Image source [here]

Disclaimer
This is going to be a post that briefly explains what glyphosate is, a basic explanation about how it works, and will proceed to answer common questions/comments made to/about the substance. I am not paid by Monsanto and if you looked at my bank account you would understand that statement as true; if I were I would not be using student loans to pay tuition. This post will directly link to studies wherever feasible and will be in a format where each has a superscript number that associates to a specific footnote. This post is not standardized to academia standards and should be looked at as if it were a article made by a blog. There will be a few different sections of comments/questions: the feasible questions (such as questions about potential carcinogenic properties), the uninformed statements (its toxic to humans and a single drop could kill you), and then the category which I will call completely ignorant conspiracy hypothesizer (as a theory requires evidence, anyways this is thins like "You are paid off by Monsanto!"). Resources and references will be broken up into a few categories. If the footnote number starts with a 1 then it links directly to a study or paper abstract, if it has a 2 then it leads to a writeup about the study(s) in some journal, and if it starts with a 3 then the resources are considered hearsay. The reason for reference category 3 is because this post will deal with conspiracy hypothesis about glyphosate and the company credited with its discovery: Monsanto. If you finish reading this and have more questions, feel free to ask and I may add them into the post but I will/should respond and attempt to directly answer your question first. If you ask question in the post I will respond with read the post, if you re ask then I will become extremely condescending and tell you to stop being ignorant and read the post. If you have a resource that contradicts some information provided here and it does so in a professional situation then please link it and I will add it to th list. My hopes by the end of this post is to have a collection of data that one may use to link directly when debating with someone about glyphosate, assuming the person receiving these arguments is not completely ignorant to all incoming arguments. Part 2 is available here.

The Active Ingredient in Most RoundUp, Glyphosate
Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide created by John Franz in 1970^[11]. The use of glyphosate is so high due to its extreme effectiveness at prevent plants from growing by preventing plants from synthesizing certain key amino acids; for this reason it is not effective as a pre-emergent herbicide. In most consumer based roundup the concentration of glyphosate is between 2% and 10%^[21].

Source here

Overview of Usage
Glyphosate is generally used as weed spot control (sprayed directly onto the weed once appeared and not on other plants) as it works by reacting with a specific enzyme that plants have (that humans and animals do not have^[21]) and thus prevents plants from reacting normally. Glyphosate is generally taken in through foliage rather than roots meaning topical application will be more effective than general spraying^[14] .

Common Questions

How is glyphosate so toxic to plants yet considered non toxic to humans and animal?

So glyphosate is toxic to animals at ranges of roughly 3,000 to 30,000 mg/kg in vitro^[12] (yes 3 to 30 g per kg) but in lower doses, such as that found on food, it is completely non toxic. The reason for this is your body tends to expel it rather rapidly and that which doesn't get expelled is so minute that it isn't able to do a lot of harm. The harm that does come from it is generally acute and only in severe cases can it cause problems. Another thing to think about as well is that cyanide is toxic to humans and not plants and this is why many plants produce cyanide as a defense mechanism. One mechanism of cyanide in humans is it binds to a enzyme used to make ATP and since plants use a slightly different enzyme they cannot be poisoned this way and this is the same reason as to why glyphosate is toxic to plants but not animals. Similarly you can think of this as why some things are toxic to your pets but not you and visa versa, toxicity is not universal in many cases.

But Glyphosate is Carcinogenic?

Yes it does have mutagenic properties when directly interacting with DNA. The issue with classifying it as carcinogenic is that it doesn't actively seek out this form of behavior, as such was labeled as a group 2a carcinogen^[22]. What this means is that there is not conclusive evidence to support that it is actively causing cancer or that the odds of increased risk associated with glyphosate are marginal. The reason the odds are so low is because Glyphosate requires direct interaction with DNA and since it is neither actively transported into a cell, yet transported out, and isn't actively transported into the nucleus you can determine that it is extremely unlikely to interact with DNA to cause such mutations.

This study talks about how rats had some problems yet you say it is non-toxic?

If the study in question is the 2013 one you will find that they too had the rats were fed up to 3,000mg/kg and take that for a 70kg human we can expect something like 100g-210g of glyphosate would directly cause these affects assuming the mechanisms are the same. Hell even if it required 1-2kg for a human, that would still be a lot of glyphosate to be eaten in a short amount of time. Thank you @onufry for correcting this.

Since 1970 diseases such as Crohns, autism, ..., and ADHD have been on the rise, I think it has to do with the excessive use of antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides, and GMO

Every source that I have looked at for Crohns disease finds the per capita affected rate to be similar and fluctuates, but doesn't appear to have any trend to it. I may be wrong and require more data points but that is difficult to find.Upon further investigation into my notes I have found a couple resources that back up the that my innitial statement was incorrect. On such reference is referenced here^[18]Autism appears to have increased which may be due to different diagnostic methods but the prevalence is not determined to have actually risen or not. ADHD also appears to have risen but has not been determined as if the increased prevalence is caused by diagnostic methods or if it is because rates are actually increasing. ^{[Multiple Citations Needed] [adhd][16][17]}
Over use of antibiotics may increase prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria. GMO's on the other hand are a completely different topic (for a future post) and have a potential to be dangerous but if it is monitored correctly then it is harmless and potentially beneficial.

Uninformed Statements

It will be here long after we are gone!

No, it has a half life of 3 to 163 days in soil and even less in the body (meaning roughly half will decay in a given period of roughly 3-163 days). So basically, if we were to outlaw it right now then it would take a couple years before it is basically all gone.

It decreases nutrition, I know it

I cannot find any data talking about effectiveness on nutrition, can you tell me where you found it (at this point I am usually met with a deflection and a argument that attacks me directly)

Scientists are just bought off from the companies

They require stating whom funded the study and many journals request receipts of what money went where. Some of these studies aren't even funded by private organizations (only government funding)

We never had problems feeding people before!

(Yes I have seen this statement in debate)
In the past 17 years our population grew from 6.9 billion to 7.5 billion. In 1970 the global population was 3.7 billion. 1900 the worlds population was roughly 1.6 billion... See a trend here? The population is increasing faster now than ever before and is higher now than ever before.^[23]

If this is safe for consumption then why don't you drink some?

If you are going out to get a solution of glyphosate then I will drink it, along with a little bit of crystal light to cover the taste and I know how it tastes because I have tasted it before, its gross, but I am not dead. That being said, roundup is a concoction of multiple particulates and chemicals that when mixed together can be more toxic to humans, the expected dose for acute toxicity is roughly >85ml of concentrated variations (41% glyphosate as the IPA salt and 15% POEA). ^[15]

Conspiracy Hypothesis

I refuse to call them conspiracy theorists as that implies evidence and rigorous testing which neither is done with them most of the time. Doubt me, then make a prediction, right now, about them. The few times when these hypothesis turn out to be more or less accurate or true is generally about more simplistic things (Government holding potential for mass surveillance) but yet I still haven't received anyone with tangible evidence of lizard people.

You are being paid by Monsanto!

I wish but if you looked at my bank account (<$100) it would be very obvious that I am not.

You are a lizard person!

Well I had an X-ray done not too long ago, I wasn't a lizard but you wont believe that anyways.

Note

I was in the middle of writing this when things got busy at school, so the title will change to be part 1 and then part 2 will continue with more questions/statements and answers and will hopefully have better references. I had a bunch of different ideas of things to write for steemit on these subjects (debunking certain conspiracy hypothesis) and I want to get around to it but right now school is busy. Still post questions/statements and I will try to answer and provide resources to where I got my info, hopefully the second version will be better though out and researched. Other topics I plan to cover with this are as follows: GMO's, antibiotic resistance and potential solutions we can look forward to, The energy crisis, Problems with many "clean energies", etc. Below I will give a, very, brief explanation of what I want to cover in these.

GMO

I plan to discuss different types of GM types (transgenic, mutagenic, selective breeding) and how they work and why we know they are safe. I would also like to discuss potential dangers of these and how regulations and a regulatory commission that works for the public and is without bounds on research (such as WHO) could help prevent these dangers from becoming reality. Finally I would like to cover miscommunication about GM products.

Antibiotic Resistance

• What it is
• Future methods of preventing it
• bacteriophage
• How using antibiotics can select for resistance

Energy Crisis

This one is not climate change, and no I am not a denier either. The energy crisis is the fact that coal mines are becoming more scarce and mining coal is becoming more expensive, that combined with oil reserves depleting and humans moving to more expensive means of getting oil (tar sands) that we may want to look at some alternative energy sources and this will cover a few different alternative energies including the price of it, benefits, downsides, etc. This is looking at potential fuel sources that could become more popular to switch to when Oil and Coal become more scarce.

Problems with Clean Energies

This will talk about problems with things such as the machine that collects energy from coastal waves, or putting solar farms in the middle of the Sahara desert and transporting energy all over the world. This also will talk about how current "Clean" energies still rely on fossil fuels through many stages of production and will even cover a topic on how we can move forward with these energy sources and lower reliance on non-renewables.

There is more!

There is an entire list of topics that I want to cover eventually but either haven't figured out how to convey it or just haven't had the time to plan it passed the topic. Here is the list:

• Protein and why you need it (like what it is)
• Why you should stop counting calories
• Common ponze schemes that I see and why you should avoid them
• The beginners guide to programming
• How Steemit favors the rich
• Elon Musks Intercity rockets are a stupid idea
• Hyperloop compared to maglev trains
• Introduction to probability and statistics
• and more!

If you enjoyed this or found it too controversial then comment why, I promise the 2nd version will have 1: more picture and 2: more references. I have an entire list of resources for this in a google doc, its just looking through it and determining which ones go to which statement is difficult since it is just a list.

^[11] https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=3799758&KC=&FT=E&locale=en_EP#
^[12] http://www.inchem.org/documents/ehc/ehc/ehc159.htm
^[13] http://www.cdpr.ca.gov/docs/emon/pubs/fatememo/glyphos.pdf
^[14] https://monsanto.com/app/uploads/2017/06/agronomic-benefits-of-glyphosate-in-europe.pdf
^[15]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15862083
^[16] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19218885
^[17]http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mrdd.10029/abstract;jsessionid=6605802497D3DB132DAC5F28088EF02A.f04t02
^[18] http://www.crohnscolitisfoundation.org/assets/pdfs/updatedibdfactbook.pdf

^[21] https://www.roundup.com/en-us
^[22] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/who-iarc-glyphosate/
^[23] https://www.thoughtco.com/current-world-population-1435270

^[adhd] http://adhd-institute.com/burden-of-adhd/epidemiology/
Image upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Glyphosate-3D-balls.png

roundup image: www.roundup.com/sites/g/files/oydgjc121/files/asset_images/CFLs/5200210_2.png

Part 2: steemit.com/science/@kryzsec/debunking-misinformation-about-glyphosate-part-2