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Old 16-05-2003, 01:20 PM
Peter Ashby
 
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Default Is Glyphosate weed killer safe??

In article ,
Oz wrote:

Peter Ashby writes
What is the lethal dose?
remembering that water has an LD50 too. What is its mode of action, what
enzymes does it inhibit? or maybe it induces dominant postitives? You
are so bloody sure it is nasty you must have this information to hand.
Surely.



LD50 for rats 4050 mg/kg
LC50 for rats (4h) 1.3mg/l air
(note greater than, implies they couldn't reach LD50).

So a 100kg person would need to ingest about 400g or 1lb of glyphosate
to have a 50% chance of killing themselves. I would suggest a more
active product would be better.


Note folks that is neat glyphosate, not Roundup.

Note that diluted spray in the sprayer tank at 1.5kg active in 200L
means that you need to consume some 70L of product straight from the
sprayer. The acute lethal dose for water is about 5L, so you get to die
from water ingestion well before dying from the glyphosate. OK, that's
not the whole picture but you get the drift.


Yup, less toxic than water when diluted as spray. Might be because we
humans aren't plants don't you think?

Glyphosate is rapidly excreted.


That too is interesting, wonder what pathway it slots into for that to
happen. Is it excreted by the kidneys or into bile?

Thankyou for an informative reply.

Peter

--
Peter Ashby
School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Scotland
To assume that I speak for the University of Dundee is to be deluded.
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