The case in front of the [US Supreme] court centers on whether Bayer, the German company that now owns Monsanto, can be shielded from lawsuits that have been filed in state courts over claims that the company failed to warn consumers about the cancer-causing effects of glyphosate.
The Trump administration’s decision to back the pesticide maker in the case, coming on the heels of an executive order supporting the expansion of domestic production of glyphosate, has angered the MAHA movement…
Just last month, leading scientists in the field of environmental health issued a consensus statement, saying that glyphosate can cause cancer and called for urgent action. Bayer disputes this.
In Washington state they still sell it. I used it to kill this Thorny weed BlackBerry that just keeps appearing.
Basically a bird will eat a berry from elsewhere and drop it on your lawn or garden. Next thing you know this unstoppable weed takes over and you end up pulling it year after year without an end.
The proper way to get rid of it is carefully feeding it fire and or glyphosate.
I mean, the lawsuit isn’t about, “should glyphosate ever be used.” It’s about being able to sue a company for trying to hide the harmful side effects of overexposure to their product.
As someone who has worked professionally with pesticides for environmental and ecological restoration, glyphosate is Churchill’s democracy of pesticides - it is the worst pesticide aside from all other pesticides. There are pesticides I’ve used that I would rather take a shot of glyphosate than have them touch my skin.
The problem is not glyphosate’s use, especially at the consumer level. The problem here specifically is whether the company producing a poison is liable to those it hid potential harms from - and Trump administration’s intention to shield them from said liability.
The second problem, unrelated to this legal issue, is glyphosate’s overuse in the commercial setting. Modern industrial farming techniques basically use GMO varieties of crops which are resistant to glyphosate, and then douse their fields in the stuff because it will kill all the weeds while leaving their resistant cash crops intact. As a result, many of the foods we consume today are contaminated with larger doses of pesticide than they would be using traditional farming methods or spot treatment.
Are you talking about Roundup? Doesn’t that stuff pretty much salt the earth? Making the ground sterile for all growth for months?
Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup. With extreme overuse, maybe? Again I am talking about its use for consumer-level invasive species management or ecological/environmental applications. Glyphosate has very high sorption (basically, it binds to other molecules in the soil and becomes inactive as a pesticide). When compared with alternative pesticides it is far less dangerous and has very few if any long term effects on soil.
So pretty much no. Actually one of the main reasons it’s so prevalent in spot-treatment at the consumer level is because it has fast, noticeable effects, and then everything goes back to normal quickly.
Agreed in all your points. Minor correction, Roundup/glyphosate kills plants so its a herbicide. It’s the internet, that’s how the internet works.
To your point, I use it very sparingly after having learned about the cancer and lingering effect. However big farmers (owners of big farms, not specifically obese individuals) use it as a broadcast herbicide. You plant corn that is resistant to glyphosate, then you douse the entire field in glyphosate. In the process you cover yourself in glyphosate accidentally and it dries on your skin. Your skin soaks it and you get cancer.
I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding but your correction is incorrect. While you are on the right track saying a substance used to kill plants is called an herbicide, an herbicide is a type of pesticide. If you are using an herbicide to kill an unwanted plant, you are practicing pest control with a pesticide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesticide
Dam! You’re right!
We’ll I’ve been wrong most of my life, what’s one more little thing. Now I know better.
mechanical removal is equivalent to chemical termination