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by spencermountain 3356 days ago
to summarize, crop pesticides are converted to glucose internally, causing diabetes.

a pretty big plot-twist for a delirious problem in global health, and a find that resembles a 21st century silent-spring.

2 comments

For those who haven't heard of it:

Silent Spring is an environmental science book by Rachel Carson.[1] The book was published on 27 September 1962 and it documented the detrimental effects on the environment of the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation and public officials of accepting industry claims unquestioningly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring

Congrats on being one of today's lucky 10000[1], just like me.

1: https://xkcd.com/1053/

That's maybe a bit oversold. The pesticides Carson was writing about, used at levels common in the 1950's, were toxic on levels basically incomparable to anything in this study. DDT was a terrible carcinogen to the consumer, a near death sentence to the agricultural worker, and nearly wiped out the entire california condor population in a few decades of use.

In comparison this finding is of a diabetes correlation well underneath the levels we see due to diet. Well... I mean that's bad, but there's bad and there's bad, and this doesn't qualify.

Doesn't mean it should be used, but let's be realistic about our criticism.