
Roundup found in 95% of studied beers and wines - oedmarap
https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/roundup-beer-wine
======
squift
Tsingtao has the highest glyphosate content of the beers tested at 48.7ppb.
That's 0.02254 mg per 16 ounces. You'd have to drink nearly 100 pints per
kilogram of body weight in a day to get to the 2mg/day EPA safe limit
recommendation referenced in the linked article. The article, and the US PIRG
report that "1 part per trillion" of glyphosate can stimulate cancer cells but
doesn't say what unit of measurement that figure is measured from.

Also consider PIRG's funding sources and biases. I'm absolutely for minimizing
the use of pesticides but, this is just not it.

[https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=49.7+ppb+of+16+ounces](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=49.7+ppb+of+16+ounces)

[https://uspirg.org/feature/usp/glyphosate-pesticide-beer-
and...](https://uspirg.org/feature/usp/glyphosate-pesticide-beer-and-wine)

[https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/u-s-public-
interes...](https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/u-s-public-interest-
research-group/)

[Edit: I missed the per kilogram of body weight part of 2mg/kg/day on the EPA
guidance]

~~~
mortenjorck
It's not just 2mg/day; it's 2mg/day/kg of body weight.

So a woman who weighs 110lbs (50kg) would have to drink 50 times that, or 5000
pints in one day to pass the EPA limit.

Obviously most people won't drink that in a year, and this article is fairly
useless for limiting itself to the easy-clicks topic of booze versus
industrial agriculture chemicals. What I think _would_ be interesting is to
look at, across an average diet, what one's _total_ daily glyphosate exposure
might be, against any relevant clinical information, but that's more of a
research paper than a piece of blog content.

~~~
tedmcory77
Whats the clearance rate? Does it store in fat? What is the dosage from other
things in the diet. Those are very important questions.

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ucaetano
The article is pretty misleading.

There is no substance that is absolutely safe at any level for humans. Even
water will easily kill you (over-hydration is a real risk, especially for
athletes).

FTA:

> _The EPA says glyphosate is safe up to 2 milligrams per kilogram of body
> weight per day, and Bayer, who now owns Monsanto, claims that its safety for
> consumption by humans has been proven by years of research. However, the
> World Health Organization 's International Agency for Research on Cancer,
> among many others, disagrees, and considers glyphosate a potential human
> carcinogen._

The three claims are completely compatible, the WHO isn't disagreeing, it is
simply listing as a potential carcinogen. This is actually less bad than
eating salami, which is actually a known carcinogen.

Regardless of the actual safety of glyphosate, the article is journalistic
crap.

And that's before we get into the actual amount of beer you'd have to drink to
ingest any significant amount of glyphosate...

~~~
markoman
Referencing the toxicity of water is a bit disingenuous, since the average
human body is 60% water or more to begin with. Glyphosate, on the other hand,
is a substance wholly artificial and foreign to the human body. Its only
logical that if the substance is capable of interfering with a plant's enzyme
pathway, said molecule can also have a similar role in animal hosts as well.

Surely each of us is carrying more than trace amounts of this substance,
unfortunately. Its used in grain crops as a pre-harvest crop desiccant,
although in a way to limit residue effects. The fact that France has banned
the herbicide, with other European countries considering similar bans, is
something I found interesting.

~~~
s21n
Glyphosate interferes with the shikimate pathway by inhibiting the EPSP
synthase enzyme. The shikimate pathway is not present in animals.

European Union follows the precautionary principle, that means it would ban a
substance if there's a scientific uncertainty about the substance's safety
(unlike US, where you'd have to prove that it's harmful). The problem is you
can never be 100% certain about any substance's safety. And it's quite easy to
convince the politicians that the safety concerns are bigger than they really
are by using bad science and aggressive lobbying. Even so, the France's
decision to ban glyphosate was very controversial in EU.

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standardUser
I wish they could have included more craft beers or smaller wineries. I don't
drink the mass market stuff, in part because it's a given they will engage in
worst practices if it saves half a penny.

Peak Organic IPA was the one microbrew they did test and it contained no
glyphosate. It's also a really good beer.

~~~
kingnothing
I doubt it matters -- all the craft breweries and home brewers are sourcing
malt from the same set of farms as the big guys.

~~~
standardUser
That just sounds like a cynical thing to say, not a fact backed up by
evidence.

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s21n
This is an example of a very bad science that should never be published.

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atomical
If there was actual proof we wouldn't be reading about beer on a site that
manipulates browser history so you can't use the back button.

~~~
lucasmullens
Bad web dev practices may hint at a site being unreliable, but it's a bit
ridiculous to assume something is false because of it.

~~~
adrianmonk
I absolutely agree it's not proof.

However, I'd bet it's not statistically independent either. If you assume that
submitters to Hacker News often put effort into selecting well-behaved web
sites, and if you assume that legitimate news stories are carried by a wide
variety of outlets, then it skews the odds in favor of the story not being
legitimate.

