On 13/06/2013 18:26, David Hill wrote:

Very little can be read into the word "volunteer", especially
since the report is written by non-native speakers of English.

Maltese speak English often as a first language.


If people had bothered to read the final link you would have seen that
the study was done in Germany

See
https://www.bund.net/fileadmin/bundn...in_analyse.pdf


But it's makes you look much better to rubbish things without reading
properly.
If Glyphosate is so safe why do they say NOT to spray seed crops
intended for human consumption?

It is a reasonable precaution for minimum inputs and having checked they
don't say that at all. They do say not to spray off crops that will be
used as seeds the following year. There has been some concern about
traces of glyphosate in wheat flour. Glyphosate on wheat crops is of
questionable benefit unless weeds are well out of control. HGCA have
left their info sheet on the wrong side of a paywall so here it is:

http://www.hgca.com/publications/doc...et02_final.pdf

The active ingredient of glyphosate is roughly speaking about as toxic
as caffeine - the principal component of coffee. The surfactants are
more dangerous but you would need to consume a lot to do any damage.

A few really thick American gardeners once managed to do this by eating
their lunch dripping with industrial strength concentrate.

Just remember they said that Thalidomide was safe and they said the same
about agent orange which when instructing American forces about it they
actually drank the stuff.

Thalidomide has made a remarkable comeback as an important drug for some
difficult to treat conditions with the very obvious proviso that it must
not be given to pregnant women.

http://www.nationalreviewofmedicine....ure_15_10.html

The impurities in 245-T and 24-D are nasty dioxins but the pure
compounds are relatively safe with LD50 in the 0.5g/kg range. Paraquat
is right at the other extreme LD50 reckoned to be about 0.00003g/kg.

These days we have taken to erring on the side of paranoia. The recent
advice given to pregnant women to avoid all contact with "chemicals" is
calculated to create panic among the worried well and allow snake oil
salesmen to rip them off with more "chemical free" dodgy products.

The Daily Wail and it's redtop scare story ilk have a lot to answer for.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown