[klmr]

> Presuming chemicals are not safe seeems rational to me

I’m sorry but it’s fundamentally irrational. Everything is chemicals. Chemophobia is by definition irrational.

> especially sprayed on our food

~~~It’s not.~~~ Glyphosate is a herbicide: if you spray it on plants, those plants die. That is in fact its purpose. [EDIT: see correction in comment below.]

— Regarding your later edit:

> Seems like the burden of proof would be to establish safety.

That is indeed the case, why do you assume otherwise?

> And where is this evidence you have that is is safe?

There are — literally — thousands of studies [1] on that subject. Wikipedia contains a summary. All national and almost all international health and safety organisations class it as safe, with the exception of IARC, which classes it as “potentially carcinogenic” (context: compared to red meat, which it classifies as definitely ”carcinogenic”). The IARC has been roundly criticised for excluding contradictory evidence, and for using misleading language, by the scientific community [2].

[1] https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=safety+of+glyphosate&...

[2] http://academicsreview.org/2015/03/iarc-glyphosate-cancer-re...

[simonrobb]

> I’m sorry but it’s fundamentally irrational. Everything is chemicals. Chemophobia is by definition irrational.

You might disagree, but it's not irrational at all. To follow your argument, if everything is chemicals - is it rational to presume everything is safe? Of course not, there are plenty of dangerous things in the world. Of course the -phobia demarks a fear as irrational, but this isn't "chemophobia".

> ~~~It’s not.~~~ Glyphosate is a herbicide: if you spray it on plants, those plants die. That is in fact its purpose.

It's also worth noting that while it's a herbicide, of course it's only effective as a herbicide at a certain concentration. Consider that <agricultural conglomerate X> intends to spray the weeds right next to the lettuce, not the lettuce itself, so they can make $$$ from that still-alive lettuce at market. It's still going to be exposed to a small amount of herbicide, just not in a "lethal" dose. Is it absorbed into the lettuce/does it make it to the consumer? I don't know. If it did, would it be harmful at that dose? Probably not, but I don't know. Does it accumulate in the body over time, to an eventual harmful dose? Don't know. But those questions all demonstrate that it's not simply an irrational fear; there is a good number of questions to answer to go from "this could be unsafe" to "this is definitely safe".

I don't have any views on Glyphosate at all, I know next to nothing about it. Just objecting to your first two points.

[stouset]

> Is it absorbed into the lettuce/does it make it to the consumer? I don't know. If it did, would it be harmful at that dose? Probably not, but I don't know. Does it accumulate in the body over time, to an eventual harmful dose? Don't know. But those questions all demonstrate that it's not simply an irrational fear; there is a good number of questions to answer to go from "this could be unsafe" to "this is definitely safe".

These are all questions that have simple, well-tested, easily-Googelable answers. The fact that you don't personally know them is irrelevant, because scientists and government regulators do.

[CodeWriter23]

Easily-Googleable answers arrived at by industry scientists and approved by a captured regulatory body. From scientists educated at industry-funded institutions. Who as professionals, bite the hand feeding them only at the risk of becoming unemployable in their industry. (and saddled with student debt) Their studies published in peer-reviewed journals where every peer receives money from industry in some form.

This is far from an adversarial system of proof that is required by hard Science.

[stouset]

It seems clear to me that you don't have the faintest idea of the level of scrutiny that glyphosate has undergone in the half a century since its discovery.

[CodeWriter23]

It’s clear you are blind to the fact that Monsanto hid its involvement in RoundUp studies (see link). Also, glyphosate is merely an ingredient in RoundUp. To be an herbicide, RoundUp additionally requires some pretty nasty adjuvants.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-27/monsanto-...

[drb91]

Actually, my point was that presumption of safety is irrational; you latched on to the wrong word. And even though glyphosate is a known weed killer it’s still used adjacent to food we do eat.

Anyway, my impression is that glyphosate is regularly detected in the water, the plants we eat, the animals we eat, in our own bodies.

Vinegar seems to work in my experience, a chemical I can drink.

[klmr]

Presumption of safety without qualification would be irrational, correct. But the same is true the other way round: there’s a balance to be struck (otherwise you couldn’t leave your house for risk of being run over by a car). And, again, glyphosate’s safety record is pretty phenomenal, especially compared to all the other stuff we treat our food with.

> Vinegar seems to work in my experience, a chemical I can drink.

No you can’t. Food grade vinegar does fuckall as a herbicide. The stuff you use as an actual herbicide is 20% acetic acid and I urge you strongly not to drink that. And it also has some rather unsavoury side-effects, and caution is therefore necessary.

[fggcc]

“Everything is chemicals. Chemophobia is by definition irrational.”

I hate it when ppl project a domain definition to destroy a good argument that uses non domain specific language.

It is obvious to everyone that the word “chemical” refers to moieties that are synthetic, not typically present in nature or in extremely high concentrations.

So, the OP was quite reasonably saying that chemicals not naturally present at certain concentrations should be tested for safety when high concentrations are proposed to be used.

It like those pedantic ppl who say that tomatoes aren’t vegetables. Of course they are! They are also botanical fruit, so what?

[klmr]

Except that chemophobia isn’t irrational just because people use the wrong words. It’s irrational because there is no fundamental, meaningful definition of “synthetic” in this context. What’s synthetic? Is refined sugar, even if it’s chemically identical to unrefined sugar (minus impurities)? Is chemically identical lab-grown insulin?

Furthermore, even if we could draw a precise demarcation that would make sense, it would still be irrelevant: things can be beneficial and harmful regardless of whether they occur naturally or are synthetic. This is known as the naturalistic fallacy. In a similar vein, people tend to overstate the importance of coevolution for biological tolerance. Yes, it has its role in assessing safety but it’s not the ultimate argument that people make it out to be.

> So, the OP was quite reasonably saying that chemicals not naturally present at certain concentrations should be tested for safety when high concentrations are proposed to be used.

Sure but nobody is disputing this in the first place, so making such a statement is at best irrelevant and at worst a bad argument designed to derail a discussion.

[8note]

> Sure but nobody is disputing this in the first place, so making such a statement is at best irrelevant and at worst a bad argument designed to derail a discussion.

that was the crux of the argument though. All the nitpicks about whether chemical is the right word are a distraction.

the poster isn't against things because they're chemicals, and presenting it as such is silly.

[gregcrv]

It's actually sprayed on food before harvesting. It's called crop desiccation.

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

[klmr]

Thanks for the correction.

[sildur]

Plutonium is also a herbicide. If you spray it on plants, those plants die.

Sadly, plutonium has side effects for us. Glyphosate may also have them, long term or short term. I don’t want to act as guinea pig. If you want, good for you.

Thalidomide was safe once. Until it wasn’t.

[deelowe]

Salt kills plants. Should we ban that too? This debate is silly.

[PeterisP]

We've tested salt and know its effects on humans. It would make sense to require new things to be verified as safe before we start putting them in our food, and banned until that's done.

[klmr]

It would make sense, and is therefore done extensively. Glyphosate got approved in a much more lenient regulatory climate (almost half a century ago!) than what we have today but even so its initial approval required safety studies. Furthermore, it is subject to constant scrutiny and its recent reapproval by the EU was discussed heatedly, despite its stellar safety record in the decades it has been used.

[bencollier49]

We already did. Dumping saltwater is illegal in a lot of places.

[raxxorrax]

> Chemophobia (nice one!) > Everything is chemicals

Replace chemicals with chemical compounds and you can have a more honest argument. And yes, putting random chemical compounds into the food chain should indeed be scrutinized.

[elsherbini]

Glyphosate isn't sprayed on food?

edit: Of course it is sprayed on food [0][1].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW8SrXMW7Ug [1] http://web.mit.edu/demoscience/Monsanto/about.html

[overcast]

It's a plant killer, you're not going to spray it on crops, you spray it on plants you don't want to grow around your crops.

[gregcrv]

It's actually sprayed on food before harvesting. It's called crop desiccation.

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

[overcast]

Hrmm, never heard of that. It goes the complete opposite way of the Roundup Ready crops.

[AnimalMuppet]

Well, that technique won't work on Roundup Ready crops. But it's used on things like wheat that are supposed to be dried out when harvested.

[CodeWriter23]

Desiccation is done to increase yield. Stressed / dying plants produce more seed.

[freehunter]

Seems like you could spray it on Roundup Ready plants, since the point of Roundup Ready plants is to not die from being sprayed with Roundup.

[sampo]

With corn and cereal, you actually want to weaken or kill the plants some days before you harvest, so they start to dry, especially if the weather has been wet. You get a drier harvest with less chance of spoilage in storage.

[amelius]

We're talking about insecticides, i.e. chemicals designed specifically to kill insects; and bees are insects.

[klmr]

No: glyphosate is a herbicide, and part of its appeal is that — unlike other herbicides — it has very low toxicity for insects. In fact, it was assumed until now to be safe for bees, and the new study also doesn’t claim that it has a direct on bees. Instead, they show that it affects bacteria which occur in the bee’s digestive tract.

(Since you assumed glyphosate was a insecticide, what did you think the purpose of the current study was?)