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: 2, Interesting) by turtledawn on Thursday July 31 2014, @03:56PM
There are a fair number of compounds that bind so strongly to scent receptors that after only the shortest exposure, you are physically incapable of smelling them anymore until new receptors are generated, a matter of minutes to hours depending on the receptor in question. The disappearance of a scent absolutely cannot be taken to mean that the responsible compound is no longer present - that's a good way to get yourself killed in some industrial situations.