[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [SANET-MG] round-up poisons us



Hi Dale,
It is very comforting to hear from you, I always know what you are going
to say. Your point about round-up as food is a very a very true
point.          As roundup ready crops came on the market and the GOX gene
which forms an enzyme that destroys accumulate glyphosate  was no longer
required food have begun to be loaded with the toxin. EPA has recognized
and accommodated for the greater accumulation by boosting tolerance for
the herbicide in food and feed.  That was a very nice thing for them to do.
Like you they chose to ignore a number of paper showing liver damage,
birth defects and cancer  (see references below). The striking thing
about the French work was the toxic effects of the herbicide were
observed at levels well below the level encountered during spraying or
casual encountered in treated garden areas. It would be a wonderful
world, indeed, if biotechnology was required to report full and
truthful, not in public relations promotion language. sincerely,joe
Savitz DA, Arbuckle , Kaczor D, Curtis KM. Male pesticide exposure and
pregnancy outcome. Am J Epidemiol 2000, 146, 1025-36.
Benedetti AL, de Lourdes Vituri C, Trentin AG, Dominguesc MAC and
Alvarez-Silva M. The effects of sub-chronic exposure of Wistar rats to
the herbicide Glyphosate-Biocarb. Toxicology Letters 2004, 153, 227–32.
De Roos AH, Zahm SH, Cantor KP, et al. Integrative assessment of
multiple pesticides as risk factors for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma among
men. Occup Environ Med 2003, 60, E11
http://oem.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/60/9/e11
Hardell L, Eriksson M, Nordstrom M. Exposure to pesticides as risk
factor for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and hairy cell leukemia: pooled
analysis of two Swedish case-control studies. Leuk Lymphoma 2002,
43,1043–1049.
McDuffie HH, Pahwa P, McLaughlin JR, Spinelli JJ, Fincham S, Dosman JA,
et al. 2001. Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and specific pesticide exposures in
men: cross-Canada study of pesticides and health. 2001, Cancer Epidemiol
Biomarkers Prev 2001,10,1155–63.
De Roos AJ, Blair A, Rusiecki JA, Hoppin JA, Svec M, Dosemeci M, Sandler
DP and Alavanja MC. Cancer incidence among glyphosate-exposed pesticide
applicators in the agricultural health study. Environ Health Perspect
2005, 113, 49-54.

Dale Wilson wrote:
Joe,


In fact, while Roundup and similar products were originally used
against weeds, "they have become a food product, since they are
used on GMOs, which can absorb them without dying," maintains the
biochemist Gilles-Eric Seralini. A member for years of the French
Commission on Biomolecular Genetics (CBG), responsible for preparing
the files for requests for field studies, then GMO commercialization,
he ceaselessly demands more intense studies on their eventual health
impact.


Maybe it would be a good idea for Seralini to read the abundant
toxicological literature on glyphosate and formulations.  Here are some
excerpts from Exotoxnet:
http://extoxnet.orst.edu/pips/glyphosa.htm

-"Glyphosate is practically nontoxic by ingestion, with a reported
acute oral LD50 of 5600 mg/kg in the rat."

-"Studies of glyphosate lasting up to 2 years, have been conducted with
rats, dogs, mice, and rabbits, and with few exceptions no effects were
observed [96]."

-"Laboratory studies show that glyphosate produces reproductive changes
in test animals very rarely and then only at very high doses (over 150
mg/kg/day) [58,96]. It is unlikely that the compound would produce
reproductive effects in humans."

-"Glyphosate is poorly absorbed from the digestive tract and is largely
excreted unchanged by mammals."


For their study, the researchers used human placental cell lines, in
which very weak doses of glyphosate showed toxic effects...


Many things are toxic when introduced into the broth bathing cultured
animal cells.  Iron is a good example.  In tissue culture or introduced
by injection into the body, iron is very toxic.  Yet, iron is all
around us, in our cooking utensils, added intentionally to food.  The
digestive system of most people are very good at avoiding iron uptake.

This is why toxicologists focus mainly on studies with whole animals.
Glyphosate, and the formulated products have pretty much been studied
to death, and it keeps showing up as virtually non-toxic.  Low toxicity
to soil fauna, low toxicity to aquatic fauna, low mammalian toxicity,
somewhat higher toxicity to birds.  Not mutagenic, not carcinogenic.
These studies involving dosing real live animals with glyphosate (and
with formulated product) are vastly more conclusive and reliable than
someone dinking around with cell cultures or giving cancer patients
questionaires about whether they sprayed roundup 10 years ago.

The big danger from glyphosate is toxicity to plants of course.  Spray
drift is a great danger.

http://www.epa.gov/iris/subst/0057.htm
http://www.monsanto.com/monsanto/layout/sci_tech/crop_chemicals/scipubs.asp#humanhealth


This, for Gilles-Eric Seralini, could explain the high levels of
premature births and miscarriages observed in certain
epidemiological studies - which are, however, controversial -
covering women farmers using glyphosate.


It sounds like Seralini is trying to squeeze way too much out of his
superficial experiments.


He is joined in his conclusions by Robert Belle, from the National
Center for Social Research (CNRS) biological station in Roscoff
(Finistere), whose team has been studying the impact of glyphosate
formulations on sea-urchin cells for several years.


Here is a link to Belle's paper:
http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/2002/Roundup-Cell-Division-DysfunctionMar02.htm

Here is an excerpt:

"Sea urchin gametes were fertilized and the embryos transferred 10 min
post-fertilization into fresh seawater (full circles) or into seawater
containing 0.8% Roundup (open circles)."

Do you realize what kind of absurdly high dose this is?  You could
probably get these kind of effects from laundry detergent.  Considering
how tightly glyphosate is bound to soils and sediments, Belle's work is
simply not relevant.

The point of all this is that you should pick your battles better than
this.  I agree that there are legitimate problems with environmental
effects of agriculture and concentration of power in the industry.  But
trumpeting this kind of off-beat, weak work hurts your credibility.

Dale



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/

********************************************************
To unsubscribe from SANET-MG:
1- Visit http://lists.sare.org/archives/sanet-mg.html to unsubscribe or;
2- Send a message to <listserv@sare.org> from the address subscribed to the list. Type "unsubscribe sanet-mg" in the body of the message.

Visit the SANET-MG archives at: http://lists.sare.org/archives/sanet-mg.html
For more information on grants and other resources available through the SARE program, please visit http://www.sare.org.

********************************************************
To unsubscribe from SANET-MG:
1- Visit http://lists.sare.org/archives/sanet-mg.html to unsubscribe or;
2- Send a message to <listserv@sare.org> from the address subscribed to the list. Type "unsubscribe sanet-mg" in the body of the message.

Visit the SANET-MG archives at: http://lists.sare.org/archives/sanet-mg.html
For more information on grants and other resources available through the SARE program, please visit http://www.sare.org.