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'ROUNDUP' ...toxic cancer causer -or- safe miracle herbicide?

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
Staff member
GOLD Site Supporter
Who here does not use RoundUp?

I never liked using it but I use it regularly to kills weeds in the gravel drive, control some of the poison ivy and otherwise manage some of the invasive species that invade areas where they don't belong. We don't use RoundUp where we grow food, which we do as herbicide and pesticide free as possible.

But now could we be learning that the anti-RoundUp campaign is just scare mongering from radical leftists?

http://business.financialpost.com/o...-against-a-chemical-miracle-of-the-modern-age

Reasons to ban glyphosate don’t exist except in the minds of green activists


Terence Corcoran October 27, 2017
7:00 AM EDT

The world of agriculture, food production, international trade and European unity dodged an economically toxic junk-science bullet this week when 28 members of the powerful European Commission (EC) failed to get a majority to support a ban on one of the great chemical miracles of the modern age. But the world is not safe yet. Another EC vote on whether to keep or ban the herbicide glyphosate is expected later this year.

For 40 years, glyphosate — the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide and similar products from other companies — has helped feed the planet and liberate farmers in developed and developing nations. But Europe is split on glyphosate. News reports indicate a lack of majority for either side, but the fact that a ban or phase-out was avoided at a Wednesday EC meeting provided temporary relief to farmers, industry and many governments around the world.

Reasons for banning glyphosate are non-existent except in the minds of global green activists who have managed to turn glyphosate into a killer chemical that causes cancer in humans and generally threatens life on earth, including (according to the Suzuki Foundation) North America’s Monarch butterfly. “It’s the asbestos of our generation,” said a Greenpeace activist.

For 40 years, glyphosate has helped feed the planet

A Google search under the single word “glyphosate” produces thousands of hits that portray the weed-controlling chemical as a global scourge. Despite scores of reports and regulatory conclusions that glyphosate is not carcinogenic, international green chemo-phobic activists — who are philosophically opposed to most of human existence within nature — have managed to twist public opinion through a constant barrage of fabricated alarmism.

Junk science occurs when scientific facts are distorted, risk is exaggerated and the science adapted and warped by politics and ideology to serve another agenda. The activists’ campaign is the main reason the European Commission is even considering a ban on Monsanto’s invention. It’s effectiveness in improving crop production and reducing farmer effort and costs is beyond dispute. So is the evidence that the chemical does not pose a cancer risk to humans.

From around the world, the conclusions have been the same:

– Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency, April 2017: “Glyphosate is not genotoxic and is unlikely to pose a human cancer risk.”

– A 2016 UN Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization expert panel on pesticide residues in food and the environment: “In view of the absence of carcinogenic potential in rodents at human-relevant doses and the absence of genotoxicity by the oral route in mammals, and considering the epidemiological evidence from occupational exposures, the meeting concluded that glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans via exposure from the diet.”

– The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2016: “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’.”

– A report from the European Union’s Chemicals Agency Risk Assessment Committee (RAC), March 2017: “RAC concluded that the available scientific evidence did not meet the criteria to classify glyphosate as a carcinogen, as a mutagen or as toxic for reproduction.”​

There’s more, but the conclusions are all the same … except for one. In Lyons, France, another UN organization — the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) — produced a rogue report in 2015 that claimed there is “limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans for non-Hodgkin lymphoma” and that glyphosate is therefore “probably” carcinogenic to humans.

There is more, but the conclusions are all the same

No other regulator has agreed with IARC, an agency that has also claimed bacon, coffee and red meat are “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency said IARC’s glyphosate conclusions failed to take into account “the level of human exposure, which determines the actual risk.”

As for the level of human exposure and the actual risk, Matt Ridley, writing in the London Times, noted that Ben and Jerry’s ice cream was recently found to contain glyphosate at a concentration of up to 1.23 parts per billion. “At that rate,” said Ridley, “a child would have to eat more than three tonnes of ice cream every day to reach the level at which any health effect could be measured.”

...story continues at link above...
 

Jim_S

Gone But Not Forgotten
GOLD Site Supporter
I don't think it's near as bad as its portrayed. I use it in fence rows and selected spot applications. I use RM-43 rather than Roundup.

I'm using a vinegar, epsom salt, dawn detergent mix in places I never want things to grow. I don't know how this works long term. Just started with it this spring.

I use Pasture Pro or Crossbow (2,4-d) for weed control. Kills weeds but leaves the grass.
 

mla2ofus

Well-known member
GOLD Site Supporter
I use Spectracide on all the weeds in the lawn. If it has broad leaves it will kill it. For flower beds and the veggie garden we do it the old fashioned way.
Mike
 

300 H and H

Bronze Member
GOLD Site Supporter
Glyphosate kills weeds by destroying the plants immune system. It does so by chemically binding with minerals used by the immune system, making them unavailable to the plant. The plant dies because it can not defend itself from attack by pathogens that the immune system prevented. Not a fast kill if you watch the results, how ever the Round up formulation has been tweaked to allow for a faster kill over the years.

The fear is that just as in plants, Roundup my tie up minerals needed by our own immune systems, just as it does in plants. This action is caused as glyphosate is a "chelate" and binds chemically with minerals.

Wide spread us on crops started in 1996 with the advent of round up ready soybeans. Probably over 85% of crops in the USA today are tolerant and get sprayed with glyphosate. Lots of residue from the mass of the chemical heavily applied, over decades reside in our soils. Not sure how this will playout in the future.

I know I would never knowingly ingest the product, and I believe it to be harmful to humans, more so than Monsanto wants to admit. That company is the only one who benifited from it's use for all these years. And they have been "bad actors" who have paid politicians huge sums of money defending their monopoly.... SO what is the truth?

Be damned if I know, so I just stay away as much as I can.

Regards, Kirk
 

EastTexFrank

Well-known member
GOLD Site Supporter
I'm a Roundup user or rather a glyphosate user. I'm not a fan but I do use it around the place and I've used it for over 30 years. I also use selective herbicides and insecticides both in the yard and the pasture. You can see that I'm no organic gardener. :brows:

Whether glyphosate is a carcinogen or not, I don't know. I've seen contradictory evidence but generally, it does what it is supposed to do but it is not a miracle spray. There have been occasions when a weed sprayed with Roundup, if it is growing vigorously, can outgrow it. It can become sickly for a while and then perk right back up. In my experience Roundup doesn't act that quickly on certain weeds and grasses.

Will I stop using it? I doubt it very much.
 

mla2ofus

Well-known member
GOLD Site Supporter
Any truth to the report that some weeds/noxious plants are becoming roundup resistant?
Mike
 

300 H and H

Bronze Member
GOLD Site Supporter
Any truth to the report that some weeds/noxious plants are becoming roundup resistant?
Mike

Lots of truth to that.

Water hemps are totally resistant to it in my neck of the woods. Farmers I know think that ultimately it will only kill gasses, not broad leafed weeds. Palmer Amaranth is the new kid on the block here. Not much touches that one, especially round up.. So the usefulness of Glyphosate is limited, and is more so each year.

Regards, Kirk
 
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