----- Original Message -----
From:
Leslie Moyer
Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 7:17
PM
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Safest Systemic
Killer for Stump?
The EPA requires extensive endocrine and reproductive testing before a
pesticide is registered.
This just isn't true.....or, at best I'd take issue with the use of
your word, "extensive". The EPA hasn't even been *around* long enough
for testing that would qualify as "extensive" in my opinion.
My response:
Glyphosate was orginally registered
with the EPA in 1974. After amendments to FIFRA, the EPA issued a
Registration Eligiblity Decision (RED) in 1993 (after more testing). I
wish I could find the research cost for the original registration and
reregistration of glyphosate, but feel confident it would be in the tens of
millions of dollars. According to http://ipm.ncsu.edu/safety/factsheets/laws.pdf it costs $50 million to register a pesticide.
However, this is dated information. A researcher in this industry
indicated to me, research costs currently runs somewhere around $100
million to register a compound today. In my opinion, whatever number is
used qualifies as extensive.
MANY chemicals that the EPA has *previously* approved as "safe" (and were
once widely considered to be "harmless") have now been removed from the
market because they now know they are not and these kinds of "discoveries"
continue to recent times.
We are getting
somewhat off the path here, but I suppose it still relates to
glyphosate. True, we may find out in 20 years chemicals
(glyphosate) we thought safe now, aren't. But we have to use the
best science available to access risk and go with it. I know of no
other way. I would point out this is not limited to just
agriculture, rather it occurs with many products that have advanced our
standard of living - i.e. white phosphorus in matches, mercury in the
manufacture of hats, Paris Green to paint with, poorly designed cribs that
choke babies, poorly designed accelerators that cause people to crash,
Thalidomide, etc. Even though these
things caused horrific consequences, we don't get rid of
matches, hats, art, cribs, cars, or pharmaceuticals. We use the best
technology of the time to assess risk, and keep moving
forward.
But it's not because Monsanto came clean about their
research.... The EPA certainly hasn't tested the long-term human
effects of persistent pesticides (by the way, I imagine you know
glyphosate isn't a pesticide, it's an herbicide)....particularly when used on
such a huge percentage of the foods that we're eating in our modern American
diet (corn, wheat, soy, canola--they're in virtually every processed food in
the grocery store and they're virtually all 100% Round-up soaked).
The EPA hasn't done a lot of human
testing on glyphosate (although some has been done). As I'm sure you're
aware, there is a moral componet that precludes much human testing.
However, regarding your point of the large amount of glyphosate we could be
ingesting, the EPA did do a risk assessment. According to the
summary RED, "EPA conducted a dietary risk assessment for glyphosate
based on a worst-case risk scenario, that is, assuming that 100 percent of all
possible commodities/acreage were treated, and assuming that tolerance-level
residues remained in/on all treated commodities. The Agency concluded that the
chronic dietary risk posed by glyphosate food uses is minimal."
Regarding the general classification of
pesticides, herbicides are actually classified as pesticides. In
simplest terms, a pesticide is anything that repels or eliminates a pest,
including plant pests.
We are, in fact, unwitting participants in a very large, uncontrolled
human experiment(s). And that doesn't even take into account that those
same 4 foods have been almost 100% genetically modified...a whole separate
point of disagreement, I suspect.
Besides--that's not the only
peer-reviewed article against glyphosate--only the most recent I knew about.
Here's another book that references many other peer-reviewed studies on the
toxicity of herbicides and pesticides:
http://www.amazon.com/Living-Downstream-Ecologists-Investigation-Environment/dp/0306818698Living
Downstream: An Ecologist's Personal Investigation of Cancer and the
Environment
by Sandra Steingraber
(This is the new edition--if you want
to read more reviews, look for the older edition on Amazon.) I saw Steingraber
speak at a conference just last weekend that also included speakers like
Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, and other notables. (Wes Jackson, by the way, has
a much better solution to soil erosion than glyphosate--research The Land
Institute if you're interested.) I don't know specifically what
Steingraber's book has to say about glyphosate.
A risk/benefit analysis
is prudent. How important is it, really, to remove the stump? Would a stump
grinder do the job just as well? Would time alone? The mushroom
spawn idea is a great one--that is, afterall, nature's solution.
I
could look up other references to glyphosate studies--there are others that
can be found online. But those who are interested can find this for
themselves as well. This conversation has gone astray of the list
parameters....perhaps the original question was itself inappropriate for the
list. I'll refrain from commenting further--I suspect that no minds will
be changed in either camp.
--Leslie
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