Tampons, sterile cotton, sanitary pads contaminated with glyphosate - study

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Except that that's not "The evidence", it is more "The outlier".

It would be ever so nice if we could declare things to be true after a single study hints that they might be, despite there being no known mechanism by which they could be true.

We could have perpetual motion machines in every home.

But we can't; because there is an important difference between 'the evidence' and 'one small bit of evidence that contradicts most of the other evidence'.

No matter how many times you quote yourself making a claim, it remains no better than it was the first time.

You're on thin ice, Bilby. What is outying is that the results of the study are not congruent with your understanding or your desires. The why..we can only guess, but I am guessing more about you than the study. This study has been subjected to serious review. There really is no reason to apply the labels you are attempting to apply to the study. It is your prejudice that is most obvious.

I would add that this section of the paper seems relevant:

...converging evidence suggests that GBH residues pose a particular risk to kidney and liver function. Hepatic effects of glyphosate were first observed in the 1980s, including its ability to disrupt liver mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation [6]. As glyphosate can act as a protonophore increasing mitochondrial membrane permeability to protons and Ca 2+[7], it can trigger the production of reactive oxygen species resulting in observed oxidative stress [8]. Elevation in oxidative stress markers is detected in rat liver and kidney after subchronic exposure to GBH at the United States permitted glyphosate concentration of 700 μg/L in drinking water [9]. Hepatic histological changes and alterations of clinical biochemistry are detected in rats consuming 4.87 mg/kg body weight (bw) glyphosate every 2 days over 75 days [10].

Here is the refernces section from the paper for those relevant studies:

6. Olorunsogo OO, Bababunmi EA, Bassir O. Effect of glyphosate on rat liver mitochondria in vivo. Bull Environ Contam Toxicol. 1979; 22:357-64.

7. Olorunsogo OO. Modification of the transport of protons and Ca2+ ions across mitochondrial coupling membrane by N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine. Toxicology. 1990; 61:205-9.

8. De Liz Oliveira Cavalli VL, Cattani D, Heinz Rieg CE, Pierozan P, Zanatta L, Benedetti Parisotto E et al.. Roundup disrupted male reproductive functions by triggering calcium-mediated cell death in rat testis and sertoli cells. Free Radic Biol Med. 2013; 65:335-46.

9. Larsen K, Najle R, Lifschitz A, Virkel G. Effects of sub-lethal exposure of rats to the herbicide glyphosate in drinking water: glutathione transferase enzyme activities, levels of reduced glutathione and lipid peroxidation in liver, kidneys and small intestine. Environ Toxicol Pharmacol. 2012; 34:811-8.

10. Benedetti AL, Vituri Cde L, Trentin AG, Domingues MA, Alvarez-Silva M. The effects of sub-chronic exposure of Wistar rats to the herbicide Glyphosate-Biocarb. Toxicol Lett. 2004; 153:227-32.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

What, like the PubMed study I linked to IN THE VERY POST OF MINE YOU ARE QUOTING?

Your quoted study didn't show that long term exposure to minute glyphosate is safe. It simply said short term minute expose wouldn't cause serious acute complications. Just because you have to ingest large quantities of something to kill yourself doesn't mean its safe long term in trace amounts. Do you think tobacco is safe since it takes most people decades of use to even have a chance at developing cancer?

I think your point is correct. There are a number of measurements out there. Let's look at some.

• Lethal dose (LD50) is the amount of an ingested substance that kills 50 percent of a test sample. It is expressed in mg/kg, or milligrams of substance per kilogram of body weight. Common name. Toxin. Lethal doses.
• Median toxic dose (TD50) of a drug or toxin is the dose at which toxicity occurs in 50% of cases. An upper bound to toxic dose can be LD50, if you don't know the TD50. But TD50 might also be much, much less than LD50.
• Effective dose (ED50) of a drug is the dose at which the desired effect occurs in 50% of cases.

In looking at policies, we might be interested in cost-benefit. The benefit would be related more to effectiveness measures. The cost would be related to toxicity measures. TD50 even would be too large when we consider ethics.

I mean, we as a society, would not want products at concentrations in the market and everywhere which cause cancer 10% of the time or to 10% of cells. We generally are looking for much, much smaller risk to fellow humans.

To put this in perspective and to personalize it a bit...

One of the factors in my mother's death was vitamin A toxicity. She never took a lethal dose of vitamin A. However, she did not have a 100% healthy liver, probably from taking medications her doctor prescribed, from lack of a lot of exercise, and from taking Tylenol. There also could have been some genetic predisposition to fatty liver, who knows. In any case, ingesting some amount of vitamin A for some time which was greater than the US RDA and possibly greater than thresholds advised against but not anywhere near LD50, resulted in a kind of saturation in my mother's liver.

After my sister realized my mother's health was poor--she saw hair loss and yellow/orange skin. She called an ambulance. My mother then was no longer taking vitamin A at such levels in hospitals.

Over the course of a year in hospitals, my mother's condition got worse, her liver could not process what it needed to. Ammonia built up in her body. She was comatose/in a coma. Her organs failed. She died.

 

[Juma]

Your quoted study didn't show that long term exposure to minute glyphosate is safe. It simply said short term minute expose wouldn't cause serious acute complications. Just because you have to ingest large quantities of something to kill yourself doesn't mean its safe long term in trace amounts. Do you think tobacco is safe since it takes most people decades of use to even have a chance at developing cancer?

I think your point is correct. There are a number of measurements out there. Let's look at some.

• Lethal dose (LD50) is the amount of an ingested substance that kills 50 percent of a test sample. It is expressed in mg/kg, or milligrams of substance per kilogram of body weight. Common name. Toxin. Lethal doses.
• Median toxic dose (TD50) of a drug or toxin is the dose at which toxicity occurs in 50% of cases. An upper bound to toxic dose can be LD50, if you don't know the TD50. But TD50 might also be much, much less than LD50.
• Effective dose (ED50) of a drug is the dose at which the desired effect occurs in 50% of cases.

In looking at policies, we might be interested in cost-benefit. The benefit would be related more to effectiveness measures. The cost would be related to toxicity measures. TD50 even would be too large when we consider ethics.

I mean, we as a society, would not want products at concentrations in the market and everywhere which cause cancer 10% of the time or to 10% of cells. We generally are looking for much, much smaller risk to fellow humans.

To put this in perspective and to personalize it a bit...

One of the factors in my mother's death was vitamin A toxicity. She never took a lethal dose of vitamin A. However, she did not have a 100% healthy liver, probably from taking medications her doctor prescribed, from lack of a lot of exercise, and from taking Tylenol. There also could have been some genetic predisposition to fatty liver, who knows. In any case, ingesting some amount of vitamin A for some time which was greater than the US RDA and possibly greater than thresholds advised against but not anywhere near LD50, resulted in a kind of saturation in my mother's liver.

After my sister realized my mother's health was poor--she saw hair loss and yellow/orange skin. She called an ambulance. My mother then was no longer taking vitamin A at such levels in hospitals.

Over the course of a year in hospitals, my mother's condition got worse, her liver could not process what it needed to. Ammonia built up in her body. She was comatose/in a coma. Her organs failed. She died.

I"m so very sorry for you and your family.
But this is mot an argument for anything. Your mother died from complications caused by a bad liver. Wether it was caused by vitamin A cannot be inferred from this post, and probsbly not in resl life either.

 

[Will Wiley]

I"m so very sorry for you and your family.
But this is mot an argument for anything. .

I think he is just pointing out that Bilbys argument is irrelevant. You can't draw conclusions about the long term effects of exposure to small amounts by looking at the study Bilby posted.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I think your point is correct. There are a number of measurements out there. Let's look at some.

• Lethal dose (LD50) is the amount of an ingested substance that kills 50 percent of a test sample. It is expressed in mg/kg, or milligrams of substance per kilogram of body weight. Common name. Toxin. Lethal doses.
• Median toxic dose (TD50) of a drug or toxin is the dose at which toxicity occurs in 50% of cases. An upper bound to toxic dose can be LD50, if you don't know the TD50. But TD50 might also be much, much less than LD50.
• Effective dose (ED50) of a drug is the dose at which the desired effect occurs in 50% of cases.

In looking at policies, we might be interested in cost-benefit. The benefit would be related more to effectiveness measures. The cost would be related to toxicity measures. TD50 even would be too large when we consider ethics.

I mean, we as a society, would not want products at concentrations in the market and everywhere which cause cancer 10% of the time or to 10% of cells. We generally are looking for much, much smaller risk to fellow humans.

To put this in perspective and to personalize it a bit...

One of the factors in my mother's death was vitamin A toxicity. She never took a lethal dose of vitamin A. However, she did not have a 100% healthy liver, probably from taking medications her doctor prescribed, from lack of a lot of exercise, and from taking Tylenol. There also could have been some genetic predisposition to fatty liver, who knows. In any case, ingesting some amount of vitamin A for some time which was greater than the US RDA and possibly greater than thresholds advised against but not anywhere near LD50, resulted in a kind of saturation in my mother's liver.

After my sister realized my mother's health was poor--she saw hair loss and yellow/orange skin. She called an ambulance. My mother then was no longer taking vitamin A at such levels in hospitals.

Over the course of a year in hospitals, my mother's condition got worse, her liver could not process what it needed to. Ammonia built up in her body. She was comatose/in a coma. Her organs failed. She died.

I"m so very sorry for you and your family.
But this is mot an argument for anything. Your mother died from complications caused by a bad liver. Wether it was caused by vitamin A cannot be inferred from this post, and probsbly not in resl life either.

Please read excerpt from post#57:

LD50 is one way to measure lethality which specifically we are NOT discussing in context and which we have said a couple of times is NOT being discussed in context. A chemical need not be lethal at concentration X to be harmful at concentration Y where Y << X. The ways in which harm is evidenced also need not be highly correlated to the ways in which lethality is evidenced in the LD50 chart. So the lethal concentration could create a coma and brain death where very low doses may harm some pathway in the kidneys or other organs. The lethal concentration may also harm the pathway in kidneys but the hypothetical brain death could occur first. Dose responses are also not linear.

An example is vitamin A toxicity. Vitamin A toxicity can include symptoms that affect the liver. For vitamin A toxicity you will observe some symptoms similar to jaundice because of liver dysfunction. You may observe yellow/orange skin as with jaundice. You may also observe hair loss. There are a number of other problems, too. Wikipedia lists 30 or so. However, if you look at an LD50 chart of vitamin A lethality you will see different kinds of symptoms such as unconsciousness, reproductive toxins, and convulsions.

LD50 of vitamin A is 2000, LD50 of glyphosate is 5600. However, a much lower dose than 2000 mg/kg of vitamin A over time can cause toxicity. For example, 1500IU/kg retinol can be toxic for children. IU for retinol is only .3 ug. The LD50 versus toxic dose is different by several orders of magnitude. To review:
LD50 (vit A) = 2000 mg/kg body weight
toxic dose (vit A) = 1500 IU/kg per day = 1500*.3ug/kg body weight per day = 1500*.3ug/kg body weight per day = 0.45mg/kg body weight per day.

So a single toxic dose (which would be done each day for quite a lot of days) is only ~= 1/5000th of the single lethal dose.

Also, thank you for concern and polite condolences.