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Roundup Weed Killer Could Be Linked To Widespread Bee Deaths, Study Finds (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: A new study [published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences] by scientists at the University of Texas at Austin posit that glyphosate -- the active ingredient in the herbicide -- destroys specialized gut bacteria in bees, leaving them more susceptible to infection and death from harmful bacteria. Researchers Nancy Moran, Erick Motta and Kasie Raymann suggest their findings are evidence that glyphosate might be contributing to colony collapse disorder, a phenomenon that has been wreaking havoc on honey bees and native bees for more than a decade. They hope their results will convince farmers, landscapers and homeowners to stop spraying glyphosate-based herbicides on flowering plants that are likely to be pollinated by bees.
"No large-scale study has ever found a link between glyphosate and honey bee health issues," Bayer said in a statement, adding that the new study "does not change that." Bayer noted the study relied on a small sample of individual bees and that it does not meet regulatory research criteria on pesticides stipulated by international guidelines developed by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development and other international organizations. Additionally, the company suggested it is "questionable whether the concentrations of the substance tested could at all be absorbed by bee populations in the open over a relevant period of time." According to the report in the journal, the researchers focused on honey bees and used "hundreds of adult worker bees from a single hive" and treated them with varying levels of glyphosate. Editor's note: In June, Germany's pharmaceutical giant Bayer purchased Monsanto, the company that developed Roundup.
"No large-scale study has ever found a link between glyphosate and honey bee health issues," Bayer said in a statement, adding that the new study "does not change that." Bayer noted the study relied on a small sample of individual bees and that it does not meet regulatory research criteria on pesticides stipulated by international guidelines developed by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development and other international organizations. Additionally, the company suggested it is "questionable whether the concentrations of the substance tested could at all be absorbed by bee populations in the open over a relevant period of time." According to the report in the journal, the researchers focused on honey bees and used "hundreds of adult worker bees from a single hive" and treated them with varying levels of glyphosate. Editor's note: In June, Germany's pharmaceutical giant Bayer purchased Monsanto, the company that developed Roundup.
Could it bee?
I think once we (at long last) manage to kill Bayer/Monsanto by whichever means, we'll have to drive a stake through its heart.
Such a disgusting monster.
Normally big companies don't bother responding to scientific studies. The fact that they did in this case, attempting a character assassination to boot, suggests they are scared. They might even have their own internal data supporting such results.
If that is the case, I can barely imagine the multiple international class action suits that will follow. It will make the smoking debacle look small.
Any way we can get roundup to also kill all the wasps?
I know we are not supposed to kill wasps, as they are pollinators and help to control insects, but holy hell do I hate them more than nearly anything else.
Plus, they do eat honey bees. And at least honey bees don't just sting you out of spite like those little dick heads do.
This summer was especially bad. I had two wasp traps... just the little green cups they fly into and cannot get out again.
In one weeks, there was AT LEAST 400 wasps. Both cups were nearly full. I have no idea where they all came from.
It may, or it may not. Salt and vinegar are both very good at killing plants, but I do like my chips!
And it doesn't look like this study proves much.
Monsanto has announced their first GM, roundup resistant bees. Available soon. /s
I didn't have any problems finding weedkiller without it - glyphosate kills grass, so there's a whole line of "safe for your yard" products without it.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
and suddenly the research that proves it's harmful after all start to pop up. What a coincidence.
For once The findings have vastly worse implications than the headline. Namely, Round-up isn't poisoning the Bee's themselves it's impairing their symbiotic microbiome. You too have a microbiome, as does the every plant, the soil, and wasps too.
What's interesting here is that previous studies had found that ROund up did kill cells at high doses it wasn't the glycophase that was doing modt of it. It was the packaging "inert" ingredients many of which were detergent-like. It's not a surprise that detergents might harm isolates cells in high concentration.
this one finds the Glycophase itself harms some unknown bacteria that in turn makes the microbiome tank, and the bee's die.
That is a big deal. Much bigger deal than the previous findings.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It doesn't necessarily follow.
I know more about mosquito control, since I worked in that industry for decades, but in that field the common pesticides are chosen because they have low toxicity for non-target species and low potential for bioaccumulation because once deployed in the environment they break down rapidly into non-toxic byproducts. I assume that herbicides are approved using similar criteria.
Now herbicides are targeted at the plant kingdoom, and bees are in the animal kingdom. Glycophosphate in particular targets a metabolic pathway that is found in plants and fungi, but not animals. That tells you exactly zero about whether it's harmless to animals; it might kill animals in a completely different way. You have to conduct tests.
Tests show that glycophosphates have a high LD50 (i.e., low toxicity) for animals, but that's acute toxicity. It takes a lot of Roundup to kill an animal outright, but that doesn't mean it can't affect the animals behavior and reproduction in ecologically disruptive ways. If you exposed all humans to a drug which was harmless but made men impotent, human populations would crash even if the drug had an infinitely high LD50.
If this sounds complicated, that's because it is. But that's no reason to throw our hands up in the air and assume everything will be OK. At this point nobody's in any position to state anything definitive about the impact of glycophosphates on bees; this study has successfully opened a question we don't have an answer for yet. But if we study this problem, we'll get a definitive answer. Either way some people might not like that answer, but at least it's a rational basis for making policy.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Every year, there are hundreds of studies that attempt to prove the Roundup is the devil. So far there haven't been any smoking guns. At this point, I'm cynical.
This is the fairy tale they'd want us to believe.
Hush! You're not supposed to tell the people what's actually in our non-diary creamer.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm pretty sure there's some Mosanto product that kills parasites that we could try on them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Glyphosate has been in use since 1973 and bee colony disorder is a relatively recent phenomenon starting around 2006
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
According to the above wiki article Bayer's patent on glyphosate expired in 2000 and other companies jumped on the bandwagon and released their own pesticides using it so it's possible that it just had to reach enough critical mass for it to appear - but it was used so widely in crops which will sometimes hire bee colonies to pollanize the fields that I'd be surprised it didn't come up earlier.
Just plain wrong. I could find triclopyr-based products rather easy. There's also picloram-based products.
After looking at them all though, I ended up going with glyphosate. For what I was doing, it seemed about as dangerous as the other herbicides.
I still have a bottle of the concentrated stuff, which I use only as a stump killer. To be fair, I'd rather be exposed to people using herbicides like me - directly applied to the plant via brush, no spraying, no broad application - than like my neighbors, who spray it across their yards because front lawns are supposed to look like golf courses.
It may, or it may not. Salt and vinegar are both very good at killing plants, but I do like my chips!
And it doesn't look like this study proves much.
How many decades did it take for the public summary of scientific consensus to admit that tarring your lungs was shortening your life span? And where are we with regard to climate change? I mean, if we deny evolution in our schools, what's to keep us from denying other environmental consequences?
These are new findings against global player financial interests. They will not influence political decisions in the next 25 years, just the amount of bribes paid out.
Roundup has been linked to Parkinson's Disease and suspected to be linked to other human neurological diseases as well. Now it looks like it is killing pollinators too. It's probably time to find a better weed killer.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
This headline and the comments it has created have me scratching my head. I and other farmers use a fair amount of glyphosate but I can't think of any time I'v seen it used on flowering plants. Glyphosate use is fairly staggering in quantity but nearly all of that is used on glyphosate-resistant crops to control weeds, and this by definition must be done when the crop and weeds are very small. In other words, weeks or months before flowering. If glyphosate were sprayed on a crop that was flowering it would abort flowers and destroy yield, if not making the plants very sick. So it wouldn't make any sense for a farmer to use glyphosate in this way to begin with. Something smells funny.
By the way we also have our own bees that we use for pollinating a glyphosate-tolerant crop.
In yards and around homes also, glyphosate is typically not sprayed on glowering plants. Why would it be? You wouldn't use glyphosate to remove dandelions from your lawn for example (if you do, you're in for a very dead lawn).
This study is highly problematic for this reason. The findings may well be true about toxicity to bees, but if glyphosate isn't used typically on flowering plants or weeds, then the study is somewhat pointless, if interesting. Certainly it cannot inform any policies over the use of glyphosate, except to urge that it not be used on flowering plants, which it already isn't.
In the end, however, those calling for the end of glyphosate will probably get their wish as over-use of glyphosate is rapidly ending the effectiveness of that chemical. And everyone will end up paying for that in increased food costs.
Yes, it opens the question. But because the question is opened, and on the thin evidence there is, I think we're likely to see revised guidelines on how Roundup is to be used so as to minimize honeybee exposure to it.
I.e., don't spray on flowering plants that bees are actively visiting. I don't think this is a crippling restriction (or much of a practical restriction even) on Roundup, so it may be a slam-dunk guideline revision even though the evidence is shaky.
--PM
Well, I think even if we did away with a lot of the chemicals, the US could still easily feed itself, and that's all that matters to us you know.
I mean, if the famers can sell all their goods domestically, that's all we need to do, eh?
That's the way it was done in the past....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
How do you know it is safe for the environment? And cow shit is not so environmentally safe. Runs off into water ways and causes all kinds of problems.
My question is whether the damage to the microbiome necessarily leads to bee fatality. I'm not sure--from my minimal understanding--whether that has really been demonstrated here. This study is important, but it does seem to be very limited in its actual findings. There needs to be testing to see what else damages the microbiome and what are the immediate and long term consequences of this damage. As usual, some of the reporters seem to be too rash in making simplistic claims about the dangers of the chemical. It's easy to see glyphosate as part of the faceless evil of the big corporation, but the truth is that even the people at Monsanto have no interest in killing off the bees. Bees are a vital part of agriculture (and I don't think Monsanto has brought their Roundup brand genetically-modified glyphosate-resistant extra-killer honey bees to market yet).
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
Except it's not. It was a conclusion based on a group of 15 bees, which gave bees unusually large doses of glyphosphate, and found that the heaviest dose of glyphosphate had no statistically significant effects, unlike the mild dose. The data actually argues that we should give bees more glyphosphate in order to neutralize any effects.
They try to explain this away by arguing that maybe they were having some bias in capturing G-10 bees, well, because "bees exposed to glyphosate may exhibit impaired spatial processing"... without giving any evidence for or even a mechanism through which this could happen. What they wrote is literally the equivalent of writing re. humans "If you take some antibiotics that kill only a fraction of your gut bacteria, you're going to wander off in confusion and die". The whole study also contradicts the authors' previous work, which blamed CCD on antibiotics given by beekeepers.
The whole premise is kind of silly to begin with. Glyphosphate kills flowering plants. Bees adjust where they forage based on where flowers can be found. Bees are not going to have any interest whatsoever hanging around a field that's been sprayed with glyphosphate. Glyphosphate also does not stay on the surface; it's highly soluble and washes into the soil, where it binds tightly with soil particles.
But of course, the study said something negative about glyphosphate, so of course everyone covered it, in as apocalyptic terms as possible.
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
Is there a responsible way to use Roundup? I've used it before to get rid of hops (a real bastard of a plant), spraying Roundup on the leaves while taking care to not spill any on the other plants and flowers or the ground. That kills it good, and I don't see how it would bother the bees much (I have loads but they never get near the hops), but now I'm not so sure about that. Still, it's not quite the same as a farmer spraying his entire field of Roundup-ready crop.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
When the Macondo oil well (Deepwater Horizon) was leaking, the chemicals applied to break down the oil were as hazardous to marine life as the oil was. Many were detergents or similar compounds.
How can they prove causality? What kind of jury approves this stuff?
Why does Bayer simply go into defense-mode and try to dismiss the study all together? At the least, for PR, they should be a bit more receptive and let people know that, you know, bees are good, that they would like to make sure their product doesn't kill them off en mass, that they may throw even just a *tiny* bit of cash toward research, and maybe, just maybe, adjust their product(s) to maybe counter these possible negative impacts of using Roundup.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
The parent post is bullshit, the possible link was found to paraquat, not glyphosat. These are completely different pesticides.
Thanks for that. I didn't have time to dive into the paper when I first saw this in the news. Figured they were probably playing games with the data but didn't want to jump to conclusions. You've saved me the trouble of going through it myself.
maybe just to research chemicals being used and not use the harmful ones
Good luck watering your plants then. Bees definitely die when exposed to excess amounts of that stuff.
They won't influence anything at all. People who already believed that glyphosate was teh eeeebil will continue to believe it. Those who don't believe it will read the paper and realize it doesn't change anything. In the end this study will change nothing whatsoever.
> but ended up buying Roundup because it was on a special offer as a result of the negative press.
Why are so many people trying to ban Neonics?
Look up when the patent expires on them: 2019.
What if I told you they have not been found to cause colony collapse disorder (CCD) but antifungals are that also take out the immune system leaving to the host prone to infection it could normally fend off.
It's not just the bees, this is happening to amphibians, bats, coral and in some cases man. Next time somebody tells you a gas or heat is killing corals... go look up the necropsy. No it is not, it's the damn antifungals.
http://www.plosone.org/article...
https://qz.com/107970/scientis...
http://rs79.vrx.palo-alto.ca.u...
http://www.gbr.qld.gov.au/docu... (July 2016)
http://www.gbr.qld.gov.au/docu... (May 2016)
Compare this with Cuba.
http://www.pri.org/stories/201...
Need Mercedes parts ?
Don't know why parent got modded down, they're absolutely correct. People should read up on LD50 (median lethal dose) before recklessly modding down.
>"Is there a responsible way to use Roundup?"
YES
There is no support for it doing ANY harm in using it on and around non-flowering plants (weeds) on which bees and insects don't visit. So for YARD weeding, Roundup is probably just fine (and should NOT be banned).
Spilling it on the ground will typically cause no harm either, since it goes inactive very quickly. And if it got into good/flowering plants, it would KILL them. Bees don't visit dead plants, either.
The major problem is the industrial-scale use on FLOWERING plants that were designed to be Round-up resistant. Those plants suck up the Roundup and present it to bees in their flowers and from those plants we also get our food.
"No large-scale study has ever found a link between glyphosate and honey bee health issues," Bayer said in a statement
I am certain Monsanto paid for such a study, with the hope of a no-link outcome that could be used in PR campaign. And the outcome was probably bad enough that they make sure it would not be published.
Not stealing. Grow up and address the specific issues without alarmist hyperbole
Joe Sixpacks, defender of the common man.
There is a lot to take issue with in terms of this study, starting with the dosage.
Hundreds of adult worker bees were collected from a single hive, treated with either 5 mg/L glyphosate (G-5), 10 mg/L glyphosate (G-10) or sterile sucrose syrup (control) for 5 d, and returned to their original hive. Bees were marked on the thorax with paint to make them distinguishable in the hive. Glyphosate concentrations were chosen to mimic environmental levels, which typically range between 1.4 and 7.6 mg/L (24), and may be encountered by bees foraging at flowering weeds.
That last conclusion is extremely suspect. Concentrations as high as 5mg/L glyphosate are basically never found except in groundwater sources except for a few days after a significant overspray. It never gets into nectar anywhere near that level. Not only does glyphosate degrade over time, but the plants which take it in never bring it all the way up to the flowers. It kills them instead. That's what it's supposed to do.
Further, there is no dose-response relationship. If this was real, rather than just statistical noise from too small a sample, you would expect that the 10mg/L "roundup" they fed to the bees would have had a worse reaction. Nothing like that happened.
Even then, the author's conclusions are misquoted. What they really concluded was this:
Exposure of bees to glyphosate can perturb their beneficial gut microbiota, potentially affecting bee health and their effectiveness as pollinators.
I'm liberal myself, but this anti-scientic luddism that is trendy among the comfortably well off hippie left drives me nuts.
I found glyphosate was the only active ingredient that worked on my weeds, so went with that.
Not Roundup though. I'm never directly giving Monsanto a cent of my money.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Roundup does not make rain stop falling.
This has to be a joke.
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
The time for a plant to visibly wither depends on the plant and the ambient temperature. But it arrests development relatively quickly; you're not going to have new flowers maturing on a plant that's been sprayed with roundup. And bees don't revisit flowers that have already been visited.
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
Who knew that big chem has shill moderators?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So is the glycophate that kills the "weeds" that some people ae deathly alergic to a harmfull or a usefull chemical?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
A lot of plants that are the intended taget for 2, 4-D Amine herbicides are becomong very resitant to it.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds