Category Archives: Science

Parkinson’s and Roundup: latest in a long list

We already knew Argentinian farmers were suing Monsanto about Roundup-induced birth defects, including cerebral palsy, down syndrome, psychomotor retardation, missing fingers, and blindness; we knew Roundup’s active ingredient glyphosate was “a risk factor for developing Non-Hodgkin lymphoma”; we knew that Roundup-ready corn causes liver and kidney damage in rats and chickens fed feed including Monsanto corn show abnormal gene expression, and we knew that Roundup-ready corn is toxic to humans. Add to all that: Roundup is a risk for Parkinson’s disease.

Sayer Ji wrote for GreenMediaInfo 18 April 2012, Roundup Herbicide Linked To Parkinson’s-Related Brain Damage,

Alarming new research published in the journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology supports the emerging connection between glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide, and neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and Parkinsonian disorders.

Published this month (April, 2012), the new study entitled “Glyphosate induced cell death through apoptotic and authophagic mechanisms,” investigated the potential brain-damaging effects of herbicides, which the authors stated “have been recognized as the main environmental factor associated with neurodegenerative disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease.”1

They found that glyphosate inhibited the viability of differentiated test cells (PC12, adrenal medula derived), in both dose-and-time dependent manners. The researchers also found that “glyphosate induced cell death via authophagy pathways in addition to activating apoptotic pathways.”

Roundup herbicide is now a ubiquitous contaminant in our air, rain, groundwater, and food, making complete avoidance near impossible. A growing body of experimental evidence now indicates that it in addition to its neurotoxicity it also has the following.

Modes of Toxicity

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The whistleblowers show sued Fox (and lost)

Fox News hired Jane Akre and a couple of other reporters as an investigative unit and did a snazzy promo about that. The first case they investigated was Monsanto’s bovine growth hormone, RBGH. This is the whistleblower story behind the Fox Can Lie lawsuit.

ITN in the U.K. reporting about Health Canada’s report on bovine growth hormone:

Monsanto’s engineered growth hormone did not comply with safety requirements. It could be absorbed by the body, and therefore did have implications for human health. Mysteriously, that conclusion was deleted from the final, published version of their report.

That was for a product that U.S. EPA had approved with little or no testing. Fox’s investigative unit had the story, but Monsanto threatened to sue Fox. Watch the video for the details.

Eventually, Akre sued Fox. She won, but Fox won on appeal. An appeal that established that Fox can lie.

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PS: Owed to Paul Hollands.

Troubled youth heal by healing troubled watersheds

We already knew nature makes healthy. Here’s a group helping nature help troubled youth make nature healthy.

From the website of Youth and Ecological Restoration Program:

Planting native trees and shrubs in local watersheds provides habitat and protection for fish, birds and many other species.

Stephen Hume wrote for the Vancouver Sun yesterday, Healing power of troubled waters: An ecological program that links at-risk teens with damaged watersheds has breathed new life into both,

After Carnation Creek, Wendy applied and was accepted at university as a mature student, successfully studying ecology and land reclamation, presenting her own scientific papers. Then, eight years ago, she began putting her wisdom to work teaching the next generation to pay attention to the consequences of heedlessness, greed and ignorance about our dependence on the natural world.

Her innovative Youth and Ecological Restoration Program helps teenagers at risk. Some struggle with

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Advanced sheets-Field operations of the Bureau of Soils, 1917

What was your county like a hundred years ago, roads, houses, streams, ponds, and soils? Digital Library of Georgia in association with the University of Georgia Map Library has made available old soil maps from around 1910-1920 online in a viewer that can pan and zoom. Detail of Cat Creek Road, Lowndes County, Georgia in 1917:

Detail of Cat Creek Road

Detail of Cat Creek Road
John S. Quarterman, Gretchen Quarterman, Brown Dog, Yellow Dog,
Screenshot by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 13 July 2012.

The soils haven't changed much (Tf is Tifton A soil, for example), but the roads and houses have, and many streams have been dammed for ponds.

They seem to have all Georgia counties. Here's Tift County in 1910 and Cook County in 1931.

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Owed to Don Davis of the Lowndes County Museum at the 11 July 2012 WWALS Watershed Coalition meeting.

 

Dr. Elsie Quarterman, Prof Emerita of Plant Ecology, Vanderbilt, 101 years and 7 months

Patrick, Gretchen, Elsie, Ann:

Patrick, Gretchen, Elsie, Ann

Patrick, Gretchen, Elsie, Ann
Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Nashville, Tennessee, 2 July 2012.

Elsie, Patrick, Ann:

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Groundwater levels: red

In case anybody thinks the recent rains have done away with the drought in Georgia, take a look at this USGS map of groundwater levels today:

USGS Active Groundwater Network map 18 April 2012
Legend for USGS Active Groundwater Network map 18 April 2012

South Georgia, all red and orange. Here’s more detail.

It’s also worth remembering that while our Floridan Aquifer does recharge somewhat, that much of its water has been there since the last ice age. So if we keep mining water at a rapid rate, the aquifer will keep falling.

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Greed is Good for Poisoning the Food Supply?

For many years big agro has treated the world’s health as an economic externality, a problem for somebody else that did not affect its own bottom line. That is starting to change, most recently in Argentina.

Anthony Gucciardi wrote for NaturalSociety 11 April 2012, Explosive: Monsanto ‘Knowingly Poisoned Workers’ Causing Devastating Birth Defects,

In a developing news piece just unleashed by a courthouse news wire, Monsanto is being brought to court by dozens of Argentinean tobacco farmers who say that the biotech giant knowingly poisoned them with herbicides and pesticides and subsequently caused ”devastating birth defects” in their children. The farmers are now suing not only Monsanto on behalf of their children, but many big tobacco giants as well. The birth defects that the farmers say occurred as a result are many, and include cerebral palsy, down syndrome, psychomotor retardation, missing fingers, and blindness.

This would be the same Monsanto that was convicted of chemical poisoning in France.

But this is once again far away in a small country of which we know nothing, right? Wrong:

The farmers come from small family-owned farms in Misiones Province and sell their tobacco to many United States distributors. The family farmers say that major tobacco companies like the Philip Morris company asked them to use Monsanto’s herbicides and pesticides, assuring them that the products were safe. Through asserting that the toxic chemicals were safe, the farmers state in their claim that the tobacco companies ”wrongfully caused the parental and infant plaintiffs to be exposed to those chemicals and substances which they both knew, or should have known, would cause the infant offspring of the parental plaintiffs to be born with devastating birth defects.”

Still, it must be some obscure poison only sold in the third world, right?

Wrong:

The majority of the farmers in the area used Monsanto’s Roundup, an herbicide with the active ingredient glyphosate that has shown to be killing human kidney cells. What’s more, the farmers say that the tobacco companies pushed Monsanto’s Roundup on the farmers despite a lack of protective equipment. In other words, these farmers — many in dire economic conditions — were being directly exposed to Roundup in large concentrations without any protective gear (or even experience or skills in handling the substance). Still, the farmers say the tobacco giants required the struggling farmers to ‘purchase excessive quantities of Roundup and other pesticides’.

That would be the same Roundup that farmers use around here all the time, without protective equipment. The Roundup we already knew was Continue reading →

Why Monsanto Thought Weeds Would Never Defeat Roundup

Wishful thinking. That’s why Monsanto unleashed crops and pesticides that are both poisonous to humans. Wishful thinking. Also known as greed.

Daniel Charles wrote for The Salt 11 March 2012, Why Monsanto Thought Weeds Would Never Defeat Roundup,

First, the company had been selling Roundup for years without any problems. Second, and perhaps most important, the company’s scientists had just spent more than a decade, and many millions of dollars, trying to create the Roundup-resistant plants that they desperately wanted — soybeans and cotton and corn. It had been incredibly difficult. When I interviewed former Monsanto scientists for my book on biotech crops, one of them called it the company’s “Manhattan Project.”

Considering how hard it had been to create those crops, “the thinking was, it would be really difficult for weeds to become tolerant” to Roundup, says Rick Cole, who is now responsible for Monsanto’s efforts to deal with the problem of resistant weeds.

So they thought small scale would be the same as saturating 90+% of every corn, soybean, peanut, and cotton field in the U.S. and numerous other countries with virulent poisons. Because they wanted the money.

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Both Roundup-Ready corn and Roundup are toxic to humans: scientific evidence

Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini put out a press release yesterday, NEW STUDY: Genetically Modified Corn Toxic to Humans,
“We were very much surprised by our findings. Until now, it has been thought almost impossible for Bt proteins to be toxic to human cells. Now further investigations have to be conducted to find out how these toxins impact the cells and if combinatorial effects with other compounds in the food and feed chain have to be taken into account,” says Gilles-Eric Séralini from the University of Caen, who supervised the experiments. “In conclusion, these experiments show that the risks of Bt toxins and of Roundup have been underestimated.”
The toxicity of the corn itself may have been a surprise, but not that of Roundup:
These findings are in accordance with several other investigations highlighting unexpected health risks associated with glyphosate preparations.
Previous studies, including ones by Dr. Séralini, already showed exposure to glysophate (the active ingredient in Roundup) to be “a risk factor for developing Non-Hodgkin lymphoma”, and to be toxic to human umbilical, placental, and placental cells with a that “is far below agricultural recommendations and corresponds to low levels of residues in food or feed.” In Argentina, Prof. Andrés Carrasco has demonstrated birth defects in amphibians and there is increasing evidence of human birth defects.

Regarding Monsanto’s GM corn itself, we already knew it causes liver and kidney damage in rats (later reverified using Monsanto’s own data), and chickens fed feed including Monsanto corn show abnormal gene expression.

Now we have even more hard evidence of the toxicity of Monsanto’s GM corn and of Monsanto’s Roundup. The journal article is available through Wiley online.

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Glyphosate found in all samples of urine, many times drinking water limit

Mike Barrett wrote for NaturalSociety 26 January 2012, Monsanto’s Infertility-Linked Roundup Found in All Urine Samples Tested,
A recent study conducted by a German university found very high concentrations of Glyphosate, a carcinogenic chemical found in herbicides like Monsanto’s Roundup, in all urine samples tested. The amount of glyphosate found in the urine was staggering, with each sample containing concentrations at 5 to 20-fold the limit established for drinking water.
So, we now know what pesticides are doing to bees. What are they doing to humans? Well, we know that, too: lower IQ in children, organ disruption, miscarriages, birth defects, and infertility.

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