[APWG] Heavy use of herbicide Roundup linked tohealth dangers:study

[Wayne Tyson]

Lauren and all:

"Sublethal" is a dangerous word. What is sublethal? What does it mean? Does it mean that the organisms affected die immediately, in a few hours or days, or, say, 80 years later? That'll be five years for me. That'll be 80 years for your newborn. 

It is not necessary or desirable to kill all (or 99 percent of) weeds on any restoration project, but a good one will certainly cut their populations down significantly over the period of a few years as the restored vegetation becomes more and more mature. Healthy ecosystems resist invasions and work against weeds, and indigenous plants and other organisms keep them in check. 

WT
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Lauren Smith 
  To: apwg at lists.plantconservation.org 
  Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2013 12:17 PM
  Subject: Re: [APWG] Heavy use of herbicide Roundup linked tohealth dangers:study


  In addition to the sources that Gena sent, you might all be interested in Rick Relyea's work on non-target effects of Roundup on amphibians.  http://www.pitt.edu/~relyea/Site/Welcome.html  The Roundup tab has information about one particular study, but he has other interesting work in his publication list on how sublethal levels of herbicides can alter interactions amongst predators and prey or competitors.  





  On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 2:36 PM, Gena Fleming <genafleming at gmail.com> wrote:

    Well, this is quite a conundrum, isn't it?  I guess we'll never know for sure, but it's an interesting puzzle.   The following may or may not be deemed relevant to the discussion.

    This correspondence by Michael Surgan is a good (and brief) discussion of the problems posed by the presence of "inert" ingredients in pesticide formulations:

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1281320/#b1-ehp0113-a0657c


    In his reference section, he cites but does not provide a link to the New York lawsuit filed against Monsanto, so I will provide it here:
    http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/fraud.pdf

    Note that a similar lawsuit against Monsanto's false claim of Roundup being nontoxic and biodegradable was also successfully pursued in France.

    The article Surgan references by Richard et al. that explores the toxicity of some of the adjuvants in Roundup formulations is a worthwhile read; the abstract doesn't take too much time:
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1257596/

    Surgan's link to the EPA Reregistration Eligibility Document on Glyphosate doesn't work.  Here's an EPA fact sheet for that document:  http://www.epa.gov/oppsrrd1/REDs/factsheets/0178fact.pdf 
    ... with the relevant excerpt being (and bold emphasis is mine):




    Due to the presence of a toxic inert ingredient, some glyphosate end-use products must be labeled, "Toxic to fish," if they may be applied directly to aquatic environments.



    The fact that the EPA feels comfortable using terms such as "toxic inert ingredient" is enough to keep my head in a spin.

    best regards,

    Gena Fleming




    On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 10:18 AM, Wayne Tyson <landrest at cox.net> wrote:

      A possibility, sure, but not a probability. Certainly the "soils" were disturbed; they were cut slopes, creating ideal conditions for colonization by weedy plants. Yes, the "invasives" could have altered soil properties (one of the ways is soil-building), and in fact, it could have been the dead invasives that harbored the residues that killed the emerging native seedlings. 

      Conjecture can be useful, but  useless in the absence of a stated theoretical foundation or actual evidence. What is needed is good science that can confirm or reject the conjectures. 

      WT
        ----

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  -- 
  Lauren Smith
  PhD Candidate
  Reynolds Lab
  Department of Biology, Indiana University 


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