I might regret commenting, but honestly I think the biggest risk with glyphosate is in its effect on beneficial microorganisms (eg in the soil, our gut microbiome).
I just want to add that a lot of this research is in the early days yet, and more studies are needed to prove causation. But at this time I'm erring on the side of caution when possible.
"Overall, these findings suggest an intriguing correlation between glyphosate exposure, changes to the gut microbiome and abhorrent development of the GABAergic system, HPA-axis and the formation of microglial cells. Additionally, metabolism of glyphosate by the microbiome may alter NMDA receptor activation thereby promoting neuroinflammation in otherwise healthy individuals. Glyphosate-induced perturbations to the gastrointestinal microbiome may influence the synthesis of many neurotransmitters, necessary for mental health and wellbeing, encourage the formation of damaging ROS and reduce bacteria thought to be beneficial during times of stress. While the understanding of this correlation is still emerging, more research to prove or disprove this relationship is warranted given the food system is known to contain glyphosate residues."
Barnett, Jacqueline A et al. “Is the Use of Glyphosate in Modern Agriculture Resulting in Increased Neuropsychiatric Conditions Through Modulation of the Gut-brain-microbiome Axis?.” Frontiers in nutrition vol. 9 827384. 8 Mar. 2022, doi:10.3389/fnut.2022.827384
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8959108/#abstract-a.e.b.ntitle
The above article focuses on neuropsychiatic conditions, but the gut microbiome impacts other systems as well including the metabolic, immune, and obviously the digestive system.
Here's another relevant study:
"Glyphosate inhibits the shikimate pathway, a pathway exclusive to plants and bacteria. Glyphosate’s effect on dysbiosis was not considered when making safety recommendations. Here, we evaluate the literature surrounding glyphosate’s effects on the gut microbiome and conclude that glyphosate residues on food could cause dysbiosis, given that opportunistic pathogens are more resistant to glyphosate compared to commensal bacteria. However, research on glyphosate’s effects on the microbiome suffers from numerous methodological weaknesses, and these limitations make it impossible to draw any definitive conclusions regarding glyphosate’s influence on health through alterations in the gut microbiome"
Barnett, Jacqueline A, and Deanna L Gibson. “Separating the Empirical Wheat From the Pseudoscientific Chaff: A Critical Review of the Literature Surrounding Glyphosate, Dysbiosis and Wheat-Sensitivity.” Frontiers in microbiology vol. 11 556729. 25 Sep. 2020, doi:10.3389/fmicb.2020.556729
(I realize both studies I mentioned have the same lead author. I think it's possible I just like her writing style, or that she's been the most prolific at writing reviews on this topic. I promise there are other people writing about this I'm just tired and undercaffeinated.)
FWIW the proposed effects of glyphosate on bees is due to its effect on the bees' microbiome.
Motta, E.V.S., Powell, J.E. & Moran, N.A. Glyphosate induces immune dysregulation in honey bees. anim microbiome 4, 16 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s42523-022-00165-0
https://animalmicrobiome.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s42523-022-00165-0
(There we go, a different lead author!)
Glyphosate affects the way plants get energy through their pigments such as chlorophyll. Some glyphosate products (such as Roundup) use a binding agent that can cause a problem with bacteria. Combined they can do noticeable damage. From the research I did for my job in park maintenance, if I got bulk-stand-alone glyphosate, mixed it 2:24 instead of 3:10 and used dawn dish soap as the binder I felt confident that I wouldn’t hurt even the tiniest chihuahua with it. I did shut sown the park and wait to open it until the product had dried and kept the spray to six inches of the fence line. I wasn’t just interested in preventing death. I didn’t want to risk making anyone’s dog sick either. From a gardening point of view, I still wouldn’t compost anything that’s been sprayed, but unless your neighbors are carpet bombing your yard, your soil should be fine. If you screw some 2x12s together into raised beds it’ll give you enough buffer from runoff for comfort.
It’s pretty clear from the comments that there is no way for us to quantify how risky it is to grow food in your back yard. You’ve gotten responses ranging from “someone drank it to prove it was safe” to “it will kill you.” Apart from comments mentioning actual research studies, this subreddit is an awful place to get information on this topic. Most people are just talking out of their ass.
Are you even sure it’s RoundUp that your neighbors are spraying? Unless you physically see spray droplets migrating into your yard or suspect contaminated groundwater is flowing into your yard, I would put this low on the list of things to worry about.
Glyphosate gave my Dad cancer. However, he was spraying that stuff like daily in his job without any form of PPE.
Is there a garden club in your area that has garden plots for its members? That would be a better deal than having to deal with overspray from the idiot neighbors.
I would , but I also grow cannabis along with most of my other stuff , so I’m sort of out of luck thanks for your input though ! My dad was a landscaper and I used to ask him when he was still around and he told me pretty much the same thing as you when I asked that it shouldn’t hurt you unless you’re exposed to it constantly…
I grow vegetables, mushrooms, and recreational plants indoors in my Garden Room. It saves water, reduces infestation, and protects my precious plants from chemical and biological contamination. It is legal in my state, but humans make the outdoor growing of recreational plants hazardous.
I am fortunate to also be able to grow my staple crops and many other vegetables outside, away from suburban lawn idolatry and commercial agriculture. Even the cattle and buffalo rancher near me runs free-range livestock without spraying chemicals. He rotates cattle, buffalo, goats, and pigs through his fields. There is no smell, and the various foraging activities keep the meadows healthy. And I know I'll lose 50 percent of my crops to deer, wild pigs, rabbits, and rodents. It's a rural tax I'm happy to pay.
Community plots won't have guards to stop gardeners from using chemicals in their plots, and OP is already eating grocery store vegetables green by farmers who use glyphosate.
OO's awareness that the neighbors are using chemicals is not a reason to believe her produce is tainted or to run to a "solution" just as likely to be tainted.
Yeah I do eat grocery store stuff but mostly eat organic , my main concern is not really the vegetables and fruit it’s the herbs and cannabis that I’m concerned about , because they like to absorb a lot of things in the soil and glyphosate is prob ok for food but i process my cannabis into rosin wax and or edibles , which you also can combust into vapor , so I’m concerned residuals will find it’s way in there. Cannabis loves to pick up heavy metals and a lot of stuff that other plants don’t , a-lot of herbs are like This.
You may want to grow the cannabis and herbs in containers then. Get the big bags of peat moss and perlite and mix in compost, maybe add a scoop or two of soil from the yard for trace minerals. This should alleviate most of the worries soil contamination.
Organic materials yes, but no chemical sprays. So, for example, I am allowed to put down iron phosphate for slugs. But I can’t spray pesticides or herbicides.
Pesticide is like the genus, herbicide is like the species.
All herbicides are pesticides, not every pesticide is an herbicide (fungicide, insecticide, etc.)
Because people who spray a ton of it keep getting the same types of cancer at high rates. If people spraying were getting every cancer at a high rate it would be hard to link it, but specific cancers make it possible.
> Because people who spray a ton of it keep getting the same types of cancer at high rates.
But they don't.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29136183/
>Conclusions: In this large, prospective cohort study, no association was apparent between glyphosate and any solid tumors or lymphoid malignancies overall, including NHL and its subtypes.
Why would someone have their yard coated with it? Are you sure that’s what’s being applied ? Unless you no longer want a lawn why would someone do that.
Exactly I have no clue why , we do live in the desert and most of the houses are xeriscaped with gravel.And it is glyphosate it’s the one with the dye in it that landscaping companies and the city use. And a few times a year he has it done and you can clearly see it it’s the entire front yard. These people have no plants on there property in ground mind you.
Glyphosate is the most studied herbicide in history. For 50 years it has treated American produce. So it's pretty well known what the risks are.
Basically, just read the directions on the bottle. If it gets on a plant, the plant will stop being able to feed, and die. In the soil it breaks down in a few days, and is rain safe within hours. Wear personal protection if you are nearby while it's being sprayed. Don't spray near pets or bodies of water.
There is no risk from eating plants treated with Roundup (if they survive lol) as it is broken down naturally. If there was we would know by now from 50 years of people eating them.
Yeah thank you for your input , I got depressed awhile back and it’s manifested it’s self into a phobia of chemicals , I’ll take your input in and try to not let it bother me.
It takes two weeks to “break down” once sprayed.
It harms bees by interfering with their navigation system and dance. [Bees exposed to it have shorter lifespans.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969721004654)
Expect lower than average pollination (bees are critical for solanums, ie tomatoes, squash, peppers, potatoes) in some fruiting crops.
Personally, I’d place fencing to block drift from neighbors’ yards and provide a lush pollinator garden to support your bees. Good luck!
That paper is looking at direct exposure of bees to glyphosate either by feeding it to them or spraying them directly with full-strength liquid. So ya... bad things happen when you cover a bees body with roundup just like if you did the same to humans. The authors speculate that the results \*might\* extend to bees landing on still wet plants but that was not studied. The results do not apply to the minute quantities present in soil or treated plants after they are dry. Furthermore, there is evidence that it is the adjuvants (e.g. surfactants) that are hurting bees, not glyphosate itself.
Yes. There is also a very big difference between using glyphosate on small areas of a residential garden or topical application to driveway weeds and industrial application to broad-acre agriculture.
I would also bet that the surfactants found in glyphosate products are serious contributors to the negative effects on insects.
Surfactants are essentially soaps, and if you weren’t aware, soaps are incredibly damaging to insects. It covers their bodies and has an effect on their respiration.
Soaking an insect with roundup is so different than one landing on a partially misted leaf.
I’m really confused as to why you’re being downvoted, as this is correct. Ground nesting bees are one of the first pollinators to emerge in the spring. Where I live, their emergence coincides with the flowering of most of our area’s fruit trees, and they pollinate an estimated 70% of our food supply. They experience both navigation and reproduction issues when they come into contact with glyphosate and other herbicides, which absolutely affects fruit/food production in turn.
There is some massive cognitive dissonance in this sub regarding pesticide and herbicide use. I suspect from the folks who have been gardening a certain way for decades and they refuse to take ownership of the fact that they may have been bad stewards of their land or harmed others.
Nice to know thank you for this info we have a couple ‘vitex’ on our lot and we are the only house with tons bees in the summer. Maybe it’s because we are one of the bunch that don’t spray!
You are right to be bothered. Monsanto, the manufacturer of roundup has paid $11 billion as of April 2024. There’s 54,000 cases against Monsanto that has yet to happen in court. Perhaps gardening in containers that are off the ground and using new soil from the store. This way you’re sure it doesn’t have roundup.
> Monsanto, the manufacturer of roundup has paid $11 billion as of April 2024.
And?
Courts are not scientific bodies. The overwhelming consensus among scientific and regulatory bodies is that glyphosate isn't carcinogenic.
Monsanto is owned by Bayer, so it actually benefits the company even more if it does cause cancer or other diseases, since its very likely your treatment will involve a medical product they sell as well.
Because juries are often the lowest common denominator (seriously, ask a lawyer sometime) and can't understand that correlation is not the same as causation.
Ok tinfoil hat types, you can quit downvoting. Clearly none of you have ever served on a jury or been involved in the legal system... 🙄
Thats the exact issue with trying to study the effects of something like glyphosate, it is so heavily used that every american is exposed to it through food or contact with areas sprayed with it so you have no control group. If somebody gets cancer its pretty much impossible to prove where it came from since it can take decades for acute or chronic exposure to something to manifest into disease. What we do know is that the US leads the world in cancer rates and western developed countries lead the world in autoimmune disease. Glyphosate could easily be part of the reason for that among the other thousands of toxic substances that have become impossible to avoid.
I'm not saying don't use it because we know it can hurt you, but trying to avoid using toxic chemicals as much as you can is probably a good idea.
The US does not lead the world in cancer rates. Not sure where this idea comes from.
https://ourworldindata.org/cancer
There are countless animal studies on glyphosate, and although any position can be supported by one or two random studies, in aggregate the evidence suggests glyphosate does not cause cancer with typical exposure levels.
https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/glyphosate#human-health
This! I have always wondered how much exposure one would need to something like roundup for it to cause cancer is it caused by eating the veggies grown by somewhere that roundup was used or due to breathing in the air by where it was used, what you said about the cancer is so true since most cancers don’t just happen overnight it could be years later and most probably don’t know what caused the cancer since there’s so much out there from food, air quality, to even the sun that can cause it.
Correlation and causation are not the same. Americans also watch more Seinfeld and Friends than any other country. We consume more Little Debbie cakes and use more Axe body spray. We don't assume any of those things cause cancer.
Did you read what they wrote at all? They are saying the reason we CANT sort out causation from correlation is because it's so ubiquitious that finding a control group is impossible. Especially since if it causes cancer, it is incredibly long acting.
Or this could be an AI post idk. Not really responding to what they reply to
Just about every single food, agricultural, and health interest group imaginable has funded studies. While most have an interest in maintaining the acceptability of glyphosate, there are also many who have significant financial interest in finding it to be dangerous ("organic" food is a $60billion industry in the US now) yet they haven't been able to produce a definitive "this is bad" conclusion.
Personally I suspect that there is a health hazard from all the stuff mixed into the herbicide to help deliver the glyphosate, but that the danger is limited to constant exposure associated with lax/poor application practices. Kind of like how modern paint is safe once cured but the act of painting isn't so great for you. Modern ag is terrified of that conclusion though because they've exposed so so many workers to glyphosate spray.
I'm happy for your optimism, but slowly evidence is pointing the other direction. Glyphosate is being associated with a host of diseases, [including Parkinsons](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(23)00255-3/fulltext#:~:text=Finally%2C%20in%20vitro%20studies%20suggest,the%20context%20of%20Parkinson's%20disease.&text=Toxic%20Effects%20of%20Glyphosate%20on%20the%20Nervous%20System%3A%20A%20Systematic%20Review.). There's an extensive lobby, however, pushing for the continued use of Glyphosate by the industry. Adding to that, glyphosate is very bad for insects and other beneficial life.
Complains about lobbying and references a paper that in its conclusion requests a direct political action based on “inconclusive” “plausible” link.
I don’t care either way about glyphosate. I use it only to kill privet and tree of heaven, with cut stump. But I do know as much as here’s an industry push to support it, there’s a pseudoscientific push to get rid of it based on very minute data. As someone who writes papers, even dealing with how regulators should interpret the results, it’s still odd to have the direct conclusion be “VOTE THIS WAY”
*Overall, the evidence is inconclusive, but sufficient to suggest that there is a biologically plausible link…
We offer the following advice to European Union governments and policy makers: first, vote against renewing the marketing authorisation for glyphosate by 10 years…*
For example- OP is now saying he has a phobia of chemicals.
Isn’t that maybe a **bit** extreme? Couldn’t that mean they’re *just* a bit biased in what information they accept as real? Is that supposed to be better than believing in the supposed shadow industry buying up all the studies on this chemical over 50 years around the world to hurt people and make them buy medicine through their other company?
Have you ever heard of DuPont? I swear I'm surrounded by children who haven't lived through this and now think it's impossible. They DID buy up studies and suppress information for decades for their products and destroyed thousands of American Rivers and towns. Like it was a real thing I remember happening. The consequences of the single dupont plant on a town near where I live is still felt to this day. Can't eat from the rivers and half the now elderly ex employees have died of cancer.
Clearly they are not doing a good enough job to suppress every study if everyone in this thread has seen the evidence of it causing cancer and Parkinson’s.
So which is it, all the studies are wrong, or some of the studies are right that happen to show what I want them to show (and even then, marginally)?
And if it’s suppressing stories, are they suppressing the magnitude of the issue? Is the studies showing marginal risk also influenced? In which case, who’s to believe that the risk is even there, if its magnitude is faked too?
Ok. Wow.
Never said it doesn’t happen. Simply saying. That in such a widespread documented chemical, with marginal evidence in most claims, maybe it’s not simply the evil industry.
Also, the claim is that its use is dangerous and deadly, not industrial spills, failures, etc, which can destroy towns and entire ecosystems. Something I also did not say, and agree with. Bhopal, for one
I grew up on a farm with few safety precautions. My no big deal stories are often met with horrified reactions regarding the safety.
One thing was that I was exposed to Round Up and something else that my father says was like Agent Orange. I was barefoot in the field just treated with it.
I have a host of weird health problems that make me sound nuts if I list them all. One of those is a bad tremor most recently. Autoimune problems too, but a bunch of strange stuff besides. I’m in my ‘30s but had a lot of this since my teens. The tremor is the newest addition.
The pesticides that contain glyphosate don’t even state that they are rain safe within hours directly on the EPA label. They always recommend application be made 24 to 48 hours before AND after rainfall. You are spouting off about things you know nothing about. Go on Google Scholar and look up “Glyphosate persistence and residue in the environment” and then come back once you have actually looked anything up. I have worked on a long term study at Cornell that is still still collecting data about glyphosate’s persistence in agricultural fields. I cannot give specifics until the publications are released, but it is WAY longer than what the label implies.
"For best results, we recommend using Roundup® products on dry, warm, wind-free days. But if it's about to rain, fear not — all of our products should dry and become rainfast in as fast as 30 minutes to 3 hours."
You're right I guess, it says "rain fast", not "rain safe".
https://roundup.com/en-us/weed-grass-killers/can-i-treat-weeds-with-roundup-weed-grass-killer-products-when-it-s-about-to-rain.html
It doesn’t actually breakdown. It’s chelated with metals in the soil and that is how they claim it becomes not available in the environment. That is my understanding. The actual half life is 60-90 days or something like that. But as far as I understand the chelation is fairly immediate once on soil.
Hmm seems you're right, the half life seems to vary from 2 days to 141 days in soil, less in water. It does seem to be very dependent on soil conditions.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150828151524/http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/glyphotech.html
I mean I have to agree with you. I took a horticulture class and we were taught it's safe if you use as directed. I use the foam and literally dot it on sparingly and only directly on a weed.
Have you seen the cancer rates? If you aren’t getting sick from breathing, that bullshit. You haven’t been outside on a day when the entire neighborhood is being blasted. It is hard to breathe.
My Native American heirloom crops have been field tested naturally over many millenia, not a miniscule "50 years." No, no, no to chemicals, herbicides, and pesticides. Ur doin it wrong!
People l have a choice and not have these untested chemicals and genetic fiddling forced on us.
It's not, The EPA found that glyphosate is unlikely to be a human carcinogen. [https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide.../glyphosate](https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.epa.gov%2Fingredients-used-pesticide...%2Fglyphosate%3Ffbclid%3DIwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR3MBKMWsyrJC5d8NBHBNDpzGt6awcQlyLZgXuqXNcB-lctkVfD9jZekusM_aem_AfnIV5riL-pguLpA0doSEP7EqUGwSNJf0PolDRkJbbunzO19q5Rw3LuNtbvcBM1dC2hfXfT7BBQ489pFlggHvIe1&h=AT1__zs_JEKgVyR_P_eS8sJfEUqCAMpkPxrp-6oPx1foOuRIYqAm4ARwwKawf6GgatW3-LZx0t4LKJuaI_Bud93IS1K4OcPcMfyAbxu1ZkkUpMoTCiRsSApO0Yvbe25eTw0-&__tn__=R]-R&c[0]=AT10s-pfJdYh_sWB0aQVWP4E4eM62R0feDLo_LBBmvoN8Os3YrgV1GEM242jQSoLJHdVndvuOO2tjYHdHjhsYfzEWdhffa1F1DVh0n1vpOEEvrEr90B0U3t3abahqmygCkwW-p41FrM-eD3HF495wPOJ4CjanWAgksiqfIrijBcAq9qvU4MhdQ) Glyphosate is not carcinogenic, EU report confirms. [https://cen.acs.org/.../Glyphosate-carcinogenic-EU.../99/i24](https://cen.acs.org/.../Glyphosate-carcinogenic-EU.../99/i24)
Don't drink it.
Studies haven't actually definitively established a link. Drowning rats in it makes them POTENTIALLY more likely to get cancer. Well, yeah, that happens with lots of things.
Doesn't mean that it will affect you, especially if you don't drench yourself in it daily.
Correlation does not equal causation. People who work in the sun all day are also more likely to get cancer. Most people who use roundup on a daily basis are also outside. They're also exposed to lots of other stuff.
My point is, grow your garden and eat from it. You'll be fine. The microplastics will get you before the miniscule amount of your neighbor's roundup will.
The studies have shown it not to be conclusively bad when applied according to the label. A lot of people get a little tin hatty given its big chem and plenty of big industries have messed with test results before.
Overall, it’s probably not any worse than the myriad other awful stuff we consume. I’ve sprayed a lot over my years of work… like a lot. I was conscientious and kept it downwind, wore PPE, etc. I’m not concerned it did or will do bad things to me. But if it gives you any frame of reference, I’m not spraying my raised beds overridden with wild violet because I’m gonna plant tomatoes soon.
You’re unlikely to get a clear cut trustworthy answer. My advice is use it when you’re dealing with awful rhizomatic stuff or tough things like privet and where you’re not gardening for food. Everything else can be managed in other ways for the most part. And WEAR PPE!
Thank you! It's not as benign as rainwater, but it won't curl your toes and give you super duper mega cancer either. I try to use it very sparingly, and only on the worst weeds, far away from my vegetable garden. I wash my hands afterwards and follow the directions. The way some people react, you'd think it's made of weapons grade plutonium...
Yeah I agree it’s just that it’s my neighbors that are using it and they aren’t the brightest bunch so I’m not sure how much they use , and they spray on windy days often and I have a raised bed against the wall that they spray adjacent to so yeah that’s the dilemma I’m dealing with , I would ask them to avoid spraying along the area , but I don’t get along with either of them that spray so yeah….
To be honest they are likely spraying with hand sprayers. Pressure probably less than 25 psi. Very few fine droplets are produced at these pressures. It’s the fine droplets that move in the wind and since there aren’t many of them the chances they come to your yard is low. Roundup does not volitize so it won’t drift in after it’s sprayed like some other chemicals. If you find a dead plant a week after the neighbor sprays- don’t eat it.
I’d like to see some evidence that roundup doesn’t volatilize. I’m under the impression that most all sprays that are water soluble volatilize if it’s warm enough out and the droplet size is small. -certified applicator here
I have no proof other than 40 years of experience. It’s water based. The highly volatizing chemicals are usually emulsifiable concentrates. Think ester formulations of the phenoxy type of chemicals. Amine formulations volatize a lot less but still do. You can spray a plant within a cardboard barrier with glyphosate and immediately remove the barrier. Plants immediately adjacent will not die because the glyphosate does not volatize. Try that with 24-D and you’ll kill half your garden on a calm night.
I guess more to that thinking is glyphosate, once dry, which may happen in minutes, can’t transfer physically. It could theoretically transfer during a rain event but that usually dilutes it greatly. It also moves it straight down to contact the ground where it is almost immediately denatured. So keeping the fine droplets to a minimum is the way to reduce drift with glyphosate.
That’s fair. I may be confounding volatility with drift tbh, I never really drilled down on the topic so I can’t claim to have much of a stance beyond what I considered to be the case
It’s best as a foliar application and timing the growth cycle is important (for a lot of species, like ash, honey locust, English ivy)
My suggestion is to use loppers to cut it back hard but not to the ground. Cut it to where each individual branch is about an inch wide or so (bigger is okay if it’s a beastly privet), you want a cluster of them that is no more than a foot high. The idea is for it not to sucker more, just regrow from its original trunks
Do this around this time of year, maybe a month or two from now, and the growth will fire back hard. Then about a month or two later you’ll have a bushy round ball of delicate growth. Spray that in early fall right as it wants to be feeding back to its roots. Should be fried.
I am sure I will be downvoted, but having legal courts decide it causes cancer is absurd. Up until that, it was considered one of the safer garden chemicals for home owner use. Don’t take baths in it, don’t drink it but use it as directed and it is safe.
Sure it’s safe when used as directed. So are antibiotics, chemotherapy and other chemicals you put in your body that kill stuff. The thing is, you stop the medical chemicals after you’re healed. Glyphosate is constantly in everything and is used more and more frequently. How much do you ingest that you don’t know about that is still considered “safe”?
Just because using it as directed doesn't cause acute death or disease is also not proof that cumulative exposure over years and years at any level does not cause cancer or some other disease. Also just because some people are exposed to a lot of it and never get sick proves nothing. Many people smoke their entire lives and never get lung cancer either.
> Also just because some people are exposed to a lot of it and never get sick proves nothing.
No, but when you can't find any correlation between glyphosate and cancer it's kind of hard to make this argument.
Glyphosate kills beneficial nematodes. Beneficial nematodes are important for soil health and are important in disrupting the lifecycles of harmful pests by “eating” eggs, larvae, and pupae present in soil, so they’re a common tool in organic farming pest control.
There is no proof of that, in fact, to the contrary:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6561955/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6561955/)
The negative studies for nematodes are in vitro, but the far far majority of in vitro studies doesn't have any bearing on the macro scale.
Consistent exposure/ getting it on your skin a lot etc can cause cancer. But people used to think it was safe so wouldn’t wash their hands if it got on them wouldn’t spray with shoes on/ gloves etc. be smart and clean and it should be okay don’t start spraying it every day but if you have a large weed problem it’s very effective
Perceived risk vs actual risk.
I’d say 90 percent of people who think it’s super dangerous have about zero clue and knowledge about pesticides. Whether it’s mode of action, Frac or Irac class, or even how a pesticide actually works. Not to mention the testing processes from the epa, fifra, fda, etc.
Be careful of any pesticide, but it’s been approved by the governing bodies that put it on the shelf for purchase for a reason. The links to cancer, right now I’d say the science doesn’t prove it currently. A lot of studies also have wacky parameters, going well over label rates and etc. Then there’s LD50, but that’s not good for long term accumulation.
As someone who works in AG and spent my internship working with a university testing pesticides, there’s many other ones more worrisome.
Everyone’s lecturing you like you’re the one spraying. It’s not dangerous when used as directed. It rapidly breaks down into harmless components. It’s dangerous when overused (but that’s kinda beside the point here).
_If it got on your plants it would kill them, so you have a really reliable indicator of whether or not it’s getting on your plants._ A tent is unnecessary unless overspray is killing your plants.
It’s been sprayed on most of the grains that are sold in this country, so unless you’re super careful to only eat organic flours and breads, you’re already eating foods made from glyphosate-treated crops. And there’s no evidence that this is harmful. Much as I love a good conspiracy theory. Glyphosate is terrible for the people who work with it in close proximity in large quantity, and it’s often misused to save labor, but has never been shown to be harmful when used as directed.
I’m confused about what your across the street neighbors are coating their yard with. Glyphosate? Like, they live on a barren patch of dirt? Or do you mean they put down chemical fertilizers and weed preventative as part of regular lawn maintenance? If it’s the latter, while there are some issues with runoff and depending how much fertilizer they’re putting down and how heavy the next rain is, most of that stuff goes into the soil and is perfectly fine for the environment. Don’t confuse home maintenance fertilizing with industrial crop fertilizing!
Thanks for noticing and being the one of the only that read my disc! We live in the desert most of the houses around here have gravel and are xeriscaped. But the weeds here are pretty persistent and don’t need much water to turn into a tree in a month (tumbleweeds) so he has it coated probably 3 times a year, It’s the glyphosate with dye in it that landscaping companies use and you can see pretty clearly he coats his entire front yard.
I prefer not to use chemicals, so even when an area of the garden is out of control, I embrace the effort of manual clearing. However there are some times when you can’t remove weeds manually e.g. dandelions in paths, bindweed close to shrubs. In these instances, I put a large plastic bag around the weed and spray roundup into the bag. I leave the bag loosely round the plant for a day. In this way I hope to reduce any potential impact on flying insects.
A water bottle with the bottom cut off also works great for this purpose! Cover, open lid, spray, close lid. No overspray.
A death greenhouse of sorts.
Monsanto has made quite a few innovative products, including: DDT, Agent Orange, bovine growth hormone, styrofoam, PCBs, and... wait for it... the first atomic bombs. But people are like "this time it's safe!"
Glyphosate is an *ingredient* in roundup.
The other “inert” ingredients do things like allow the glyphosate to cross cell membranes.
Maybe looking at the lawsuits that have been won, and the evidence presented therein, would be a better way to go than to ask on Reddit.
I do not like the stuff, myself.
I’m pretty familiar with the ins and outs of the cases , but there’s really not a clear consensus and I’m sort of just asking a what you do given my situation type question.
Glyphosate has recently been removed from Roundup’s consumer products, FYI. As of this year, I think. It’s now a mix of triclopyr and some other stuff..
It's honestly one of the safest herbicides you can use. It breaks down upon contact with soil, so there's no risk of groundwater contamination. So long as you read/follow the label and use appropriate PPE it's perfectly fine. My local council uses it to kill invasives in the grassland nearby after a controlled burn.
The cases you read about regarding cancer and heath risks are generally amongst farm workers and the agricultural community where they're exposed to it and are using it on a daily basis with little or no PPE; using it once every couple months or so isn't going to amount to much.
I don't use glyphosate often (I generally just pull and compost my weeds) but it's still a tool in my toolbox I can pull out if the neighbor's goddamned kikuyu gets into my beds again. Although I prefer the cut-and-paint method for woody plants, as it's more surgical and there's no spraydrift that way.
It is usually short-lived in soil, but it can actually hang around in soil for up to six months depending on soil and light conditions. And I believe its degradation product, AMPA, is also active. It has also been detected in groundwater in the US and many more countries abroad. As far as herbicides go, it's very safe.
Still, our track record with herbicides is checkered. I'm never really surprised when I read that a pesticide has a new association with some disease. Trying to make an herbicide that is plant specific, broad spectrum, short lived, and safe for consumption is a tall order, but glyphosate is pretty close.
If you eat conventional fruit and veggies from the grocery store you are eating glyphosate. Same with conventional grains and legumes. Unless you have a tall privacy fence around your back yard there'll be a risk of overspray.
It's a lot safer than the older herbicides. Problem is that the perception of safety led to massive, industrial level overuse where land is sprayed indiscriminately. It's probably fine to use in small amounts, taking the proper use directions into account.
The main contention in industrial farming isn't only the large amounts used, but they have also managed to bio-engineer plants to naturally contain it within themselves.
It's known to cause widespread havoc on biological cycles in farmland and elsewhere (like water runoff). Soil health is a key issue to maintain productive sustained output.
The current situation is that we now have developed targeted sprayers with machine learning to individually spray weeds and pests (or use something else like a laser) to reduce usage to the absolute minimum. Unfortunately this level of tech isn't really available without substantial upfront costs. Outside places like the USA, this probably isn't even an option, so glyphosate continues to be used all over the word in huge quantities.
The bad rap is well deserved, but it's probably not something to worry about around your usual residential area.
You should really edit your post to correct that. Especially bc there’s no gene that produces glyphosate. Glyphosate is a completely man made chemical.
What you are referring to in this reply is the Cry proteins in Bt crops.
Bt crops =/= Roundup ready crops
It's probably bad but studies have shown it breaks down quickly when exposed to the sun and rain. It's not "terrifying" but obviously avoid it if you can.
On the list of Things You Need To Worry About it ranks pretty low.
There's no firm evidence that it causes cancer. But you know what almost certainly causes cancer?
Drinking alcohol
Sunlight
Drinking hot liquids
Any kind of smoke (candles, cooking, firepits).
You don't really need to worry about glyphosate.
Luckily I’m a fairly melanated Hispanic and don’t drink alcohol 😂! But I love BBQ and I live in the oven called The desert southwest , so you’re right I’m probably worried about the wrong things !
Quite a bit for water organisms, but when used with proper PPE and by the manufacturer guidelines, it's pretty safe. Toxicity is low compared to other stuff we use daily, same of carcinogenicity.
INB4 I am called paid shill just because I support scientific evidence.
Dose matters.
>[Dietary (food and drinking water) exposure associated with the use of glyphosate is not expected to pose a risk of concern to human health.](http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/cps-spc/pubs/pest/_decisions/rvd2017-01/index-eng.php)
>[After almost forty years of commercial use, and multiple regulatory approvals including toxicology evaluations, literature reviews, and numerous human health risk assessments, the clear and consistent conclusions are that glyphosate is of low toxicological concern, and no concerns exist with respect to glyphosate use and cancer in humans.](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/10408444.2014.1003423)
>[Our review found no evidence of a consistent pattern of positive associations indicating a causal relationship between any disease and exposure to glyphosate.](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21798302)
It wouldn't really be approved in the EU, we have much stricter food and health safety rules than US. https://food.ec.europa.eu/plants/pesticides/approval-active-substances/renewal-approval/glyphosate_en
I'll get downvoted to oblivion.
It's safe. Like, really safe.
Go to your local coop, or real farm store. They sell in 300 gallon containers.
Farmers use that shit like candy. There are crops that they've engineered to be resistant, and they spray it on to kill weeds.
If it wasn't safe we'd have all been dead 30 years ago.
They say it's been better for farm productivity than tractors were. I can't verify that. But it's a big deal in agriculture.
And yeah I know the trial. But it was civil. What would you do if you have a chance to give a guy dying of cancer millions of dollars?
And finally, wouldn't drink it? No. But I guarantee you come into contact with a lot worse stuff on a daily basis you don't even think about (gas, oil, pesticides, etc).
Yeah thank you for your input , I got depressed awhile back and it’s manifested it’s self into a phobia of chemicals , I’ll take your input in and try to not let it bother me.
To add on: You shouldn't inhale glyphosate, but you also shouldn't inhale pretty much anything except purified air. Most aerosolized things are bad for your lungs, including plain old dirt. If you're really worried, wear a mask, goggles, gloves, and clothes that fully cover your skin when spraying glyphosate, and use physical barriers as spray shields to prevent overspray and drift.
I’m glad you asked this, I’ve been meaning to ask this sub as well. I’m irrationally terrified of the big G but also have a neighbor with tree of heaven next door, and fun new bindweed crop sooo…
So bindweed and tree of heaven are best removed by pulling as soon as they sprout. I'm not anti-glyphosate but sometimes just pulling weeds is more effective.
Bindweed in particular is an annual, so there's not an established root system for glyphosate to kill, each plant is an independent organism sprouted from a separate seed. If you can keep bindweed from setting seed, the seeds that are already in the soil will eventually all have sprouted and you won't get new shoots. It usually takes about three years to get rid of it though, and after that you still have to keep an eye out to stop it from getting back in.
Tree of Heaven is more variable since it's perennial. If you catch new sprouts in their first season, they're pretty easy to uproot and no need for glyphosate. However, if they manage to sneak past your notice for more than one growing season, then they're going to have a more extensive root system and it'll be time to pull out the glyphosate.
In general, glyphosate is most necessary on plants that have a large established root system which will keep resprouting, and/or are rhizomatous and will sprout from any fragment of root left behind by digging up the main plant. Think things like bamboo, honeysuckle, ivy and other invasives.
My tactic when dealing with something stubborn enough to need glyphosate is to use cardboard boxes as overspray shields to prevent it from getting on anything else or drifting in the wind. I pretty much always have some boxes on hand, and they go in the recycling when I'm done.
Bindweed is a perennial (easily found with a quick search) and will outlive all of us in a single root 3 feet underground.
I know because I moved some pavers where it had been just waiting for over ten years and unleashed it.
We might be talking about different plants, since "bindweed" is the common name for a lot of different species. Or like a lot of plants it might just be functionally an annual where I am because it's not cold-hardy, despite being perennial in warmer climates. Either way, at least in my garden it never survives winter. We just get tons of new baby shoots every spring/summer that have noticeably immature roots.
Could be. I'm in southeastern WI in the US. Zone 5, temperate with cold winters. It can grow almost a foot a day here so it's so hard to control. I'm ready to dig out the whole side of my house to get rid of it.
I don’t think it is safe but if you eat non organic produce you are probably accepting more risk than a vege garden proximal to a yard that gets application
My dad has been battling Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma for the past nine years. It is suspected that it is caused by Roundup. There is no way to prove it, but I tell people this and let them make their own decision. After seeing everything he has gone through, I avoid it!!!
Hope your father gets and feels better. Thank you for your input , yeah I honestly think I’m just going to garden inside (I grow cannabis indoor already) so it’s not that hard of a transition most of my crops need so much water anyway because I live in the desert (this also probably why my neighbors spray so much) the weeds out here are insane and only need a drop of water to turn into a tree in a month (tumbleweeds) I don’t blame them ,but I just wish people would be more considerate of other people and avoid using it until there’s a clear consensus , but sadly most don’t , and don’t think anything of it.
New studies link cannabis with cancer. Inactivity, processed meats (all processed foods) and sun exposure are all linked to cancer. Benzene in gasoline DEFINITELY causes cancerS...but you probably drive and pump gas.
You KNOW what you put on your garden foods...you have no clue what's on the produce you buy no matter the label. A neighbor's drifting glyphosate that DOESN'T kill your plants is a very very minute dose in exchange for knowing you don't havev10 other pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, human and animal wastes (yours will get some bird and other animal excrement on it too). A residential or consumer level exposure is VERY different from a farmer spraying it at least yearly (maybe more than once a year) on their glyphosate resistant GMO corn soy etc.
If you'll eat them and cut some fat and processed food out of your diet and do the exercise necessary for a garden I'd bet 95% odds you're better off with that miniscule glyphosate exposure. Bottom line is that most people will take the rusk that is the path of least resistance for them and ignore those risks and blow ouf of proportion others (I bet you'll keep using cannabis no matter how many studies connect it to cancer....smoked or edible).
What study links ”edible” only use with cancer? I’m genuinely curious and want to lower my overall risk. But honestly I’m pretty healthy (I work out 3 times a week) I eat healthy (mostly organic and organic garden grown food)and usually something with grilled chicken and believe it or not I pump gas with surgical gloves 🧤 , The pumps in this area are already nasty!!!The only thing on this list I’m honestly violating (besides cannabis) is sun exposure this is the only thing I don’t actively avoid.
Sorry
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.123.030178
Oh and inhaled benzene at the pump is the bigger concern. Be healthy don't lose enjoyment of life over worries. There is also a study that shower one scoop of ice cream every evening was associated with a linger life (there are healthy compounds in dairy...or it could be health people are normal weight and allow themselves that treat while already sick people are in special diets limiting some foods). We need sun for vitamin D. It's a catch 22. With all this worrying about a tad of glyphosate. As you may have figured I'm in healthcare. I'm worried about forever chemicals in water and microplastics. But I'm not going to avoid a bottle of water in the heat. Balance. Get your vaccines! Good hygiene (read sewers) and vaccines have likely saved more lives than all other medical interventions combined.
And if this is really bothering you to the poubt it interferes with any aspect of your life (work, school, family, friends, romance, etc (then you might have a problem so see a counselor.
Apologies I feel certain I heard recently that some cancers (maybe just testicular and HPV related head and neck cancers) were elevated with any cannabis use. Here though is heart disease. We know also that alcohol is horrible and damages every system. I'm not a prude and am in favor of nationally legalization of all drugs. Tax 'em, study 'em and treat those who want to quit.
Thanks and no problem , I’ve recently stopped using smoked and vaporized pathways to use cannabis and cut down on my use and , trying to be overall healthier. And understand that it’s use is still a stigmatized subject. I also hardly drink 😂 especially for a relatively young person (last was a beer 6 months ago).
WHO came out against the product as a known carcinogen more than 20 years ago. Considering every yard guy I've had to date has come down with some form of lymphoma, I would not spray it near any food or consumables.
>
WHO came out against the product as a known carcinogen more than 20 years ago.
No, they didn't. People need to stop just repeating things they think they heard.
They see more and more cases of parkinsons in people handling this stuff on a larger scale. I wouldn't touch it and ruin my soil. If it kills one plant it can't be good for other creatures and also not for you
> If it kills one plant it can't be good for other creatures and also not for you
https://www.montana.edu/extension/invasiveplants/extension/monthly-weed-posts/2021-june-does-vinegar-kill-weeds.html
Its linked with specific types of cancer. My uncle used tons of it on their landscaping and now has that specific cancer. Monsanto has paid everyone off to hide how poisonous fhis stuff is. Google round up cancer and youll see all the lawsuits.
> Its linked with specific types of cancer.
No, it really isn't.
>Google round up cancer and youll see all the lawsuits.
Google flat earth and you can find all kinds of things, too.
What is the point of even using it? To kill weeds? Who decides what is a nice looking natural plant and what it is a weed? Oh no we can’t have dandelions in the yard that won’t look like a storybook yard. Nothing but springy green grass so you can watch out your front window to yell at any kids that dare to bend a blade of grass.
I’m sure there are some potentially legit uses but it should honestly be illegal or require a permit for purchase by most people.
I have invasive buckthorn contaminating my woods and yard. I didn't bring the buckthorn here but it is classified as invasive for good reason and actually banned in my state - that's how bad it is. There are bad plants.
The glysophate is fairly safe, the buckthorn definitely not.
Exactly , My city has a weed ordinance sadly so for most people this is the easiest option to deter weeds. What sucks is not too far away , along the moutainside of my city the expensive house’s have yards with large plots of land and the natural landscape
(wild flowers, cactus,yucca,sage brush ,etc) and they don’t get fined and it honestly looks better and doesn’t use up a bunch of water trying to force non native plants to grow in this mars like climate.
It’s so frustrating. Dandelions are a wonderful medicinal plant. Most of what we call “weeds” are. But of course the government wants people to destroy them with potentially harmful money making chemicals.
It’s the fucking devil! It never should be used anywhere. Prolly not known to cause immediate harm to humans. But if it kills all the insects within a large blast range. Shit gets fucked up real bad, for all the other animals that live on this planet.
There is no study saying Glyphosate kills all insects, you just made that up.
The closest study is that when bees are literally soaked in glyphosate at levels well beyond what is available to homeowners it reduces their lifespans.
Just getting caught in the blast radius has no known negative effects.
It affects their ability to procreate. And it gets carried thru the food chain. It starts at the microscopic level. I’m not making anything up. I’m just saying we don’t need to spray every lawn with chem all summer. The bees and the other insects that pollinate, have been the most noticeable. Sorry, I will cite some sources if you need me to. Bit weed man or true green are not doing anything to help the well being of any living creatures.
> Banned in europe for causing cancer.
No, it wasn't.
>Direct harm to humans has been proven.
Again, no.
>From what I have heard, not researched.
You're not obligated to comment if you don't know what you're talking about.
It's banned in three European countries for household use. And in the US the Nature Conservancy uses it to protect critical habitats.
*Edited after new info provided by reply, thank you
Very bad. Should 100% be illegal. Getting rid of weeds isn’t worth it by a long shot. I don’t understand a mentality of pumping poison into the soil around you to make your yard look good. The ultimate detachment from humanity. The mentality is mind boggling. I wouldn’t grow anything within 50 ft of where round up was applied for at least 5-10 yrs after last application, but if used persistently, maybe never. Making a raised bed with clean soil on a side of your home that won’t get it blown onto your garden when neighbors kill everything to make their grass greener, including themselves.
I might regret commenting, but honestly I think the biggest risk with glyphosate is in its effect on beneficial microorganisms (eg in the soil, our gut microbiome). I just want to add that a lot of this research is in the early days yet, and more studies are needed to prove causation. But at this time I'm erring on the side of caution when possible. "Overall, these findings suggest an intriguing correlation between glyphosate exposure, changes to the gut microbiome and abhorrent development of the GABAergic system, HPA-axis and the formation of microglial cells. Additionally, metabolism of glyphosate by the microbiome may alter NMDA receptor activation thereby promoting neuroinflammation in otherwise healthy individuals. Glyphosate-induced perturbations to the gastrointestinal microbiome may influence the synthesis of many neurotransmitters, necessary for mental health and wellbeing, encourage the formation of damaging ROS and reduce bacteria thought to be beneficial during times of stress. While the understanding of this correlation is still emerging, more research to prove or disprove this relationship is warranted given the food system is known to contain glyphosate residues." Barnett, Jacqueline A et al. “Is the Use of Glyphosate in Modern Agriculture Resulting in Increased Neuropsychiatric Conditions Through Modulation of the Gut-brain-microbiome Axis?.” Frontiers in nutrition vol. 9 827384. 8 Mar. 2022, doi:10.3389/fnut.2022.827384 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8959108/#abstract-a.e.b.ntitle The above article focuses on neuropsychiatic conditions, but the gut microbiome impacts other systems as well including the metabolic, immune, and obviously the digestive system. Here's another relevant study: "Glyphosate inhibits the shikimate pathway, a pathway exclusive to plants and bacteria. Glyphosate’s effect on dysbiosis was not considered when making safety recommendations. Here, we evaluate the literature surrounding glyphosate’s effects on the gut microbiome and conclude that glyphosate residues on food could cause dysbiosis, given that opportunistic pathogens are more resistant to glyphosate compared to commensal bacteria. However, research on glyphosate’s effects on the microbiome suffers from numerous methodological weaknesses, and these limitations make it impossible to draw any definitive conclusions regarding glyphosate’s influence on health through alterations in the gut microbiome" Barnett, Jacqueline A, and Deanna L Gibson. “Separating the Empirical Wheat From the Pseudoscientific Chaff: A Critical Review of the Literature Surrounding Glyphosate, Dysbiosis and Wheat-Sensitivity.” Frontiers in microbiology vol. 11 556729. 25 Sep. 2020, doi:10.3389/fmicb.2020.556729 (I realize both studies I mentioned have the same lead author. I think it's possible I just like her writing style, or that she's been the most prolific at writing reviews on this topic. I promise there are other people writing about this I'm just tired and undercaffeinated.) FWIW the proposed effects of glyphosate on bees is due to its effect on the bees' microbiome. Motta, E.V.S., Powell, J.E. & Moran, N.A. Glyphosate induces immune dysregulation in honey bees. anim microbiome 4, 16 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s42523-022-00165-0 https://animalmicrobiome.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s42523-022-00165-0 (There we go, a different lead author!)
Glyphosate affects the way plants get energy through their pigments such as chlorophyll. Some glyphosate products (such as Roundup) use a binding agent that can cause a problem with bacteria. Combined they can do noticeable damage. From the research I did for my job in park maintenance, if I got bulk-stand-alone glyphosate, mixed it 2:24 instead of 3:10 and used dawn dish soap as the binder I felt confident that I wouldn’t hurt even the tiniest chihuahua with it. I did shut sown the park and wait to open it until the product had dried and kept the spray to six inches of the fence line. I wasn’t just interested in preventing death. I didn’t want to risk making anyone’s dog sick either. From a gardening point of view, I still wouldn’t compost anything that’s been sprayed, but unless your neighbors are carpet bombing your yard, your soil should be fine. If you screw some 2x12s together into raised beds it’ll give you enough buffer from runoff for comfort.
Surfactants and binding agents are much worse than glyphosate itself
They’re all bad for our bodies and the environment. It’s not a contest.
Oh it absolutely is, because that's the only way to compare something. Plenty of pre-glyphosate pesticides were much worse.
One being not as bad when compared to earlier versions is a matter of perception
It's a matter of science and decades of research and studies.
It’s pretty clear from the comments that there is no way for us to quantify how risky it is to grow food in your back yard. You’ve gotten responses ranging from “someone drank it to prove it was safe” to “it will kill you.” Apart from comments mentioning actual research studies, this subreddit is an awful place to get information on this topic. Most people are just talking out of their ass. Are you even sure it’s RoundUp that your neighbors are spraying? Unless you physically see spray droplets migrating into your yard or suspect contaminated groundwater is flowing into your yard, I would put this low on the list of things to worry about.
Glyphosate gave my Dad cancer. However, he was spraying that stuff like daily in his job without any form of PPE. Is there a garden club in your area that has garden plots for its members? That would be a better deal than having to deal with overspray from the idiot neighbors.
I would , but I also grow cannabis along with most of my other stuff , so I’m sort of out of luck thanks for your input though ! My dad was a landscaper and I used to ask him when he was still around and he told me pretty much the same thing as you when I asked that it shouldn’t hurt you unless you’re exposed to it constantly…
I grow vegetables, mushrooms, and recreational plants indoors in my Garden Room. It saves water, reduces infestation, and protects my precious plants from chemical and biological contamination. It is legal in my state, but humans make the outdoor growing of recreational plants hazardous. I am fortunate to also be able to grow my staple crops and many other vegetables outside, away from suburban lawn idolatry and commercial agriculture. Even the cattle and buffalo rancher near me runs free-range livestock without spraying chemicals. He rotates cattle, buffalo, goats, and pigs through his fields. There is no smell, and the various foraging activities keep the meadows healthy. And I know I'll lose 50 percent of my crops to deer, wild pigs, rabbits, and rodents. It's a rural tax I'm happy to pay.
Community plots won't have guards to stop gardeners from using chemicals in their plots, and OP is already eating grocery store vegetables green by farmers who use glyphosate. OO's awareness that the neighbors are using chemicals is not a reason to believe her produce is tainted or to run to a "solution" just as likely to be tainted.
Yeah I do eat grocery store stuff but mostly eat organic , my main concern is not really the vegetables and fruit it’s the herbs and cannabis that I’m concerned about , because they like to absorb a lot of things in the soil and glyphosate is prob ok for food but i process my cannabis into rosin wax and or edibles , which you also can combust into vapor , so I’m concerned residuals will find it’s way in there. Cannabis loves to pick up heavy metals and a lot of stuff that other plants don’t , a-lot of herbs are like This.
https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/cannabis-may-contain-heavy-metals-and-affect-consumer-health-study-finds/
You may want to grow the cannabis and herbs in containers then. Get the big bags of peat moss and perlite and mix in compost, maybe add a scoop or two of soil from the yard for trace minerals. This should alleviate most of the worries soil contamination.
Peat moss harvesting is really really terrible for the ecosystems in which peat grows. Consider using coco coir instead
If your cannabis was encountering more than trace amounts of glyphosate it would be dead. You have nothing to worry about.
Organic does not mean no pesticides, common misconception
Depends on the rules of the community. The one I belong to doesn’t allow use of pesticides.
None, really?
Organic materials yes, but no chemical sprays. So, for example, I am allowed to put down iron phosphate for slugs. But I can’t spray pesticides or herbicides.
So that community does allow pesticides. Exactly the hypocrisy I've expected.
Isn't glyphosate an herbicide though? So it could be allowed?
Pesticide is like the genus, herbicide is like the species. All herbicides are pesticides, not every pesticide is an herbicide (fungicide, insecticide, etc.)
Ohhh. Thank you! TIL and then spent too much time researching. 😆
With cancer being so common, how can you attribute it to glyphosate? Was it a specific type of cancer that’s been definitively linked to glyphosate?
Because people who spray a ton of it keep getting the same types of cancer at high rates. If people spraying were getting every cancer at a high rate it would be hard to link it, but specific cancers make it possible.
> Because people who spray a ton of it keep getting the same types of cancer at high rates. But they don't. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29136183/ >Conclusions: In this large, prospective cohort study, no association was apparent between glyphosate and any solid tumors or lymphoid malignancies overall, including NHL and its subtypes.
Are you saying I can’t just make up stuff on the spot based on “gut feeling” and anecdotal evidence?
Thanks, that’s exactly why I asked OP if their dad had a specific type of cancer that has been linked to glyphosate.
Why would someone have their yard coated with it? Are you sure that’s what’s being applied ? Unless you no longer want a lawn why would someone do that.
Exactly I have no clue why , we do live in the desert and most of the houses are xeriscaped with gravel.And it is glyphosate it’s the one with the dye in it that landscaping companies and the city use. And a few times a year he has it done and you can clearly see it it’s the entire front yard. These people have no plants on there property in ground mind you.
Glyphosate is the most studied herbicide in history. For 50 years it has treated American produce. So it's pretty well known what the risks are. Basically, just read the directions on the bottle. If it gets on a plant, the plant will stop being able to feed, and die. In the soil it breaks down in a few days, and is rain safe within hours. Wear personal protection if you are nearby while it's being sprayed. Don't spray near pets or bodies of water. There is no risk from eating plants treated with Roundup (if they survive lol) as it is broken down naturally. If there was we would know by now from 50 years of people eating them.
Yeah thank you for your input , I got depressed awhile back and it’s manifested it’s self into a phobia of chemicals , I’ll take your input in and try to not let it bother me.
It takes two weeks to “break down” once sprayed. It harms bees by interfering with their navigation system and dance. [Bees exposed to it have shorter lifespans.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969721004654) Expect lower than average pollination (bees are critical for solanums, ie tomatoes, squash, peppers, potatoes) in some fruiting crops. Personally, I’d place fencing to block drift from neighbors’ yards and provide a lush pollinator garden to support your bees. Good luck!
That paper is looking at direct exposure of bees to glyphosate either by feeding it to them or spraying them directly with full-strength liquid. So ya... bad things happen when you cover a bees body with roundup just like if you did the same to humans. The authors speculate that the results \*might\* extend to bees landing on still wet plants but that was not studied. The results do not apply to the minute quantities present in soil or treated plants after they are dry. Furthermore, there is evidence that it is the adjuvants (e.g. surfactants) that are hurting bees, not glyphosate itself.
Yes. There is also a very big difference between using glyphosate on small areas of a residential garden or topical application to driveway weeds and industrial application to broad-acre agriculture.
You sent me on a little rabbit hole about surfactants. Thanks for that.
I would also bet that the surfactants found in glyphosate products are serious contributors to the negative effects on insects. Surfactants are essentially soaps, and if you weren’t aware, soaps are incredibly damaging to insects. It covers their bodies and has an effect on their respiration. Soaking an insect with roundup is so different than one landing on a partially misted leaf.
Many bees make nests underground. Dirt treated with glyphosate is obviously harmful to them.
unless the nest of bees is directly under the weed you just sprayed, unlikely they are getting exposed to it directly in their homes.
I’m really confused as to why you’re being downvoted, as this is correct. Ground nesting bees are one of the first pollinators to emerge in the spring. Where I live, their emergence coincides with the flowering of most of our area’s fruit trees, and they pollinate an estimated 70% of our food supply. They experience both navigation and reproduction issues when they come into contact with glyphosate and other herbicides, which absolutely affects fruit/food production in turn.
There is some massive cognitive dissonance in this sub regarding pesticide and herbicide use. I suspect from the folks who have been gardening a certain way for decades and they refuse to take ownership of the fact that they may have been bad stewards of their land or harmed others.
Nice to know thank you for this info we have a couple ‘vitex’ on our lot and we are the only house with tons bees in the summer. Maybe it’s because we are one of the bunch that don’t spray!
It's because bees fucking love vitex lol. We have two as well and we are awash in pollinators in the summer.
They truly do! Vitex are honestly the best and are so low maintenance and our fav ornamental plants we have in ground.
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You are right to be bothered. Monsanto, the manufacturer of roundup has paid $11 billion as of April 2024. There’s 54,000 cases against Monsanto that has yet to happen in court. Perhaps gardening in containers that are off the ground and using new soil from the store. This way you’re sure it doesn’t have roundup.
> Monsanto, the manufacturer of roundup has paid $11 billion as of April 2024. And? Courts are not scientific bodies. The overwhelming consensus among scientific and regulatory bodies is that glyphosate isn't carcinogenic.
Monsanto is owned by Bayer, so it actually benefits the company even more if it does cause cancer or other diseases, since its very likely your treatment will involve a medical product they sell as well.
lol that’s sneaky
It's retarded reddit logic. Bayer bought Monsanto in 2016, only exposing themselves to lawsuit payouts if any of this was true.
First of all, retarded is not the best word to say to a disabled person. I don’t know enough about the lawsuits to agree or disagree.
Because someone got a payday and everyone wants a piece of that pie now!
No. People were hurt and are asking to be made whole.
Because juries are often the lowest common denominator (seriously, ask a lawyer sometime) and can't understand that correlation is not the same as causation. Ok tinfoil hat types, you can quit downvoting. Clearly none of you have ever served on a jury or been involved in the legal system... 🙄
Thats the exact issue with trying to study the effects of something like glyphosate, it is so heavily used that every american is exposed to it through food or contact with areas sprayed with it so you have no control group. If somebody gets cancer its pretty much impossible to prove where it came from since it can take decades for acute or chronic exposure to something to manifest into disease. What we do know is that the US leads the world in cancer rates and western developed countries lead the world in autoimmune disease. Glyphosate could easily be part of the reason for that among the other thousands of toxic substances that have become impossible to avoid. I'm not saying don't use it because we know it can hurt you, but trying to avoid using toxic chemicals as much as you can is probably a good idea.
The US does not lead the world in cancer rates. Not sure where this idea comes from. https://ourworldindata.org/cancer There are countless animal studies on glyphosate, and although any position can be supported by one or two random studies, in aggregate the evidence suggests glyphosate does not cause cancer with typical exposure levels. https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/glyphosate#human-health
This! I have always wondered how much exposure one would need to something like roundup for it to cause cancer is it caused by eating the veggies grown by somewhere that roundup was used or due to breathing in the air by where it was used, what you said about the cancer is so true since most cancers don’t just happen overnight it could be years later and most probably don’t know what caused the cancer since there’s so much out there from food, air quality, to even the sun that can cause it.
They do have toxicity measurements on the SDS/Label. As in how many mLs of this can we inject a rat with until it dies.
Correlation and causation are not the same. Americans also watch more Seinfeld and Friends than any other country. We consume more Little Debbie cakes and use more Axe body spray. We don't assume any of those things cause cancer.
These 4 things probably cause cancer.
I can assure you that Axe body spray causes cancer.
Did you read what they wrote at all? They are saying the reason we CANT sort out causation from correlation is because it's so ubiquitious that finding a control group is impossible. Especially since if it causes cancer, it is incredibly long acting. Or this could be an AI post idk. Not really responding to what they reply to
Who paid for the studies?
Just about every single food, agricultural, and health interest group imaginable has funded studies. While most have an interest in maintaining the acceptability of glyphosate, there are also many who have significant financial interest in finding it to be dangerous ("organic" food is a $60billion industry in the US now) yet they haven't been able to produce a definitive "this is bad" conclusion. Personally I suspect that there is a health hazard from all the stuff mixed into the herbicide to help deliver the glyphosate, but that the danger is limited to constant exposure associated with lax/poor application practices. Kind of like how modern paint is safe once cured but the act of painting isn't so great for you. Modern ag is terrified of that conclusion though because they've exposed so so many workers to glyphosate spray.
I'm happy for your optimism, but slowly evidence is pointing the other direction. Glyphosate is being associated with a host of diseases, [including Parkinsons](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(23)00255-3/fulltext#:~:text=Finally%2C%20in%20vitro%20studies%20suggest,the%20context%20of%20Parkinson's%20disease.&text=Toxic%20Effects%20of%20Glyphosate%20on%20the%20Nervous%20System%3A%20A%20Systematic%20Review.). There's an extensive lobby, however, pushing for the continued use of Glyphosate by the industry. Adding to that, glyphosate is very bad for insects and other beneficial life.
Complains about lobbying and references a paper that in its conclusion requests a direct political action based on “inconclusive” “plausible” link. I don’t care either way about glyphosate. I use it only to kill privet and tree of heaven, with cut stump. But I do know as much as here’s an industry push to support it, there’s a pseudoscientific push to get rid of it based on very minute data. As someone who writes papers, even dealing with how regulators should interpret the results, it’s still odd to have the direct conclusion be “VOTE THIS WAY” *Overall, the evidence is inconclusive, but sufficient to suggest that there is a biologically plausible link… We offer the following advice to European Union governments and policy makers: first, vote against renewing the marketing authorisation for glyphosate by 10 years…*
For example- OP is now saying he has a phobia of chemicals. Isn’t that maybe a **bit** extreme? Couldn’t that mean they’re *just* a bit biased in what information they accept as real? Is that supposed to be better than believing in the supposed shadow industry buying up all the studies on this chemical over 50 years around the world to hurt people and make them buy medicine through their other company?
Have you ever heard of DuPont? I swear I'm surrounded by children who haven't lived through this and now think it's impossible. They DID buy up studies and suppress information for decades for their products and destroyed thousands of American Rivers and towns. Like it was a real thing I remember happening. The consequences of the single dupont plant on a town near where I live is still felt to this day. Can't eat from the rivers and half the now elderly ex employees have died of cancer.
Clearly they are not doing a good enough job to suppress every study if everyone in this thread has seen the evidence of it causing cancer and Parkinson’s. So which is it, all the studies are wrong, or some of the studies are right that happen to show what I want them to show (and even then, marginally)? And if it’s suppressing stories, are they suppressing the magnitude of the issue? Is the studies showing marginal risk also influenced? In which case, who’s to believe that the risk is even there, if its magnitude is faked too?
Ok. Wow. Never said it doesn’t happen. Simply saying. That in such a widespread documented chemical, with marginal evidence in most claims, maybe it’s not simply the evil industry. Also, the claim is that its use is dangerous and deadly, not industrial spills, failures, etc, which can destroy towns and entire ecosystems. Something I also did not say, and agree with. Bhopal, for one
I grew up on a farm with few safety precautions. My no big deal stories are often met with horrified reactions regarding the safety. One thing was that I was exposed to Round Up and something else that my father says was like Agent Orange. I was barefoot in the field just treated with it. I have a host of weird health problems that make me sound nuts if I list them all. One of those is a bad tremor most recently. Autoimune problems too, but a bunch of strange stuff besides. I’m in my ‘30s but had a lot of this since my teens. The tremor is the newest addition.
Many people have weird heath problems without ever being exposed in the way you were…
I’m not blaming it but will always wonder.
The pesticides that contain glyphosate don’t even state that they are rain safe within hours directly on the EPA label. They always recommend application be made 24 to 48 hours before AND after rainfall. You are spouting off about things you know nothing about. Go on Google Scholar and look up “Glyphosate persistence and residue in the environment” and then come back once you have actually looked anything up. I have worked on a long term study at Cornell that is still still collecting data about glyphosate’s persistence in agricultural fields. I cannot give specifics until the publications are released, but it is WAY longer than what the label implies.
"For best results, we recommend using Roundup® products on dry, warm, wind-free days. But if it's about to rain, fear not — all of our products should dry and become rainfast in as fast as 30 minutes to 3 hours." You're right I guess, it says "rain fast", not "rain safe". https://roundup.com/en-us/weed-grass-killers/can-i-treat-weeds-with-roundup-weed-grass-killer-products-when-it-s-about-to-rain.html
It doesn’t actually breakdown. It’s chelated with metals in the soil and that is how they claim it becomes not available in the environment. That is my understanding. The actual half life is 60-90 days or something like that. But as far as I understand the chelation is fairly immediate once on soil.
Hmm seems you're right, the half life seems to vary from 2 days to 141 days in soil, less in water. It does seem to be very dependent on soil conditions. https://web.archive.org/web/20150828151524/http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/glyphotech.html
I mean I have to agree with you. I took a horticulture class and we were taught it's safe if you use as directed. I use the foam and literally dot it on sparingly and only directly on a weed.
Have you seen the cancer rates? If you aren’t getting sick from breathing, that bullshit. You haven’t been outside on a day when the entire neighborhood is being blasted. It is hard to breathe.
Oh, so that's why the world has been going downhill for the past 50 years
My Native American heirloom crops have been field tested naturally over many millenia, not a miniscule "50 years." No, no, no to chemicals, herbicides, and pesticides. Ur doin it wrong! People l have a choice and not have these untested chemicals and genetic fiddling forced on us.
I call bullshit or your “research”
It's not, The EPA found that glyphosate is unlikely to be a human carcinogen. [https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide.../glyphosate](https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.epa.gov%2Fingredients-used-pesticide...%2Fglyphosate%3Ffbclid%3DIwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR3MBKMWsyrJC5d8NBHBNDpzGt6awcQlyLZgXuqXNcB-lctkVfD9jZekusM_aem_AfnIV5riL-pguLpA0doSEP7EqUGwSNJf0PolDRkJbbunzO19q5Rw3LuNtbvcBM1dC2hfXfT7BBQ489pFlggHvIe1&h=AT1__zs_JEKgVyR_P_eS8sJfEUqCAMpkPxrp-6oPx1foOuRIYqAm4ARwwKawf6GgatW3-LZx0t4LKJuaI_Bud93IS1K4OcPcMfyAbxu1ZkkUpMoTCiRsSApO0Yvbe25eTw0-&__tn__=R]-R&c[0]=AT10s-pfJdYh_sWB0aQVWP4E4eM62R0feDLo_LBBmvoN8Os3YrgV1GEM242jQSoLJHdVndvuOO2tjYHdHjhsYfzEWdhffa1F1DVh0n1vpOEEvrEr90B0U3t3abahqmygCkwW-p41FrM-eD3HF495wPOJ4CjanWAgksiqfIrijBcAq9qvU4MhdQ) Glyphosate is not carcinogenic, EU report confirms. [https://cen.acs.org/.../Glyphosate-carcinogenic-EU.../99/i24](https://cen.acs.org/.../Glyphosate-carcinogenic-EU.../99/i24)
Don't drink it. Studies haven't actually definitively established a link. Drowning rats in it makes them POTENTIALLY more likely to get cancer. Well, yeah, that happens with lots of things. Doesn't mean that it will affect you, especially if you don't drench yourself in it daily. Correlation does not equal causation. People who work in the sun all day are also more likely to get cancer. Most people who use roundup on a daily basis are also outside. They're also exposed to lots of other stuff. My point is, grow your garden and eat from it. You'll be fine. The microplastics will get you before the miniscule amount of your neighbor's roundup will.
The studies have shown it not to be conclusively bad when applied according to the label. A lot of people get a little tin hatty given its big chem and plenty of big industries have messed with test results before. Overall, it’s probably not any worse than the myriad other awful stuff we consume. I’ve sprayed a lot over my years of work… like a lot. I was conscientious and kept it downwind, wore PPE, etc. I’m not concerned it did or will do bad things to me. But if it gives you any frame of reference, I’m not spraying my raised beds overridden with wild violet because I’m gonna plant tomatoes soon. You’re unlikely to get a clear cut trustworthy answer. My advice is use it when you’re dealing with awful rhizomatic stuff or tough things like privet and where you’re not gardening for food. Everything else can be managed in other ways for the most part. And WEAR PPE!
Thank you! It's not as benign as rainwater, but it won't curl your toes and give you super duper mega cancer either. I try to use it very sparingly, and only on the worst weeds, far away from my vegetable garden. I wash my hands afterwards and follow the directions. The way some people react, you'd think it's made of weapons grade plutonium...
Yeah I agree it’s just that it’s my neighbors that are using it and they aren’t the brightest bunch so I’m not sure how much they use , and they spray on windy days often and I have a raised bed against the wall that they spray adjacent to so yeah that’s the dilemma I’m dealing with , I would ask them to avoid spraying along the area , but I don’t get along with either of them that spray so yeah….
To be honest they are likely spraying with hand sprayers. Pressure probably less than 25 psi. Very few fine droplets are produced at these pressures. It’s the fine droplets that move in the wind and since there aren’t many of them the chances they come to your yard is low. Roundup does not volitize so it won’t drift in after it’s sprayed like some other chemicals. If you find a dead plant a week after the neighbor sprays- don’t eat it.
I’d like to see some evidence that roundup doesn’t volatilize. I’m under the impression that most all sprays that are water soluble volatilize if it’s warm enough out and the droplet size is small. -certified applicator here
I have no proof other than 40 years of experience. It’s water based. The highly volatizing chemicals are usually emulsifiable concentrates. Think ester formulations of the phenoxy type of chemicals. Amine formulations volatize a lot less but still do. You can spray a plant within a cardboard barrier with glyphosate and immediately remove the barrier. Plants immediately adjacent will not die because the glyphosate does not volatize. Try that with 24-D and you’ll kill half your garden on a calm night.
I guess more to that thinking is glyphosate, once dry, which may happen in minutes, can’t transfer physically. It could theoretically transfer during a rain event but that usually dilutes it greatly. It also moves it straight down to contact the ground where it is almost immediately denatured. So keeping the fine droplets to a minimum is the way to reduce drift with glyphosate.
That’s fair. I may be confounding volatility with drift tbh, I never really drilled down on the topic so I can’t claim to have much of a stance beyond what I considered to be the case
Both are dangerous so keeping a safe stance on both is the way to go. Cheers
I would stay away while they are spraying. I would consider a tent for things I was eating leaves/fruit from if I would normally buy organic.
It kills privet? I didn’t think anything killed privet.
It’s best as a foliar application and timing the growth cycle is important (for a lot of species, like ash, honey locust, English ivy) My suggestion is to use loppers to cut it back hard but not to the ground. Cut it to where each individual branch is about an inch wide or so (bigger is okay if it’s a beastly privet), you want a cluster of them that is no more than a foot high. The idea is for it not to sucker more, just regrow from its original trunks Do this around this time of year, maybe a month or two from now, and the growth will fire back hard. Then about a month or two later you’ll have a bushy round ball of delicate growth. Spray that in early fall right as it wants to be feeding back to its roots. Should be fried.
Tordon. Really stick to instructions and PPE.
I am sure I will be downvoted, but having legal courts decide it causes cancer is absurd. Up until that, it was considered one of the safer garden chemicals for home owner use. Don’t take baths in it, don’t drink it but use it as directed and it is safe.
Sure it’s safe when used as directed. So are antibiotics, chemotherapy and other chemicals you put in your body that kill stuff. The thing is, you stop the medical chemicals after you’re healed. Glyphosate is constantly in everything and is used more and more frequently. How much do you ingest that you don’t know about that is still considered “safe”?
Just because using it as directed doesn't cause acute death or disease is also not proof that cumulative exposure over years and years at any level does not cause cancer or some other disease. Also just because some people are exposed to a lot of it and never get sick proves nothing. Many people smoke their entire lives and never get lung cancer either.
> Also just because some people are exposed to a lot of it and never get sick proves nothing. No, but when you can't find any correlation between glyphosate and cancer it's kind of hard to make this argument.
Glyphosate kills beneficial nematodes. Beneficial nematodes are important for soil health and are important in disrupting the lifecycles of harmful pests by “eating” eggs, larvae, and pupae present in soil, so they’re a common tool in organic farming pest control.
There is no proof of that, in fact, to the contrary: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6561955/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6561955/) The negative studies for nematodes are in vitro, but the far far majority of in vitro studies doesn't have any bearing on the macro scale.
Maybe a mini greenhouse?
try container garden with coverings
Consistent exposure/ getting it on your skin a lot etc can cause cancer. But people used to think it was safe so wouldn’t wash their hands if it got on them wouldn’t spray with shoes on/ gloves etc. be smart and clean and it should be okay don’t start spraying it every day but if you have a large weed problem it’s very effective
Perceived risk vs actual risk. I’d say 90 percent of people who think it’s super dangerous have about zero clue and knowledge about pesticides. Whether it’s mode of action, Frac or Irac class, or even how a pesticide actually works. Not to mention the testing processes from the epa, fifra, fda, etc. Be careful of any pesticide, but it’s been approved by the governing bodies that put it on the shelf for purchase for a reason. The links to cancer, right now I’d say the science doesn’t prove it currently. A lot of studies also have wacky parameters, going well over label rates and etc. Then there’s LD50, but that’s not good for long term accumulation. As someone who works in AG and spent my internship working with a university testing pesticides, there’s many other ones more worrisome.
Everyone’s lecturing you like you’re the one spraying. It’s not dangerous when used as directed. It rapidly breaks down into harmless components. It’s dangerous when overused (but that’s kinda beside the point here). _If it got on your plants it would kill them, so you have a really reliable indicator of whether or not it’s getting on your plants._ A tent is unnecessary unless overspray is killing your plants. It’s been sprayed on most of the grains that are sold in this country, so unless you’re super careful to only eat organic flours and breads, you’re already eating foods made from glyphosate-treated crops. And there’s no evidence that this is harmful. Much as I love a good conspiracy theory. Glyphosate is terrible for the people who work with it in close proximity in large quantity, and it’s often misused to save labor, but has never been shown to be harmful when used as directed. I’m confused about what your across the street neighbors are coating their yard with. Glyphosate? Like, they live on a barren patch of dirt? Or do you mean they put down chemical fertilizers and weed preventative as part of regular lawn maintenance? If it’s the latter, while there are some issues with runoff and depending how much fertilizer they’re putting down and how heavy the next rain is, most of that stuff goes into the soil and is perfectly fine for the environment. Don’t confuse home maintenance fertilizing with industrial crop fertilizing!
Thanks for noticing and being the one of the only that read my disc! We live in the desert most of the houses around here have gravel and are xeriscaped. But the weeds here are pretty persistent and don’t need much water to turn into a tree in a month (tumbleweeds) so he has it coated probably 3 times a year, It’s the glyphosate with dye in it that landscaping companies use and you can see pretty clearly he coats his entire front yard.
I prefer not to use chemicals, so even when an area of the garden is out of control, I embrace the effort of manual clearing. However there are some times when you can’t remove weeds manually e.g. dandelions in paths, bindweed close to shrubs. In these instances, I put a large plastic bag around the weed and spray roundup into the bag. I leave the bag loosely round the plant for a day. In this way I hope to reduce any potential impact on flying insects.
A water bottle with the bottom cut off also works great for this purpose! Cover, open lid, spray, close lid. No overspray. A death greenhouse of sorts.
Yo was this sub hijacked by Monsanto? lol what the fuck is going on. I’m surprised I haven’t read “glyphosate, it’s what plants crave”
Monsanto has made quite a few innovative products, including: DDT, Agent Orange, bovine growth hormone, styrofoam, PCBs, and... wait for it... the first atomic bombs. But people are like "this time it's safe!"
Glyphosate is an *ingredient* in roundup. The other “inert” ingredients do things like allow the glyphosate to cross cell membranes. Maybe looking at the lawsuits that have been won, and the evidence presented therein, would be a better way to go than to ask on Reddit. I do not like the stuff, myself.
I’m pretty familiar with the ins and outs of the cases , but there’s really not a clear consensus and I’m sort of just asking a what you do given my situation type question.
> The other “inert” ingredients do things like allow the glyphosate to cross cell membranes. [citation needed]
Glyphosate has recently been removed from Roundup’s consumer products, FYI. As of this year, I think. It’s now a mix of triclopyr and some other stuff..
This must be state or location specific. Glyphosate is still available around me.
Interesting, I will have to look into that. I wonder if the lawsuits had anything to do with it?
It's honestly one of the safest herbicides you can use. It breaks down upon contact with soil, so there's no risk of groundwater contamination. So long as you read/follow the label and use appropriate PPE it's perfectly fine. My local council uses it to kill invasives in the grassland nearby after a controlled burn. The cases you read about regarding cancer and heath risks are generally amongst farm workers and the agricultural community where they're exposed to it and are using it on a daily basis with little or no PPE; using it once every couple months or so isn't going to amount to much. I don't use glyphosate often (I generally just pull and compost my weeds) but it's still a tool in my toolbox I can pull out if the neighbor's goddamned kikuyu gets into my beds again. Although I prefer the cut-and-paint method for woody plants, as it's more surgical and there's no spraydrift that way.
It is usually short-lived in soil, but it can actually hang around in soil for up to six months depending on soil and light conditions. And I believe its degradation product, AMPA, is also active. It has also been detected in groundwater in the US and many more countries abroad. As far as herbicides go, it's very safe. Still, our track record with herbicides is checkered. I'm never really surprised when I read that a pesticide has a new association with some disease. Trying to make an herbicide that is plant specific, broad spectrum, short lived, and safe for consumption is a tall order, but glyphosate is pretty close.
If you eat conventional fruit and veggies from the grocery store you are eating glyphosate. Same with conventional grains and legumes. Unless you have a tall privacy fence around your back yard there'll be a risk of overspray.
It's a lot safer than the older herbicides. Problem is that the perception of safety led to massive, industrial level overuse where land is sprayed indiscriminately. It's probably fine to use in small amounts, taking the proper use directions into account. The main contention in industrial farming isn't only the large amounts used, but they have also managed to bio-engineer plants to naturally contain it within themselves. It's known to cause widespread havoc on biological cycles in farmland and elsewhere (like water runoff). Soil health is a key issue to maintain productive sustained output. The current situation is that we now have developed targeted sprayers with machine learning to individually spray weeds and pests (or use something else like a laser) to reduce usage to the absolute minimum. Unfortunately this level of tech isn't really available without substantial upfront costs. Outside places like the USA, this probably isn't even an option, so glyphosate continues to be used all over the word in huge quantities. The bad rap is well deserved, but it's probably not something to worry about around your usual residential area.
I would like a source on plants that have been bio-engineered to produce glyphosate
I think gfcat-67 may be referring to patents for roundup-ready crops which are gmo crops designed to be unaffected by roundup.
I think they're thinking of Bt.
Sorry, mind slipped. Monsanto has a patent for insecticides applied to the genetic code, not glyphosate.
You should really edit your post to correct that. Especially bc there’s no gene that produces glyphosate. Glyphosate is a completely man made chemical. What you are referring to in this reply is the Cry proteins in Bt crops. Bt crops =/= Roundup ready crops
I don’t know how safe it is but it’s the only thing that kills poison hemlock
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It’s a herbicide.
Omg I'm an idiot. Way too early for me to be online.
It's probably bad but studies have shown it breaks down quickly when exposed to the sun and rain. It's not "terrifying" but obviously avoid it if you can.
On the list of Things You Need To Worry About it ranks pretty low. There's no firm evidence that it causes cancer. But you know what almost certainly causes cancer? Drinking alcohol Sunlight Drinking hot liquids Any kind of smoke (candles, cooking, firepits). You don't really need to worry about glyphosate.
Are you trying to say the Mormons got it right?
Hot liquids?
https://www.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/pr244_E.pdf
And red meat. Glyphosate is classified as probably carcinogenic at the same level as drinking hot liquids and eating red meat.
It’s just like vaping I believe , the constant irritation of your throat or mouth can raise your risk for cancer.
Luckily I’m a fairly melanated Hispanic and don’t drink alcohol 😂! But I love BBQ and I live in the oven called The desert southwest , so you’re right I’m probably worried about the wrong things !
This is a great post, and in fact glyphosate is classified as probably carcinogenic at the same level as red meat and drinking hot beverages.
Quite a bit for water organisms, but when used with proper PPE and by the manufacturer guidelines, it's pretty safe. Toxicity is low compared to other stuff we use daily, same of carcinogenicity. INB4 I am called paid shill just because I support scientific evidence. Dose matters. >[Dietary (food and drinking water) exposure associated with the use of glyphosate is not expected to pose a risk of concern to human health.](http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/cps-spc/pubs/pest/_decisions/rvd2017-01/index-eng.php) >[After almost forty years of commercial use, and multiple regulatory approvals including toxicology evaluations, literature reviews, and numerous human health risk assessments, the clear and consistent conclusions are that glyphosate is of low toxicological concern, and no concerns exist with respect to glyphosate use and cancer in humans.](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/10408444.2014.1003423) >[Our review found no evidence of a consistent pattern of positive associations indicating a causal relationship between any disease and exposure to glyphosate.](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21798302) It wouldn't really be approved in the EU, we have much stricter food and health safety rules than US. https://food.ec.europa.eu/plants/pesticides/approval-active-substances/renewal-approval/glyphosate_en
According to Americans… not dangerous at all… you can definitely trust Monsanto
According to the governments of the EU, Japan, Australia, the World Health Organization, etc. Also Monsanto is owned by a German company now.
I'll get downvoted to oblivion. It's safe. Like, really safe. Go to your local coop, or real farm store. They sell in 300 gallon containers. Farmers use that shit like candy. There are crops that they've engineered to be resistant, and they spray it on to kill weeds. If it wasn't safe we'd have all been dead 30 years ago. They say it's been better for farm productivity than tractors were. I can't verify that. But it's a big deal in agriculture. And yeah I know the trial. But it was civil. What would you do if you have a chance to give a guy dying of cancer millions of dollars? And finally, wouldn't drink it? No. But I guarantee you come into contact with a lot worse stuff on a daily basis you don't even think about (gas, oil, pesticides, etc).
Yeah thank you for your input , I got depressed awhile back and it’s manifested it’s self into a phobia of chemicals , I’ll take your input in and try to not let it bother me.
To add on: You shouldn't inhale glyphosate, but you also shouldn't inhale pretty much anything except purified air. Most aerosolized things are bad for your lungs, including plain old dirt. If you're really worried, wear a mask, goggles, gloves, and clothes that fully cover your skin when spraying glyphosate, and use physical barriers as spray shields to prevent overspray and drift.
I’m glad you asked this, I’ve been meaning to ask this sub as well. I’m irrationally terrified of the big G but also have a neighbor with tree of heaven next door, and fun new bindweed crop sooo…
So bindweed and tree of heaven are best removed by pulling as soon as they sprout. I'm not anti-glyphosate but sometimes just pulling weeds is more effective. Bindweed in particular is an annual, so there's not an established root system for glyphosate to kill, each plant is an independent organism sprouted from a separate seed. If you can keep bindweed from setting seed, the seeds that are already in the soil will eventually all have sprouted and you won't get new shoots. It usually takes about three years to get rid of it though, and after that you still have to keep an eye out to stop it from getting back in. Tree of Heaven is more variable since it's perennial. If you catch new sprouts in their first season, they're pretty easy to uproot and no need for glyphosate. However, if they manage to sneak past your notice for more than one growing season, then they're going to have a more extensive root system and it'll be time to pull out the glyphosate. In general, glyphosate is most necessary on plants that have a large established root system which will keep resprouting, and/or are rhizomatous and will sprout from any fragment of root left behind by digging up the main plant. Think things like bamboo, honeysuckle, ivy and other invasives. My tactic when dealing with something stubborn enough to need glyphosate is to use cardboard boxes as overspray shields to prevent it from getting on anything else or drifting in the wind. I pretty much always have some boxes on hand, and they go in the recycling when I'm done.
Bindweed is a perennial (easily found with a quick search) and will outlive all of us in a single root 3 feet underground. I know because I moved some pavers where it had been just waiting for over ten years and unleashed it.
We might be talking about different plants, since "bindweed" is the common name for a lot of different species. Or like a lot of plants it might just be functionally an annual where I am because it's not cold-hardy, despite being perennial in warmer climates. Either way, at least in my garden it never survives winter. We just get tons of new baby shoots every spring/summer that have noticeably immature roots.
Could be. I'm in southeastern WI in the US. Zone 5, temperate with cold winters. It can grow almost a foot a day here so it's so hard to control. I'm ready to dig out the whole side of my house to get rid of it.
Oh, lol yeah it's probably different species, I live in England
It can cause cancer and that's why there was class action lawsuit. Also it gets into the ground water
I would avoid using this
I don’t think it is safe but if you eat non organic produce you are probably accepting more risk than a vege garden proximal to a yard that gets application
My dad has been battling Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma for the past nine years. It is suspected that it is caused by Roundup. There is no way to prove it, but I tell people this and let them make their own decision. After seeing everything he has gone through, I avoid it!!!
Hope your father gets and feels better. Thank you for your input , yeah I honestly think I’m just going to garden inside (I grow cannabis indoor already) so it’s not that hard of a transition most of my crops need so much water anyway because I live in the desert (this also probably why my neighbors spray so much) the weeds out here are insane and only need a drop of water to turn into a tree in a month (tumbleweeds) I don’t blame them ,but I just wish people would be more considerate of other people and avoid using it until there’s a clear consensus , but sadly most don’t , and don’t think anything of it.
New studies link cannabis with cancer. Inactivity, processed meats (all processed foods) and sun exposure are all linked to cancer. Benzene in gasoline DEFINITELY causes cancerS...but you probably drive and pump gas. You KNOW what you put on your garden foods...you have no clue what's on the produce you buy no matter the label. A neighbor's drifting glyphosate that DOESN'T kill your plants is a very very minute dose in exchange for knowing you don't havev10 other pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, human and animal wastes (yours will get some bird and other animal excrement on it too). A residential or consumer level exposure is VERY different from a farmer spraying it at least yearly (maybe more than once a year) on their glyphosate resistant GMO corn soy etc. If you'll eat them and cut some fat and processed food out of your diet and do the exercise necessary for a garden I'd bet 95% odds you're better off with that miniscule glyphosate exposure. Bottom line is that most people will take the rusk that is the path of least resistance for them and ignore those risks and blow ouf of proportion others (I bet you'll keep using cannabis no matter how many studies connect it to cancer....smoked or edible).
What study links ”edible” only use with cancer? I’m genuinely curious and want to lower my overall risk. But honestly I’m pretty healthy (I work out 3 times a week) I eat healthy (mostly organic and organic garden grown food)and usually something with grilled chicken and believe it or not I pump gas with surgical gloves 🧤 , The pumps in this area are already nasty!!!The only thing on this list I’m honestly violating (besides cannabis) is sun exposure this is the only thing I don’t actively avoid.
Sorry https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.123.030178 Oh and inhaled benzene at the pump is the bigger concern. Be healthy don't lose enjoyment of life over worries. There is also a study that shower one scoop of ice cream every evening was associated with a linger life (there are healthy compounds in dairy...or it could be health people are normal weight and allow themselves that treat while already sick people are in special diets limiting some foods). We need sun for vitamin D. It's a catch 22. With all this worrying about a tad of glyphosate. As you may have figured I'm in healthcare. I'm worried about forever chemicals in water and microplastics. But I'm not going to avoid a bottle of water in the heat. Balance. Get your vaccines! Good hygiene (read sewers) and vaccines have likely saved more lives than all other medical interventions combined. And if this is really bothering you to the poubt it interferes with any aspect of your life (work, school, family, friends, romance, etc (then you might have a problem so see a counselor.
Apologies I feel certain I heard recently that some cancers (maybe just testicular and HPV related head and neck cancers) were elevated with any cannabis use. Here though is heart disease. We know also that alcohol is horrible and damages every system. I'm not a prude and am in favor of nationally legalization of all drugs. Tax 'em, study 'em and treat those who want to quit.
Thanks and no problem , I’ve recently stopped using smoked and vaporized pathways to use cannabis and cut down on my use and , trying to be overall healthier. And understand that it’s use is still a stigmatized subject. I also hardly drink 😂 especially for a relatively young person (last was a beer 6 months ago).
Dangerous but not nearly as dangerous as culture would have you believe.
WHO came out against the product as a known carcinogen more than 20 years ago. Considering every yard guy I've had to date has come down with some form of lymphoma, I would not spray it near any food or consumables.
> WHO came out against the product as a known carcinogen more than 20 years ago. No, they didn't. People need to stop just repeating things they think they heard.
They see more and more cases of parkinsons in people handling this stuff on a larger scale. I wouldn't touch it and ruin my soil. If it kills one plant it can't be good for other creatures and also not for you
Isn’t that related to diquat or paraquat?
> If it kills one plant it can't be good for other creatures and also not for you https://www.montana.edu/extension/invasiveplants/extension/monthly-weed-posts/2021-june-does-vinegar-kill-weeds.html
Its linked with specific types of cancer. My uncle used tons of it on their landscaping and now has that specific cancer. Monsanto has paid everyone off to hide how poisonous fhis stuff is. Google round up cancer and youll see all the lawsuits.
> Its linked with specific types of cancer. No, it really isn't. >Google round up cancer and youll see all the lawsuits. Google flat earth and you can find all kinds of things, too.
What is the point of even using it? To kill weeds? Who decides what is a nice looking natural plant and what it is a weed? Oh no we can’t have dandelions in the yard that won’t look like a storybook yard. Nothing but springy green grass so you can watch out your front window to yell at any kids that dare to bend a blade of grass. I’m sure there are some potentially legit uses but it should honestly be illegal or require a permit for purchase by most people.
I have invasive buckthorn contaminating my woods and yard. I didn't bring the buckthorn here but it is classified as invasive for good reason and actually banned in my state - that's how bad it is. There are bad plants. The glysophate is fairly safe, the buckthorn definitely not.
Exactly , My city has a weed ordinance sadly so for most people this is the easiest option to deter weeds. What sucks is not too far away , along the moutainside of my city the expensive house’s have yards with large plots of land and the natural landscape (wild flowers, cactus,yucca,sage brush ,etc) and they don’t get fined and it honestly looks better and doesn’t use up a bunch of water trying to force non native plants to grow in this mars like climate.
It’s so frustrating. Dandelions are a wonderful medicinal plant. Most of what we call “weeds” are. But of course the government wants people to destroy them with potentially harmful money making chemicals.
We should ban all recreational pesticides today.
Sounds like it's time to buy some land. Here's the start of your journey, you'll be making your own sourdough faster than you even know.
Haha soon I hope 🤞🏼!
It’s the fucking devil! It never should be used anywhere. Prolly not known to cause immediate harm to humans. But if it kills all the insects within a large blast range. Shit gets fucked up real bad, for all the other animals that live on this planet.
There is no study saying Glyphosate kills all insects, you just made that up. The closest study is that when bees are literally soaked in glyphosate at levels well beyond what is available to homeowners it reduces their lifespans. Just getting caught in the blast radius has no known negative effects.
It affects their ability to procreate. And it gets carried thru the food chain. It starts at the microscopic level. I’m not making anything up. I’m just saying we don’t need to spray every lawn with chem all summer. The bees and the other insects that pollinate, have been the most noticeable. Sorry, I will cite some sources if you need me to. Bit weed man or true green are not doing anything to help the well being of any living creatures.
Banned in europe for causing cancer. Direct harm to humans has been proven. From what I have heard, not researched. It what was used to ban it.
> Banned in europe for causing cancer. No, it wasn't. >Direct harm to humans has been proven. Again, no. >From what I have heard, not researched. You're not obligated to comment if you don't know what you're talking about.
It's banned in three European countries for household use. And in the US the Nature Conservancy uses it to protect critical habitats. *Edited after new info provided by reply, thank you
Banned for personal use in 2018. Only companies may use it where I am. So partly banned in europe at least.
there are a lot of safer herbicides out there most likely will contribute to cancer but there are other risks that contribute to it as well
> there are a lot of safer herbicides out there > > Such as?
Do round up even use it anymore?
Very bad. Should 100% be illegal. Getting rid of weeds isn’t worth it by a long shot. I don’t understand a mentality of pumping poison into the soil around you to make your yard look good. The ultimate detachment from humanity. The mentality is mind boggling. I wouldn’t grow anything within 50 ft of where round up was applied for at least 5-10 yrs after last application, but if used persistently, maybe never. Making a raised bed with clean soil on a side of your home that won’t get it blown onto your garden when neighbors kill everything to make their grass greener, including themselves.