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The Conversation bills itself as a website designed to “Unlock the knowledge of researchers and academics to provide the public with clarity and insight into society’s biggest problems.” Their science commentary is generally very good, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone—at least I wouldn't have hesitated until I read this article: While debate rages over glyphosate-based herbicides, farmers are spraying them all over the world.

As the title suggests, the authors depicted glyphosate as a potentially deadly weedkiller, wantonly overused by farmers with little oversight...

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Read the original article here.

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Does glyphosate—the world’s most heavily-used herbicide—pose serious harm to humans? Is it carcinogenic? Those issues are of both legal and scientific debate.

In two court cases—one decided in mid-March and the...

Despite the allegations of greedy trial lawyers and greedy, ideological activist groups, a massive body of peer-reviewed research has confirmed that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Bayer's Roundup weed killer, poses minimal risk to human health and the environment. And the evidence continues to roll in.

The European Union's (EU) Assessment Group on Glyphosate (AGG) has just released an 11,000-page report yet again showing that the popular herbicide is safe when used as directed. The reviewers considered glyphosate's potential germ cell mutagenicity, carcinogenicity, reproductive toxicity, specific target organ toxicity (STOT), endocrine-disrupting effects, and environmental...

apple pie via shutterstock
apple pie via shutterstock

Formaldehyde is a known toxin and a carcinogen. We know this from real science, as well as hysteria-based groups like the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) which designated the compound as a...

1. Chicago City Wire called us for scientific insight on a recent proposal to ban good pesticides in order to protect bees. Except bees aren't actually dying. Sure, there was a blip in 2006 but there have been periodic mass die-offs of bees since record-keeping began in the 900 AD time frame. Since then, numbers are higher than ever. Even overwinter losses this year, which is predictably when a lot of bees die, saw the fewest losses since surveys have existed.

“They want Illinois to be for neonics what Vermont was for GMOs: a PR stunt,” I told them. “If you dunk anything in a bucket of goop,...

Bloomberg Businessweek has written another anti-Monsanto article, nothing special about that, but this time they did something new; they consciously sought to interfere in an environmental lawsuit against Monsanto in California and to promote fear and doubt about the science community and regulators who overwhelmingly accept the science consensus on genetically-modified foods - colloquially called GMOs, because Monsanto received a patent on that one kind of genetic engineering.

It's not the first time members of this team of Peter Waldman, Lydia Mulvany, Tiffany Stecker, and Joel Rosenblatt have...

Just about every evening news channel publicized the possibility that nitrates and nitrites, preservatives found in cured meats, have caused an increase in bladder cancer. Unfortunately, they needlessly frightened their viewers by touting a small increase in bladder cancer incidence based on a study that did not even show that the rise in cancer risk was statistically significant. The study, published in ...

The UN s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) predicted yesterday that worldwide cancer deaths would increase to 13.2 million by 2030, nearly twice the 2008 figure. IARC s new database also projects a shift of the cancer burden from wealthier to poorer nations.

Reuters scary headline, Cancer will kill 13.2 million a year by 2030 is misleading, as is often the case, says ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross. The world s population, by becoming healthier, is also aging and thus susceptible to increasing cancer rates. Further, reducing the rate of childhood and infectious diseases in developing countries allows more people to survive to adulthood and get cancer.

ACSH's Jeff Stier agrees: It s hard...

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) today released a summary of its report on the likelihood that excess body fat is linked to cancer. IARC is the cancer agency of the World Health Organization.

The summary is published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Led by Dr. Béatrice Lauby-Secretan, the IARC Handbook Working Group evaluated the current research findings linking excess fatness (overweight status and obesity) to various types of cancer.

They primarily included epidemiological data on 1000 human studies and also some animal studies. Most of the human studies were...

A study that was just published in Environmental Science and Technology claims that PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) are a significant contributor to indoor air pollution because the chemicals are emitted from kitchen cabinets. Chemically, this is plausible because a chemical called 2,4-dichlorobenzoyl peroxide, which is used in the manufacture of sealants, can indeed decompose to give a mixture of polychlorobiphenyls (PCBs) (1) (Figure 1). Since PCBs are considered to be carcinogens in rats, this raises a cancer scare in humans. But is it really something to worry about?

PCBs ARE OMNIPRESENT

Nicholas J. Herkert and colleagues at Department of Civil and Environmental...