The world needs more incels. Problem solved.
For sure. There will always be arguments against companies testing the safety of their own products. But in the U.S. there is so little independent research being done right now, corporate funded studies make up the majority of the information that we have.
I am sure they lost their case, because even with their claimed hundreds of studies done on the safety of glyphosate they didn’t go far enough for the jury to ensure human safety.
I don’t know much about the research that has been done, but I certainly know that something being listed as a “probable carcinogen” by the WHO is a lot scarier than it sounds, like I said, it is the same category as coffee and nitrates in processed meats. I think people see that and think “OMG, how could people be using this?” when the reality is, the science is by no means settled on this one.
And like you say, mice studies are not at all 100% indicative of what would happen in humans, but we can’t really test on humans, if we know there could be harm.
Yet we do it all the time for medicine. Even meds that are not medically necessary.
What I would like to see is how research is funded. Corporations want to fund research for their product? Then it goes into a general fund that’s pooled with many others. Then a governing body like the NIH doles out research grants from there to independent researchers. By pooling funds there’s no direct link between research staff and the money provided. Or we just tax corporations who need research done properly and have purely independent researchers do the work.
I second the motion!
True, but that is medication formulated for human consumption, and Roundup is not. It would be unethical to test that on humans, as it isn’t meant for human therapeutic use.
I hope that lawsuits like this will put companies on notice on how important it is to get good testing done on human effects of their products where their word just isn’t good enough.
They just put asbestos back on the market… I think there will not be an improvement in this area with the current group in charge for some time.
Well, hit em in the pocketbook. Jury of your peers etc.
The problem is vinegar, boiling water, the alternatives just don’t work as well. Until there the alternatives are actually better, I don’t see how that’s going to really work. Forget the morale implications or shaming, if something was better not just cheaper, I am sure the population would shift.
Just a point of information: Asbestos has a large number of potential uses, from fire retardant to sound insulation to electrical insulation. If it’s contained in another media properly it can be quite useful; it’s only when the fibers are in a position to be inhaled that you ought to worry.
Modern uses of asbestos are far more tightly monitored and curtailed; most won’t present any problem to humans.
That said, I wouldn’t put it past Trump’s administration to strip all those careful controls away tomorrow in order to MAGA.
True these are supposed to be new uses and doesn’t change what is already banned. I am just not… confident that they will do their due diligence with it. Didn’t Trump suggest some of the skyscrapers wouldn’t have gone down if they used asbestos which kind of sounds like the banned thing we used to do. Maybe it’s something different though.
And there-in lies the problem. We cannot rely on businesses nor the government to consistently report (outside of NASA) where this stuff is being placed. Thus when someone breaks it open, tears down a room, home, or business, those fibers are released into the air. Greedy, selfish business practices, inconsistent and underfunded government oversight and it’s a recipe for disaster.
I thought glyphosate was supposed to totally degrade. Now it’s showing up in cereal:
Ok, let’s step back and stop listening to idiots.
From that article:
“It is time now for them to step up and do their jobs to ban glyphosate,” said Zen Honeycutt, who heads Moms Across America, a group formed to raise awareness about toxic exposures. Her family switched to an organic-only diet after her three sons developed allergies and other health problems.
Zen Honeycutt… quite a name. Is this an idiot hippy? I’m guessing yes?
And… yes.
Hey guys, you need to get yourself some hydrogen tablets! Don’t worry though, it’s “molecular hydrogen. The very small particles. Not the big ones that can cause explosions.”
Jesus fuck. Shut up.
More bonus idiocy:
GMO’s are bad, because they are a foreign protein. And things.
My eyes glazed over reading that report of testing they did.
First off, publish your study in a peer reviewed journal you cowards, they might take issue with the fact that you only took 2 samples of product and sometimes they had wildly different results.
Secondly, let’s get into the “Steiner Math” that created their maximum limit for children.
In 2017, California listed glyphosate in its Proposition 65 registry of chemicals known to cause cancer. The state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, or OEHHA, has proposed a so-called No Significant Risk Level for glyphosate of 1.1 milligrams per day for an average adult of about 154 pounds. That level of exposure is more than 60 times lower than the safety level set by the Environmental Protection Agency.
California’s level represents an increased lifetime risk of cancer of one in 100,000 for an average adult. But for many cancer-causing drinking water contaminants, OEHHA’s lifetime risk factor is set at one in 1 million. Additionally, because children and developing fetuses have increased susceptibility to carcinogens, the federal Food Quality Protection Act supports including an additional 10-fold margin of safety. With this additional children’s health safety factor, EWG calculated that a one-in-a-million cancer risk would be posed by ingestion of 0.01 milligrams of glyphosate per day.
To reach this maximum dose, one would only have to eat a single 60-gram serving1 of food with a glyphosate level of 160 parts per billion, or ppb. The majority of samples of conventional oat products from EWG’s study exceeded 160ppb, meaning that a single serving of those products would exceed EWG’s health benchmark. As part of a glyphosate risk assessment, the EPA estimated potential highest dietary exposure levels for children and adults. The EPA has calculated that 1-to-2-year-old children are likely to have the highest exposure, at a level twice greater than California’s No Significant Risk Level and 230 times EWG’s health benchmark.
Studies suggest that glyphosate-sprayed crops such as wheat and oats are a major contributor to glyphosate in the daily diet. In EWG lab tests, 31 of 45 samples made with conventionally grown oats had 160 ppb or more of glyphosate.
So, they have purposely fudged the Prop 65 Safe harbor level to be 100 times lower, and then jacked up the serving size to 60g (which is more than double the packaged serving size, around 2 cups of dry cereal) to get their numbers. They are juicing the stats on both ends.
Not to say that this isn’t something to be concerned about, but they are doing some funny math to get their numbers, with a small, highly variable sample size.
Not at all shocking, but the Genetic Literacy Project was unimpressed by that “study”.
Wow, excellent website. Wish I’d known about it before.
For another take on GMO vs. Organic, a friend of ours has family member who works for the Michigan department of agriculture and rural development. She said she will never drink organic milk nor eat organic vegetables as there is so little oversight. For instance - liquefied pig/cow manure sprayed on many crops. Not stuff that’s composted and rendered safe through high heat, but direct slop. E. Coli, coliform, Campylobacter, Leptospirosis, Listeria, Salmonella. Some of these don’t manifest immediately so a proper link is never formed to the foods one ate.
Yes, the GLP is who I typically like to follow in situations like this. That “study” was a joke.
Seriously, when you hear an article about a “study” saying something, if it wasn’t in a peer reviewed science journal, give it as much weight as an 8th grader’s science fair project.
The levels of glyphosate found by EWG ranged from 0-6% of what are universally considered acceptable levels—30ppm—set by both the US and the EU. And that government-determined level is itself considered incredibly conservative as it is. By the EPA’s standard, you’d have to eat 30 bowls or more of cheerios a day, every day, for more than a year to even approach the US limit, which is itself set 100 times or more lower than what might actually harm someone. EWG just made up its own, ridiculous, scare standard, which is 14,000 times lower than the EPA’s.
I mean, they literally made up their own extremely stringent standard that they knew would fail, and then suprise the products failed. They used ppb (parts per billion) while every single analysis of any trace chemicals in foods have limits of ppm (parts per million) and anything lower than that would likely be beyond the acceptable limits of quantitation or baseline noise of their detection method. I would have to look at the methods used for chromatography and see the actual test results, but I would believe this is why the study is not peer reviewed.
And again, the GLP points out Glyphosate is built to kill plants, we are not plants. Any trace amounts leftover after food processing will pass right through us anyway.
The GLP didn’t get into this, but the EWG “study” also used serving sizes of 2 cups of dry cereal. The serving size on the box is typically 3/4 cup. I know that we all eat way more than the serving size anyway, but I don’t think that small children (which their standards targeted) are eating 2 cups of cereal each morning.
Uggh. Get this junk science out of here.
Also, about Organic foods, I don’t think I would go that far about Organic foods, they do have fairly strict standards, but they are very selectively enforced. There just isn’t enough manpower for the oversight necessary to ensure standards are being kept. (The same could be said for all agricultural industry though)
One thing a lot of people don’t realize when they buy organic is, organic doesn’t mean “pesticide free” they still spray the crap out of those plants (often way more than conventional, because they lack GM’s that can control pests) with “organic” pesticides. Not to mention, Organic produce tends (depending on the plant) to use massively more land, water, pesticides and carbon emissions than conventional crops.
So, you could probably label “organic” as “environmentally unfriendly” and that would be accurate.
That’s not fair. The 8th grader often has no motive to mislead or distract or politicize their work. They’re just doing science!
And those pesticides approved for organic use are generally much more hazardous to apply than conventional pesticides. It’s almost like organic is just a marketing campaign.
You could probably get there with GC, but it would depend on a number of factors to avoid baseline interference.