Talk:Roundup (herbicide)

Add John E. Franz

I believe Franz is credited with inventing, or first synthesizing Roundup. He should be acknowledged. Nantucketbob

Whoever added the following

"A Swedish survey-based study found a non-statistically significant association between glyphosate and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, although this study did not provide a control for exposure to other pesticides and demonstrated no dose-response relationship"

Do you realize this sentence is essentially meaningless or worse it is potentially confusing. Essentially "non-statistically significant association" means no link. If no link why add information about a failed study? ThereIsNoSteve 02:10, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Another user added the reference to the study. I wasn't bold enough to delete the reference, so I clarified it. The same goes for the "genetic damage" study.

When editing don't be afraid to be bold. If you think an edit might be controversial, explain what you are doing and why on the talk page. Also, it would probably be helpful if you created a user name for yourself. ThereIsNoSteve 02:29, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I'll be more bold. ThereIsNoSteve

Note to 192.55.20.36

192.55.20.36, thanks for your contributions to this article. One request: Please use the Show Preview button rather than the Save page button to review your edits onscreen. One change in the document history rather than twenty makes it much easier for the rest of us to follow your contributions. If you nonetheless end up making more than one edit, please describe your actions in the Summary field. Thanks. -- Viajero 10:37, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Safe as salt?

Regarding the line:

While glyphosate iteself is less toxic than table salt

Is this true or is this Monsanto marketingspeak? -- Viajero 10:47, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, ditch the salt line

I agree. This table salt comparison is extremely biasing. I was reading this article mentioning kidney and reproductive damage, but I couldn't find that mentioned here or any further source regarding kidney and reproductive damage. http://www.epa.gov/safewater/contaminants/dw_contamfs/glyphosa.html

this article has been subject to heavy lobbying by monsanto, in fact they themselves were sued in New York state for using that line in their advertising, and while everyone seems gung-ho to use all monsantos own information on their own product for this page, it only has partial value, and now we even see they had scientists they paid being indicted for fraud and going to prison...83.78.187.33 22:04, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Resistance to Roundup

I've noted that the article poison-ivy cites the fact that Roundup doesn't seem to affect poison ivy - how is this possible? I thought Roundup was wide-spectrum? -- Natalinasmpf 23:05, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Plants with waxy leaves, such as lily of the valley don't absorb roundup too well. Roundup enters the plant though the leaves, not the roots. BigE1977 02:52, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Many dicotyledons (buttercup, blackberry, hawthorn, gorse, broom) seem to have more resistance to glyphosate compared to grasses ( monocotyledons ). Has something to do with absorption. If you mix in a little urea, in my experience, it is far more effective and quick. They actively take it in. I use it mainly for a "cut & paste" method in natural re-vegetation work (a modified Bradley Method of Bush Regeneration ) in Tasmania (blackberry, gorse, hawthorn, rose briar, broom etc etc etc). This reduces the actual amount used (and subsequent bad effects of surfactants on amphibians etc) to the amount that can be soaked up by a cut stump (do it within 30 seconds of cutting). -- meika 20 Oct 2005

Resistance to glyphosate in on the rise in California's Central Valley. A few year ago the number of acres impacted was up to a couple hundred.

How to add a page with a similar name?

I was going to add a quick skeleton writeup of the Roundup Issue Tracker, but don't know how to do that .. they both 'deserve' the name "Roundup." How would you go about separating the two?

Several comments re: Roundup article

Several comments follow:

1. Most of the references listed in the text are not included at the bottom of the page.

2. The Roundup website in the External Links is only for marketing of residential use products -- there no useful information there other than advertising. However, on the corporate website, there is quite of bit of technical information about Roundup and glyphosate. This would be a good resource to include in the External Links: http://www.monsanto.com/monsanto/layout/sci_tech/crop_chemicals/scipubs.asp

3. The statements "Glyphosate residues have been found in strawberries (Cessna & Cain, 1992), lettuce, carrots, barley (U.S. EPA, 1993), and fish (Wang et al., 1994, Folmar et al., 1979). Glyphosate residues persisted a long time after the glyphosate was used; for example, lettuce, carrots, and barley contained glyphosate residues at harvest when planted a year after treatment (U.S. EPA, 1993). " require some explanation. All of the cited studies were conducted to deliberately determine the effects of glyphosate on the plant or animal. For examle, it is not surprising that residues were found in strawberries that had been sprayed with Roundup -- the study was designed to study the translocation of glyphosate throughout the plant. The Wang and Folmar studies were laboratory studies to determine the toxicity to fish -- of course there will be residues in lab tests -- this doesn't indicate that residues are found in fish in the environment. In the lettuce, carrots, and barley study, radiolabeled glyphosate was applied to plants, and the radiolabeled carbon was tracked for a few years -- this is a study the EPA requires. The "residues" noted in the EPA report were the individual carbon atoms that had been metabolized by the plant and soil and then taken up by the next year's crop. The statement about "residues" is not scientifically accurate -- just check the EPA reference that is mentioned (but not included in the references).

4. While a researcher (not cited) has reported that the surfactant in Roundup (POEA) has been found to be toxic to tadpoles, the results aren't relevant since the tests were conducted at concentrations much higher than would be found in the environment, and were conducted to mimic an illegal (off-label) use. Monsanto has provided a scientific review of the article making the allegations (which is not cited, by the way); this review is included at the website in point 2 above.

Roundup Illnesses

I find it highly questionable that Roundup is the third-leading cause of pesticide illness in California. I would expect that restricted materials; products containing ingredients such as organophosphates, carbamates, methyl bromide or metam sodium; Category I (labeled "Danger") pesticides; insecticides would dominate. I have been involved in agricultural pest control in various capacities for about 15 years and have never heard of such a thing. Roundup is generally considered a very safe product. I believe the health risks in this article are much overstated. If motivated, I may check the CA EPA DPR website. They are the definitive source for illness data in California. Ozdog 13:20, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, I have authoritative proof from CA EPA DPR. http://www.cdpr.ca.gov/docs/whs/pisp/2003spec_pest_type_illness.pdf I have deleted the reference from the article. Ozdog 13:49, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing that. I thought that was bunk also, but I didn't have the technical background to back up my assumption. kenj0418 15:12, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

These types of statistics seem to be broadly used, i think part of it stems from the very high level of use of roundup compared to many more acutely toxic things, plus eye-related incidents i am assuming are what notch that figure up. 83.78.187.33 22:04, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Is Monsanto endeavoring to better understand the potential dangers of surfactants? If some surfactants - such as the one used in RoundUp - are thought to be environmentally hazardous, will Monsanto look for safer alternatives? I contacted Monsanto about an independant study that was done on frogs, using the surfactant in RoundUp, and they responded with a refutation of the findings and included additional marketing-type information on why RoundUp is safe.

--Papaver S 18:21, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

well it sort of goes like this

There is Monsanto info, and some of it is good, yet some of it is bad, and they have incidents of scientists heading to prison for fraud. It sort of goes like this, every once in a rare while someone manages to get some funding to do a study thats not monsanto backed, it maybe comes up with some info not so flattering of the product, monsanto slams the study in any way they can with their multi-billion dollar power. Sometimes they are right, sometimes they however are not right. Really all we can say is that this product was a good step up from DDT and agent orange and a step in the right direction towards lower toxicity to humans and mammals and their habitats and health, when someone needs to use a weed killing type of technology that is chemical based, so we can thank monsanto for their improvement...it is however, by no means the perfect product & technology...yet they have "bet the farm" on this product and their roundup ready GE tech so they are loathe to acknowledge any problems with the product...So the one thing we can be sure of is that if anyone has a study showing a problem with the product, Monsanto will have a half dozen saying they were false, maybe they are correct in denouncing the unflattering studies, maybe not, just depends, anyways there is no way the product is going to be banned, even if it shows conclusive harmful reproductive effect to humans under present conditions of use and environmental & water concentrations, and really the only thing that will be getting monsanto to design a new and further improved weed killing technology whether chemical based or not, is weed resistance to roundup which is occuring and will slowly continue to increase in occurence, or someone else designing a better even less toxic product and technology...thats what will force them to improve..also, just slightly, the increasing prevalence of organic/bio farms and demand from consumers for non-chemical produce and foodstuffs will force them to better their technologies to non-toxic forms, this demand is small though, and mainly only from certain percentages of the educated classes and varies according to region so has far less impact than will weed resistance & new competitor inventions 83.78.187.33 22:04, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Ttguy

make good edits on the glyphosate page and we will bring them over here, we have no problem with that. Just dont vandalize this page Ttguy...if you have a problem with the page bring it to the talk section. With now detailed references for everything it is immune to your style of vandalism. You simply have to bring in fresh information and study results instead...there is plenty out there...we want an accurate comprehensive document, what this page really needs is more information on positives of roundup such as yield comparisons or information on soil conservation from using herbicides vrs. mechanical weed cultivation etc. 129.132.239.8 19:05, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Recommend for Cleanup

This article gets very difficult to read towards the end and has multiple formatting issues. Anyone adverse to flagging it for cleanup? FienX 00:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC)