On Monday, August 20, 2018 at 7:47:23 AM UTC-6, Norman Wells wrote:
On 20/08/2018 13:51, devnull wrote:
On 08/20/2018 05:47 AM, Norman Wells wrote:

No, neither do I.Â* The default position is that it's safe.Â* Just as
the default position is that your mobile phone is safe.

The jury is still out on cell phones so I'm on the fence on that issue.

Fine. Come back when you're rational.

However, before takeoff, I assume my airplane is unsafe...which is why
prudent pilots do a pre-flight check.

And I also assume farm chemicals that kill anything are unsafe for me
too.

No, you can rest easy. That's been tested to exhaustion for you.

Â* BT corn? You'd have to put a gun to my head to get me to eat that
crap.Â* Though gut microbiome science is just emerging, I suspect in time
my distrust of farm chemicals and GMOs will be vindicated.

Of course. Gut microbiomes will save the day.

How they grow more crops, though, is another matter.

I strongly believe someday humanity will regret polluting the soil and
water with all this toxic crap.Â* Sadly it will be too late if you want a
clean environment.

No, not so. All herbicides and pesticides have a certain persistence in
the environment. They have to in order to work. 70 years ago, in the
infancy of synthetic pesticides, when there was very little in the way
of regulation and the dangers were largely unappreciated, some
pesticides and herbicides that were used had very high persistence,
particularly the organochlorine insecticides like DDT that could persist
for years. These have all been banned for decades.

Any more recent agrochemicals have to have rigorous studies carried out
on them to determine how they are metabolised in animals, ie how they're
broken down, what into, and how they are excreted, and similar studies
have to be effected in soils.

You can see some facts about glyphosate he

http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/arch...tech.html#fate

Half of it in soils disappears in 47 days. It does not accumulate in
the environment. It does not accumulate in the body. It is not
building up problems for the future.

We've already polluted the oceans with mercury and most of us have
stopped eating mercury-laced ocean fish. No one disputes that mercury is
a toxin but maybe that's because there are no corporations profiting by
spraying it on the environment?

No-one in the agrochemical sector or farming community sprays mercury
anywhere. Nor, as far as I'm aware, have they ever done so. It
accumulates in the environment because it is an element that can neither
be created nor destroyed. Organic compounds like glyphosate are
different entirely.

Look up CERESAN and LEYTOSAN...mercurial seed treatments used in the 1940s and 1950s.
Farmers were not to inhale them and were required to use masks BUT many farmers
used them without these protective devices.
As a kid I remember them well and after shovelling treated seed we would blow
our noses and the nasal discharges were pink or purple from the chemical treatment.
Its a wonder than we lived such long lives after the dosages of mercurial
compounds we were exposed to.
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