
USA lags behind EU, Brazil and China in banning harmful pesticides - QuickToBan
https://phys.org/news/2019-06-usa-lags-eu-brazil-china.html
======
agacera
Brazil's new administration already approved more than 160 pesticides in 6
months. So they are catching up quickly.

[https://g1.globo.com/economia/agronegocios/noticia/2019/05/2...](https://g1.globo.com/economia/agronegocios/noticia/2019/05/21/governo-
federal-aprova-registro-de-mais-31-agrotoxicos-somando-169-no-ano.ghtml)

~~~
xvf22
It's also conceivable that enforcement isn't as thorough. While China did
eventually raid the factories responsible for CFC-11, it took the
international community pinpointing where it was coming from.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/science-
environment-44738952](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44738952)

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wardogs
Pesticides are the ultimate culprits that harm human and all biological life.
Unfortunately things like plastic ban occupy mindshare. Unlike plastics
pesticides like Glyphosate get 'locked' into the body --- meaning your body
cannot wash them out through its usual means --- resulting in cancer and what
not.

~~~
feld
Microplastics do not wash out of your body...

edit: also glyphosate is not a pesticide

~~~
beatgammit
Glyphosate is absolutely a pesticide. It's an herbicide, which is a type of
pesticide.

And AFAICT, glyphosate doesn't pose a significant risk to humans in the
amounts people would normally be exposed to. It's really quite harmless.
However, it can become more harmful when mixed with other chemicals, but
honestly, the other chemicals are probably more harmful than it.

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oneplane
Because harmful pesticides are easy money and easy money trumps health. At
least, that is what everybody thinks when looking at the USA.

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ncmncm
One expects the US to be behind the EU, a place generally more concerned with
the welfare of its citizens than the US, where corporate profits are King.

But when we fall behind Brazil and China, too, alarm bells should be ringing
-- if they weren't, already, over US infant mortality soaring past that in
dozens of other countries, or life expectancy reverting to a persistent
downward trend.

You don't get declining life expectancy without really concerted mismanagement
and corruption at the top.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
China isn’t really a rule of law country, so they have the option of banning
things without really banning them (the law can be on the books but enforced
only very seductively that most people ignore it). I’m not sure about Brazil,
but in general it is very difficult to compare a developed country with a
developing one.

~~~
jimclegg
>China isn’t really a rule of law country

I don't know about that, slightly unrelated but I'm 4 times less likely to get
murdered in China than in the USA.

The population seems to adhere to laws against harming fellow humans better
than we do in the USA.

~~~
NicoJuicy
Nobody cares if you get killed in China. They need to pay less if you die then
if you're wounded. So they run you over again to be sure that you are dead.

Video surveillance isn't launching everywhere, because of corrupcy.

And they don't care about foreigners ( with something happens). Chinese
protects Chinese, no one else. They will also work with favors above law.

~~~
benj111
"Nobody cares if you get killed in China"

Whatever evidence you're using to support this assertion, I'm sure theres
equal evidence from any other country.

~~~
NicoJuicy
Here's an example, not the article that opinionated me in the past though.
Since that was more a discussion about Chinese "culture", it was an fictive
example there that happens regularly.

[https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2123499/chin...](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2123499/chinese-
driver-who-hit-nine-year-old-car-killed-her-avoid-high)

------
alkonaut
US lags behind rest of world in X, due to political inertia.

Don’t wake me up please.

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QuickToBan
Such pesticides and other toxic chemicals not only cause cancer, but they also
explain the increasing infertility in the West as explainable by germline
damage in both men and women. This should worry you a lot. Please refer to:

[1] Assessment of Glyphosate Induced Epigenetic Transgenerational Inheritance
of Pathologies and Sperm Epimutations: Generational Toxicology. (2019)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31011160](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31011160)

> The transgenerational pathologies observed include prostate disease,
> obesity, kidney disease, ovarian disease, and parturition (birth)
> abnormalities. Epigenetic analysis of the F1, F2 and F3 generation sperm
> identified differential DNA methylation regions (DMRs). A number of DMR
> associated genes were identified and previously shown to be involved in
> pathologies. Therefore, we propose glyphosate can induce the
> transgenerational inheritance of disease and germline (e.g. sperm)
> epimutations. Observations suggest the generational toxicology of glyphosate
> needs to be considered in the disease etiology of future generations.

[2] Environmental toxicant induced epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of
ovarian pathology and granulosa cell epigenome and transcriptome alterations:
ancestral origins of polycystic ovarian syndrome and primary ovarian
insuffiency. (2018)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30207508](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30207508)

[3] The epigenetic impacts of endocrine disruptors on female reproduction
across generations. (2019)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31077281](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31077281)

~~~
pkaye
So what is the safer alternative to Glyphosate?

~~~
QuickToBan
Organic (natural) pesticides tend to be safer. Unfortunately, USDA has been
doing a terrible job with their USDA Organic certification. It is firstly very
expensive. Secondly, it is no guarantee that glyphosate is not present. This
could be due to fraud or negligence. Third, it is subject to lobbying to
legalize nasty synthetic pesticides as being Organic. The USDA needs to step
up and do its job.

Meanwhile, I nevertheless advocate buying Organic. Use a warm solution of
baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) in which to dissolve fruits like apples and
others for 12-15 minutes. It helps dissolve a fair portion of the pesticides,
but is not a substitute for buying Organic. Refer to
[https://suppversity.blogspot.com/2017/10/nahco3-aka-
baking-s...](https://suppversity.blogspot.com/2017/10/nahco3-aka-baking-soda-
washes-all.html)

~~~
jcranmer
> Organic (natural) pesticides tend to be safer.

This is patently false. Natural pesticides and herbicides are almost always
more toxic to humans than synthetic pestices and herbicides, in large part
because minimizing human toxicity is one of the goals in the chemical research
programs.

~~~
dqv
What are some examples of organic pesticides that are less safe than
glyphosate?

~~~
jcranmer
Copper sulfate is one.

~~~
mehrdadn
Sorry, layman here, but in what sense is a substance with a name like that
"organic"? It neither sounds natural nor does it contain carbon to be called
organic in the chemistry sense...

~~~
jcranmer
This is "organic" in the sense of "approved for use in organic agriculture."
Which generally means "no icky multinational chemical firms that [average lay
person] is aware of had a hand in the manufacture of it."

~~~
mehrdadn
Oh I see, so like "organic" in quotes, not organic in the sense most people
would expect it to be organic (natural etc.).

~~~
oneplane
(anecdotal:) Most people all over the world think 'organic' when it's _not_
about organic chemistry or a list of 'approved' things or a label some agency
sticks on things that are considered 'organic'. Organic in the sense of
organic pesticides are the kinds of pesticides that you'd find in the wild,
without them being man-made. That doesn't exclude synthetic replication,
because if you can mass-produce that thing that was already there anyway,
that's a good way making it available for more uses. That said, some 'organic
pesticides' may be introducing an insect that is a predator to the insect you
are trying to get rid of. While a 'pest' in 'pesticide' doesn't mean just
insects, you usually have organic predators that don't harm your produce while
hunting the pest that does attack it.

Say you have a fungus that eats at your corn, maybe there is another one that
just eats that fungus but leaves the corn alone. Or maybe you have some insect
that eats your wheat, and some naturally occurring compound exists that is bad
for the exoskeleton of that insect; put compound (found naturally or
replicated synthetically) on the wheat, insects will be sad/dead/gone, there
ya go, organic pesticide.

Those natural, or, organic pesticides usually evolved with some specific
target in mind, while man-made pesticides are more like chemo therapy: kill as
much as possible without killing the produce we want. This has the downside
that killing as much as possible actually kills things we don't want killed.

