have 100% of cells covered.
Well outside of California, Royalty is in decline, so subjects are hard to come by for testing; but as I said that is Outside of California.
g
EPA: “Roundup Not Carcinogenic”
Alar not available for comment
Matthew ==> We currently live in “apple country” (Central Hudson Valley of New York state) — the alar scare was horrible for apple growers here — and as with almost all “probable carcinogens” the science is very thin to non-existent.
Yep!
I could barely tell the difference in Real Coke and the diet Coke sweetened with Cyclamate (Tab?), Then in 1969 the whacos got Cyclamate banned and they used a different low calorie sweetener. To date there is still no proof that Cyclamate causes cancer AND all low calorie drinks taste like medicine. And the whacos still get stuff band based upon opinion and phony science.
usurbrain ==> As for Coke, I prefer, for the sugared variety, Mexican “Hecho In Mexico” type, sold in all the groceries in our area in NY state.
Six pack, glass bottles.
But, but, what about the glass bottles? Surely the silicon will leach out causing sillycosis.
Well there isn’t any “real” Coke any more, so who cares what it tastes like.
When ” Coke ” …. (real) …. was replaced by ” New Coke ” , nobody liked the taste, so they then replace ” New Coke ” again with “Classic Coke “.
Nobody knows why the just don’t replace “Classic Coke ” with just “Coke ” ( the original ‘real’ one that is ??)
Well there’s probably nobody alive who even remembers what ” Coke ” tasted like, when you could get it.
G
This is terrible news. Do you know how many low life ambulance chasing lawyers this will affect? How will they bring a class action suit now?
Hopefully all, permanently and terminally. And I am among other things a lawyer.
So you will get closer to the fire when you get there ?
g ggg I said g.
Thank you. Now tell the EU political courts.
Whatever the USEPA or rest of the World says, it will still carry the label, “This product contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer.” 😎
(In California everything but pot causes cancer.)
too late…
https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/chemicals/marijuana-smoke
I’m sure it will be granted “sanctuary status”. 😎
Perhaps “this pot contains chemicals known to cause the state of California” would be more appropriate.
Pot cures smoking !
They don’t call it ” Dope ” for no reason.
g
I bought a plumbing part for my bathroom sink here in British Columbia and it had that label attached to it.
I got a rock chisel for Christmas with the CA cancer warning. Never mind smashing one’s fingers.
Gunga ==> I escaped the California Lunatic Asylum when I was 21 years old, and never returned, except as a tourist.
Silica is a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer. Beware of beaches.
And it has been the “go to” for the USEPA for WAY to long.
Give it another 8 or 10 years and maybe the sane can move back if they want?
(Voter ID laws may need to be in place first.)
Is anyone really surprised by this? Really? These are the same lie spewing (Snip) who lied about eggs, milk, wheat, butter, CO2, spring water, sea levels and the cost of tax cuts. (Snip) them.
2hotel9 ==> I am pleasantly pleased that the EPA (both Obama’s and Trump’s) have come down on the side of real scientific evidence instead of kowtowing to eco-presssure groups demands.
A small win for Science.
Three years ago, I was spraying the lawn with Roundup to kill weeds. It was in a container that has to be attached to the garden hose Unfortunately, I turned the hose on myself and sprayed myself with it, and of course, in the surprise my mouth was open.
The obvious thing to do was hose myself down, which i promptly did, and rinsed out my mouth and then I went and called the Poison Center, and they said I should be fine.
I am fine. But the weeds that were growing in my yard died a sorry death in those three years.
Now I have sunflowers growing in that spot, and the goldfinches came by the dozens last summer (yes, I have photos) to raid the sunflower seed heads. The lawn looks great, too.
Not carcinogenic. Driving a spike through your head doesn’t cause cancer either. Does that mean it’s safe?
Albert ==> I guarantee that if your drive a railroad spike all the way into your skull., you will [most likely] not die of cancer.
Heavy application of glysophate has not been shown to cause gout or gingivitis either.
No but the acetamenophin you take for the headache the spike gives you , will !
g
Next thing you know they will try to ban quadrotiticale as a cancer causing grain.
Tom ==> That’s the tribble with the EPA……
Can’t get very fur without any guts !
g
These selective non-reporting incidents must be recorded and used as evidence of politically motivated media bias: in short, media corruption.
Media types like to look back on events like Watergate to glow in the light of their own self-righteousness hero-worship.
But today’s media have become Watergate.
Can’t happen. Nixon is dead.
The way to get a new fact out is to publish in a peer-reviewed paper. Is an EPA paper considered a peer-reviewed publication? It should be published in whatever esteemed journal originally published a “cancerous” finding.
Grass seeds live for over seven years in soil before taking advantage of the chance to germinate, and an acre of land has hundreds of thousands to of these seeds below the soil surface (continually accumulating). Grass is extraordinarily aggressive, and it is multi-generational per season.
In Africa, women are stuck hoeing the grass and often cannot clear an entire hectare for planting. They also cannot keep up with the growing season, and their children obviously want to leave for the city as soon as they can to escape that life.
The problem is grass. So people who hate pesticides need to pull the grass out by hand for themselves and leave the farmers who use a litre or so of chemicals per acre out of their idyllic organic paradigm.
Please, beware of hand weeded crops. You yourself may end up being the bent over laborer, if things tilt further.
Anyone who has eaten a carrot will die.
It causes global warming don’t ya know. Just look at the correlation.
Lawyers crying themselves to sleep.
Still kissing themselves goodnight though.
Most class-action and environmental law firms are left-wing amoral white-collar criminals.
Another win against the opportunistic followers of Marx & Engels.
And just to be inclusive of other points of view here are the links to Dr Seneff’s presentations and published works.
https://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/
TRM ==> Dr. Seneff is a computer scientist that has been dabbling in health and medical fields for a while — she publishes mostly in non- or barely-peer-reviewed junk journals and her specious opinions are not to be taken seriously. She is a campaigner and not a medical researcher.
If you have some specific critiques of her work and errors she has made that would be helpful but just brushing her off on the grounds you have stated above is not helpful. Her work is very technical and not refuted yet as far as I have seen.
https://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/2016/Glyphosate_V_glycine_analogue_2016.pdf
Saying that she is “a computer scientist that has been dabbling in health and medical fields for a while” is like saying that Lord Monckton’s work on climate should be dismissed because he’s not a climate scientist. Dismissing someone’s work because it is outside their main field of work is not a valid response IMHO.
Thank you
TRM ==> Like all authors here, I reserve the right to have my own opinion about science and its personalities.
I gave fair warning in the Author’s Comment Policy section at the end of the essay that “I don’t intend to argue the case for or against Roundup and I will not entertain general discussion of Monsanto-hating conspiracy theories.”
If you take a look at both her faculty page and her Wikipedia page, you will see that I am not even in the minority in this opinion.
I do, however, thank you for contributing the link to her work for those who wish to take advantage of it.
No problem. I was just looking for some rebuttals to her work and while it was outside the scope of your article I thought I’d ask.
Have a happy holiday and a great 2018.
No endangerment from glyphosate.
It is so obvious glyphosate is not carcinogenic, as tens of thousands of farm workers have been drenched in it every year for decades and no upticks of cancer beyond background expectation.
And Keeping fingers crossed:
An EPA correction of a grievous wrong: No endangerment from the MagicMolecule™️.
joelobryan December 27, 2017 at 6:31 pm
It is so obvious glyphosate is not carcinogenic, as tens of thousands of farm workers have been drenched in it every year for decades…
You know how aggies can’t follow written instructions, and tend to dump liquids over their own heads. (:
It’s indeed strange that the reaction of the American press on the EPA report was almost complete silence. I read the book “Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science”, written by Carey Gillam (2017). When 300 million pounds of glyphosate are used each year in the U.S. alone, one has to be very sure of its safety. However this is not the case. The current generation will pay the price.
The reaction of the Center for Biological Diversity: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2017/pesticides-12-18-2017.php
Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity: “The EPA’s biased assessment falls short of the most basic standards of independent research and fails to give Americans an accurate picture of the risks posed by glyphosate use.”
From the glyphosate.eu website:
“Glyphosate has undergone more thorough toxicological testing than almost any other active substance used in pesticides. As part of the latest risk assessment, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) evaluated more than 3,000 studies. They found no indications of nerve damage or of carcinogenic or mutagenic properties. Nor is glyphosate associated with reproductive toxicity.
The public had been concerned, among other things, by a classification of glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen” (category 2A) by the IARC, the WHO’s cancer research agency. However, the IARC does not look at actual risks to consumers, but at theoretical considerations. It does not consider how the assessed substances are handled, or look at actual exposure to them in everyday life. This explains why the same body has classified sausages and sawdust as “carcinogens” (category 1A).”
But obviously, who cares about 3000 studies by real scientists compared to a politically correct book by an investigative non-scientist journalist?
RPT ==> Thankfully, even the wildly anti-chemical biased EPA cannot ignore the overwhelming evidence.
Rik ==> Thanks for the link to the opinions of the rabid anti-GMO crowd. If you are truly interested in the Science — and not the eco-politics — you should actually read the EPA document — at least the Revised Issue Paper.
Note that
..”I don’t intend to argue the case for or against Roundup “
just a question to ponder based on the Belgian Eternit asbestos scandal:
Now it is known asbestos can cause cancer. However at the beginning Eternit did do a lot of lobbying and even moved abroad saying it was not dangerous. that was in the 60’s the reason? Eternit was as one of the most successful companies providing jobs, which was more interesting then public health.
will it be the same for glyphosphate? Only time will tell. but like with any chemical causing cancer or not i use it as less as possible
all i know is that i just avoid any chemical as long as it is possible. i just would use it as a last resort. untill now i never had to use it in 20 years of gardening.
Frederik Michiels ==> Nothing wrong with avoiding the use of strong chemicals in home gardening — we always did the same until we returned to living on the sea.
The attention one can pay to detail in 500 – 1000 sq feet of garden makes their use unnecessary.
But commercial farming is quite a different story. Round-Up is used to give the crop plants a head start over the weeds — suppressing the weeds as the Round-Up-Ready crop plants get going — which allows them to shade out the weeds. This instead of one or more passes with the tractor to turn between the rows to kill the weeds.
Kip, you’re an outstanding contributor here and you have great credibility. So I’m going to ask you further about Dr. Seneff. In fairness, I believe her undergraduate degree was biophysics in 1968 from MIT (a fine institution from whence my father received two engineering degrees).
You may well be right that Roundup is not carcinogenic. But could you address the issues of the Shikimate pathway, soil mineral chelation and the possibility that glyphosate replaces the amino acid glycine in proteins?
yeah, it was denied by monsanto that it could affect humans till they found it does..
how many of the supposed “scientists” the reports came from were employed BY monsanto by the way?
how many utterly NON affiliated ever ones are there?
the EPA used monsantos literature i gather from other pages where it was reported -SOTTnet for one.
i watch people use roundup year after year and do they ever find they have no weeds?
nope
lotta time n money wsated when weeding tilling or even burningoff would kil plants AND seeds far better
Lissa ==> Couple of points: “I don’t intend to argue the case for or against Roundup” — this essay is about the failure of the MSM in the United States to report the long-awaited EPA findings on the ever-popular topic of Monsanto’s Round-Up.
Dr. Seneff does have a degree in biophysics — and MIT is a fine school. But Dr. Zeneff is not a medical researcher, does not actually do medical research — “her research interests have always been at the intersection of biology and computation: developing a computational model for the human auditory system, understanding human language so as to develop algorithms and systems for human computer interactions, as well as applying natural language processing (NLP) techniques to gene predictions. ”
In the last six or seven years, she has made a new career out of trying to “prove” that glyphosate causes everything from gout to autism see “Roundup and Autism: Why Correlation IS Causation This Time”.
My read on her work is that she has, in her advanced age, gone “off the reservation” — using computation and statistical techniques to find correlations where none exist and claim they must be causations.
Since she is a trained scientist with lots of experience writing papers, her stuff reads very “sciency” — but has also been characterized as “nutty,” “truly unhinged,” and “dangerous.”
I appreciate that others may have a different opinion.
Ok, I looked at some (not sure all) of her stuff. Completely nutty. Multiple irreufutable ‘wrong’ grounds spotted in the first minutes. Pathetic
ristvan ==> Well, that was my opinion too….thanks for taking the time to address Lissa’s concerns.
No doubt California will somehow determine that using Roundup will somehow increase one’s risk of cancer, and require Roundup sold in California to be labled a possible carcinogen.
Interesting post. I espeially enjoyed george e. smith’s cricket story. It’s good to know that the venerable gentleman can discriminate between a googly and a leg break…especially on a sticky wicket.
bahamamike
Here’s a gentlemen’s bet for everyone: If/When President Trump gets wind of this discussion, and I suspect he will, he will tweet something along the lines of: “Obama wouldn’t let his EPA tell you Roundup is not a carcinogen. My EPA, freed from politics, says it’s not.”
Something along those lines will guarantee wall-to-wall coverage for a few days at least, and he’ll have performed a public service in the end.
The bet? Whether he tweets it. I’m going with “yes”
Kip Hanson, let me first congratulate you on your herculean attention to Comment response. Outstanding!
I found this glyphosate toxicity/carcinogenicity article tickled some fond memories of Bruce Ames. He gave a talk at a Dow Safety Day event sometime in the eighties which discussed chemical toxicity and the misuse of the ‘Ames Test’, which he intended only as a rough screening for possible carcinogens. Ames and his trusty sidekick Lois Gold, together with generations of collaborators, worked in this field for many years. They devised a ranking of chemicals, naturally in foods as well as synthetics, based on their HERP — human exposure / rodent potency numerical scale. All very interesting, e.g. celery more toxic than DDT, etc.
I have several summary articles through 1998 as pdf’s but unfortunately can not supply workable links.
References: Drug Metabolism Reviews, 30(2), 359-404 (1998)
Science, 258: 261-265 (1992)
bergbiker ==> Yes, it was Ames that famously came to this conclusion:
I did a Google search (UK, All) for “Roundup not carcinogenic”, and WUWT was the top result.
Hermit ==> Thank you for the report. Someone must be reading this
website….
Kip – as usual, thanks for the fact-based post that, by its very nature, takes on all comers and transcends climate wars rhetoric. I find it interesting that Monsanto haters and the GMO-phobic have avoided this post. Have they given up? I doubt it, but the reprieve has been nice.
I look forward to the post on Editorial Narratives. As an avid reader of the New York Times, I’m endlessly fascinated by their conduct on climate change. They completely ignore evidence presented by skeptics and follow their tunnel-vision kowtowing to the 97% meme. Whatever the political or financial considerations are, they must be really strong to induce the so-called seeker-of-truth to ignore common sense skeptical arguments. They should know better, but they either don’t or they choose to ignore it. This is irresponsible and surprising to me.
scraft1 ==> Thank you for you rkind words.
We’ll have to see what the readers here think about the motivations behind Editorial Narratives….I probably won’t be touching that aspect (way to easy to mis-comprehend the motivations of self, no less someone else).
But I usually try to use myself as a “sample of one” — and see if I can learn anything from that sample. I write what I write, express my opinions, using my own internal “Editorial Narratives” [analogous] because I believe [know with some certainty] that my views are Right, Correct, and Valuable enough to share. [“I could be wrong now, but I don’t think so”] It is, of course, hubristic — but all writers, communicators, public speakers, essayists, authors, …. are hubristic in this sense — if they didn’t think people should hear what they have to say or read what they have written, they wouldn’t be speaking or writing.
So, I suppose that Editors of newspapers or Science Desk editors are the same way — they just think their viewpoint is right and use their “bully pulpit” to see that their viewpoint is printed as “the truth”.
My guess is the news organizations will just leave the propaganda out there circulating the world like the DDT scam has for years. It still has value for the “cause” even if it is false. The casue being that we must have global governess to control all human things, AGENDA 21.
A few studies.
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in rats following chronic exposure to an ultra-low dose of Roundup herbicide:
https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-015-0056-1
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep39328
Roundup disrupts male reproductive function:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23820267
Cytotoxic and DNA-damaging properties of glyphosate:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22331240
Ethoxylated adjuvants of glyphosate-based herbicides are active principles of human cell toxicity:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23000283
Co-Formulants in Glyphosate-Based Herbicides Disrupt Aromatase Activity:
http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/13/3/264
Glyphosate-Based Herbicides Impair Retinoic Acid Signaling:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/tx1001749
Glyphosate estrogenic activity:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23756170
Adjuvants working together with the active ingredient and causing toxic effects that are not seen with acid glyphosate:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24434723
Glyphosate’s Suppression of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes and Amino Acid Biosynthesis by the Gut Microbiome:
http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416
RoundUp has been in use for four decades,
and there have been thousands of studies,
not to mention over four decades of use,
which is far more important than “rat studies”
showing it is safe if used as directed.
You can take your fake studies and store
them where the “sun don’t shine”, gregg
I wrote an article on the subject
in my climate blog December 6, 2017,
and you might want to read it to
learn something about fake “studies” !
http://elonionbloggle.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-fake-science-demonizing-rounduo.html