Monsanto Weedkiller Is ‘Probably Carcinogenic,’ WHO Says

Re:Monsanto Weedkiller Is ‘Probably Carcinogenic,’ WHO Says by Htsthbjig on Saturday March 28, 2015 @07:32AM (#9281149)

We are not talking about toxicity, but about carcinogen products. Very different.

Carbon monoxide is toxic. If I breath it while walking a previously fired forest, I feel bad today. If I breath too much I die. But if I get out alive tomorrow my body will be fine.

Carcinogen work in totally different ways. If I contact or breath it I will feel fine today but I will have created damage to some of my cells DNA. This damage will create other damages when 5 years from no my cells transcribe some genes in a chain reaction, or will accumulate errors over time.

Five years from now one of the damaged cells will start replicating itself without control, and I will get cancer.

We get cancer by indirect ways, and delayed in time, on people that are not isolated so it is hard to get the cause effect relationship.

I worked in a Hospital for some time. On oncology got people that smoke 3-4 cigarettes packages a day that got pulmonary cancer, but they were seriously convinced that smoking had nothing to do with it.

It took decades to establish a relationship between smoking and cancer, and that was with half of the population smoking. With smaller populations it becomes harder and harder.

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Re:Monsanto Weedkiller Is ‘Probably Carcinogenic,’ WHO Says by jp555 on Saturday March 28, 2015 @08:13AM (#9281252)

Most people cook with oil at too high a temperature, causing it to smoke and develop carcinogenic compounds, regularly, over decades. There are many examples of this in our lives (ultravilot sunlight, cosmic radiation on intercontinental flights, radon rich basement bedrooms, etc), the point being that carcinogens and cancer are more complex than you suggest. Yes smoking 4 packs of cigarettes a day for decades increases one's risk for cancer, but so does just living to an old age as a non-smoker.

I remember reading a study of cadavers that found everyone has microscopic cancers throughout their bodies, throughout their lives. It seems there's a dance between evironments that drive the proliferation of micro-cancers and our body's ability to repair this damage.

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Re:Monsanto Weedkiller Is ‘Probably Carcinogenic,’ WHO Says by pharke on Saturday March 28, 2015 @09:16AM (#9281401)

To make things even more complex, with ultra-violet for sure but possibly involving other forms of radiation as well, it is possible that small amounts of exposure actually produce a preventative effect in regards to cancer. With UV, that mechanism is the production of vitamin D in the body, a lack of which causes a wide variety of health issues and may have a link to the development of cancer.

This panel by the Mars Society actually had a very interesting discussion of this area of human health that deserves much more study. https://youtu.be/sFHQlobJbwY

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Re:Monsanto Weedkiller Is ‘Probably Carcinogenic,’ WHO Says by mkempe on Saturday March 28, 2015 @12:14PM (#9281873)

There is evidence for and debate surrouding hormesis, a positive biological response to a little bit of something deadly at higher doses e.g. low-dose radiation. [1] [2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis

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Re:Monsanto Weedkiller Is ‘Probably Carcinogenic,’ WHO Says by eurleif on Saturday March 28, 2015 @12:03PM (#9281831)

>With UV, that mechanism is the production of vitamin D in the body, a lack of which causes a wide variety of health issues and may have a link to the development of cancer.

I imagine that vitamin D production and DNA damage are separate events. Presumably, both can occur at the same time.

So would someone who took vitamin D supplements but didn't get sun exposure be slightly less likely to develop cancer than someone who got just enough sunlight for their body to produce enough vitamin D?

If that's the case, it's not really a general rule that small exposures to carcinogens prevent cancer.

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Re:Monsanto Weedkiller Is ‘Probably Carcinogenic,’ WHO Says by jp555 on Sunday March 29, 2015 @09:01AM (#9284667)

I've just recently seen work that's exploring vitamin D suplimation vs. sunlight derived vitamin D and they're finding the sunlight provides more benefit than no sunlight exposure and Vitamin D suplimation.

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Re:Monsanto Weedkiller Is ‘Probably Carcinogenic,’ WHO Says by drhodes on Saturday March 28, 2015 @12:13PM (#9281872)

FWIW, I have a friend with a form of skin cancer who got orders from his doctor to go to a tanning salon.

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Re:Monsanto Weedkiller Is ‘Probably Carcinogenic,’ WHO Says by kbutler on Saturday March 28, 2015 @11:33AM (#9281764)

We know that sunshine is carcinogenic.

Is a farm worker more likely to contract cancer from the 8 hours/day exposure to sunshine, or to glyphosate?

I personally have no idea, but I think it would be an interesting measure.

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Re:Monsanto Weedkiller Is ‘Probably Carcinogenic,’ WHO Says by kbutler on Saturday March 28, 2015 @02:40PM (#9282308)

I can't edit my post above, but here is the International Agency for Research on Cancer list of "known" carcinogens (group 1, including "solar radiation") and "probable" carcinogens (group 2A, including glyphosate).

http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/Classifications...

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Re:Monsanto Weedkiller Is ‘Probably Carcinogenic,’ WHO Says by jp555 on Sunday March 29, 2015 @09:05AM (#9284675)

Difficult to test. What if some workers are chronicly sleep deprived and that contribution was the tipping point for some of them, but not all sleep deprived workers? What if some workers are chronicly anxious, causing sustained elevated stress hormones that combined with other factors put them over the tipping point? So many possible confounding variables

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Re:Monsanto Weedkiller Is ‘Probably Carcinogenic,’ WHO Says by dragonwriter on Saturday March 28, 2015 @04:28PM (#9282643)

Er, why? The choice isn't between sunlight and no glyphosphate and glyphosphate and no sunshine, so there is no real reason to compare them except to make irrelevant propaganda points.

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