Monsanto's RoundUp, a widely used pesticide, uses the active ingredient Glyphosate and it may be up for another serious beating. Medical specialists and scientists in Sri Lanka has found that when glyphosate comes in contact with heavy metals like cadmium, arsenic, manganese and cobalt which exist naturally in the soil or fertilizer, it becomes highly toxic and has a high likelihood of causing fatal kidney disease for anyone that comes into contact with it. And because the substance binds to metals it will not show up in current tests. The report (and another one) is published in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and has resulted in that the Sri Lanka president to ban glyphosate immediately.
Exposure to glyphosate causes a drop in amino acid tryptophan levels, which interrupts the necessary active signalling of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which is associated with weight gain, depression, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. The report show that industry and regulators knew as long ago as the 1980's and 1990's that glyphosate causes malformation, but that information was not made public. Glyphosate is also a teratogenic.
Monsanto has been in the news quite recently.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by opinionated_science on Wednesday July 30 2014, @09:50PM
however, we (and plants) do have mitochondria which are strongly related i.e. they produce ATP. Mess with that at your peril...
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Thursday July 31 2014, @01:42AM
to moderators, I was replying to the "we dont have chloroplast" point. Relying on a lack of homology from two capture microbial mechanisms is very dodgy indeed. Let's not forget that R-CN targets the electron transport cascade in the mitochondria...