from the with-some-fava-beans-and-a-slight-hint-of-roundup dept.
It's in the Weeds: Herbicide Linked to Human Liver Disease
In a study published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology[$], a team [...] examined glyphosate excretion in the urine samples of two patient groups — those with a diagnosis of NASH (nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, a type of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease or NAFLD), and those without. The results, they found, were significant: Regardless of age, race, body mass index (BMI), ethnicity or diabetes status, glyphosate residue was significantly higher in patients with NASH than it was in patients with a healthier liver.
The findings, coupled with prior animal studies, said Mills, suggest a link between the use of commercial glyphosate in our food supply, which has increased significantly over the past 25 years, and the prevalence of NAFLD in the United States, which too has been on the rise for two decades.
"There have been a handful of studies, all of which we cited in our paper, where animals either were or weren't fed Roundup or glyphosate directly, and they all point to the same thing: the development of liver pathology," said Mills. "So I naturally thought: 'Well, could it be exposure to this same herbicide that is driving liver disease in the U.S.?'"
The study examined urine samples of 93 patients. Forty-one percent were male; 42 percent were white or Caucasian; 35 percent were Hispanic or Latino. Average BMI was 31.8. Patients were originally recruited as part of a larger study at the UC San Diego NAFLD Research Center conducted between 2012 and 2018. Liver biopsies were used to determine the presence or absence of NAFLD while classifying the subjects by cohort.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 15 2019, @07:29AM (3 children)
When the washing machine is broken, the clothes are not washed, is the conclusion.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 15 2019, @10:21AM (2 children)
You've got it backwards. If you put a clean load of laundry through the wash and the outtake water is clean, that doesn't mean the machine is broken. If you put dirty clothing through and get dirty water, the machine is working. If you put dirty clothing through and you get dirty water and a broken machine, then the machine can't handle that level of dirt.
If the herbicide has no negative effects, it should be excreted in higher amounts from the people with healthy livers since their livers are doing a good job cleaning the blood. However it's present from people with damaged livers which means it's highly likely to be causing that damage. The people who eat the herbicide end up with damaged livers and those won't don't eat it aren't damaged.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 15 2019, @02:50PM (1 child)
Or maybe the people with unhealthy livers are not as effective at getting rid of the glyphosate. There's no way to conclude cause and effect here.
(Score: 2) by boltronics on Thursday May 16 2019, @03:32AM
Wouldn't be surprising. A BMI of 31.8 on *average* - a lot of very unhealthy people in that sample unfortunately.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 15 2019, @07:54AM (3 children)
Vegetarianism is healthy they say. Yeah.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 15 2019, @10:14AM (2 children)
Vegetables don't have this shit. The problem is that you now have this herbicide in your drinking water.... and the red necks were afraid of fluoride :S
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 15 2019, @08:20PM (1 child)
fluoride? you mean the industrial waste biproduct of aluminum manufacturing that they pass off as fluoride and put it into kids toothpaste so they don't have to pay to dispose of the hazardous waste?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 16 2019, @03:42PM
Hydrofluorosilicic acid. It would have cost millions to dispose of it properly and legally, which would have destroyed the phosphate mining and aluminum industries. It was cheaper to mount a marketing campaign to turn it into a revenue stream by convincing people that it's good to drink.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 15 2019, @08:38AM
And apparently the other compounds always present in the pesticides you can buy are even worse than glyphosate.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by crafoo on Wednesday May 15 2019, @11:15AM (2 children)
What, we can't use the trade name here for the most common glyphosate-containing weed killer? It's the Kleenex of weed killers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 15 2019, @02:20PM
It says Roundup in the TFS.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday May 15 2019, @03:08PM
I'm assuming you meant Roundup.
From the summary:
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Informative) by CZB on Wednesday May 15 2019, @02:34PM (6 children)
As a farmer who uses roundup, I keep expecting one of the robot projects to take off, but so far, nobody has made one work.
Ultimately, it needs to move through irregular ground, identify weeds from crop, and pluck them.
But a minimum viable product only needs to see a plant and pluck it.
Roundup is a "kill everything" product used before planting a crop. Roundup resistant crops is a separate use case.
The current best option is to spend $100k+ to add a Weedseeker to your sprayer that uses IR eyes to turn nozzles on when it sees a plant. I can't afford one yet, but they pay for themselves in using less spray.
If we want to use no herbicides, robots that pick the weeds is the way to do it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Wednesday May 15 2019, @03:14PM (1 child)
We barely have Roombas / Automated Lawn Mowers and those are much simpler than a weed picking robot. Definitely wouldn't want Johnny 5 to be plucking the good crops. It's much easier to have a lawn mowing robot than it is to have a robot that can tell the difference between this green shoot / plant and a weed.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Wednesday May 15 2019, @05:23PM
The simplicity of the Roomba is driven by the cost sensitivity of the market. A fancier machine that does more would be more expensive. There *are* a few, but they're basically technology demonstrators, not a consumer product. And "If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it".
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday May 16 2019, @02:26AM (3 children)
I'd like to see the weed-picking robot that can kill the roots on bindweed and similar nuisances.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by CZB on Thursday May 16 2019, @04:55AM
That would be a place for systemic herbicides. If plants could be targeted individually a large farm might use a few gallons a year. I've heard of organic farmers who would sneak out and carefully apply roundup to problem weeds with a paintbrush.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 17 2019, @10:56AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by CZB on Friday May 17 2019, @10:20PM
Killing a root spreading plant by topping "Reliably every day" might work on a small scale.
For an average 1 to 20 square mile farm the problem becomes getting across all the land on time. The sensors, tool and rolling frame of a bot are going to be expensive enough that you can't have 320 bots per mile.
There is a non-chemical systemic weedkiller, high voltage. That would be another engineering challenge.