{"id":69371,"date":"2017-09-02T00:14:48","date_gmt":"2017-09-02T06:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=69371"},"modified":"2017-09-01T16:54:43","modified_gmt":"2017-09-01T23:54:43","slug":"the-aluthparlimenthuwa-debate-on-glyphosate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/09\/02\/the-aluthparlimenthuwa-debate-on-glyphosate\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u201cAluthParlimenthuwa\u201d Debate on Glyphosate."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Professor Chandre Dharmawardana, Ottawa, Canada.<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The government banned\u00a0 the popular herbicide\u00a0 known as Glyphosate\u201d in 2105 using the epidemic of Kidney Disease in the Rajarata as justification for its drastic action. It proposed to create a toxin free nation\u201d eventually banning agrochemicals.\u00a0 Ven. Ratana\u00a0 is\u00a0 Sri Lanka’s presidential adviser on agriculture, promising to rid the country of toxins\u201d. He\u00a0 angrily and passionately holds forth like a modern-day Savonarola. But, unlike Savonarola’s\u00a0 moral anger, Ven. Ratana’s anger is based on\u00a0 misinformation\u00a0 that\u00a0 totally dominates the internet, and the rejection of main-stream scientific opinion.\u00a0 Having embraced\u00a0 fake news and\u00a0 exploiting\u00a0 public fear as its selling point,\u00a0 Ven. Ratana\u00a0 talks of\u00a0\u00a0 glyphosate killing\u00a0 all bacteria, microbes and soil organisms when it is used in agriculture. In fact earthworms and other soil organisms thrive better in its presence. But he has come forward as the saviour of the nation against this alleged evil toxin\u00a0 poisoning\u00a0 the whole environment and the food chain, triggering\u00a0 innumerable diseases including the chronic kidney disease\u00a0 ravaging\u00a0 the Rajarata\u201d!<\/p>\n

On 23rd<\/sup> August the Derana TV\u00a0 program Aluth Parlimenthuwa\u201d had assembled a discussion panel\u00a0 led by Ven. Rathana. Others were an ex-minister of agriculture, i.e., Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena(MYA), Nalaka Karunaratne (NK) of the Samastha Govijana Sammelanaya\u201d (a Farmers’ League) , Dr. Priyanka Yapa (PY) of the\u00a0 Sabaragamuwa University, and Asoka Abeygunawardena (AA). The latter is a government ideologue pushing sustainable agriculture\u201d and\u00a0 a so-called\u00a0 strategic enterprise management agency\u201d –\u00a0 SEMA. To some extent Asoka A\u00a0 is\u00a0 what Lysenko was to Soviet agriculture.\u00a0 There was also a\u00a0 selected set of\u00a0\u00a0 members of the audience\u201d\u00a0 brought from Trincomalee, Dambulla \u00a0Kurunegala etc.\u00a0 Their role was\u00a0 to ask\u00a0 rhetorical\u00a0 questions\u201d vigorously supporting the\u00a0 doing away with all agrochemicals\u201d, not just glyphosate. The\u00a0 veteran\u00a0 figures from\u00a0 Sri Lanka’s science, agriculture,\u00a0 health,\u00a0 or experts from\u00a0 the plantation institutes or the WHO\u00a0 were conspicuously absent and presumably not invited. In my view, only the ex-minister MYA talked some sense, i.e., stated scientifically valid things about toxins.\u00a0 Nalaka Karunaratne correctly described the plight of the farmers;\u00a0 but he as well as his co-panelists were totally wrong on toxicology and agrochemicals.<\/p>\n

Nalaka Karunaratne correctly pointed out that Sri Lanka\u00a0 has been importing Soya products and soya milk grown using glyphosate technology from the West\u00a0 for many years. He raised the specter of a poisoned nation ranging from babies to grand mothers. And yet, given decades of such soya consumption, we cannot find anyone stricken down by the alleged toxicity of glyphosate! None\u00a0 noted that Sri Lanka has consumed Canadian Lentils (parippu\u201d)\u00a0 and Canola oil for decades, grown with GM (genetically modified\u201d) agricultural\u00a0 technologies intensively using glyphosate.<\/p>\n

Nalaka Karunaratne noted that 40% of the fruits and vegetables produced by our farmers go waste due to lack of food preservation technologies and markets. Minutes before, it was noted that a fruit imported from Australia would remain on the table for months\u201d while the Sri Lanka fruit which rots\u00a0 in a few\u00a0 days was claimed to be healthy, natural\u201d and safer to eat. Not one expert\u201d panelist noted that the Australian fruit is simply coated with a layer of perfectly harmless wax which seals its aroma, its moisture, and prevents pathogens and mold spores from attacking the fruit. The wax can be washed off with hot water! But then, the toxin-free nation wants natural untreated fruits and nothing less. Let the farmers loose 40% of their produce!<\/p>\n

Priyanka Yapa and Asoka A uttered the usual litany of lies about the green revolution and the capabilities of alternative agriculture\u201d that I have heard from Californian activists, revealing the source of their\u00a0 borrowed ideas. Dr. Yapa even stated that he learned organic agriculture\u201d from the West, while attacking Glyphosate as a Western product\u201d. Amazingly,\u00a0 he was willing to accept a toxin if produced in Sri Lanka itself!\u00a0\u00a0 Priyanka Y mentioned several alternative techniques\u201d for killing weeds using equipment imported from China (not the West!) as alternatives to glyphosate. Every one of them are well known to most of us old hands, as being\u00a0 environmentally very harmful and rather ineffective, unlike glyphosate which is effective, inexpensive\u00a0 and environmentally friendly. These alternatives proposed by Priyanka Yapa, e.g.,\u00a0 infrared rays, or flames, microwaves\u00a0 attack all bugs, good and bad, in trying to burn\u201d the weeds. Gyphosate\u00a0 acts only on green plants, and does not harm worms, beetles, and other organisms (as long as they do not use photosynthesis- i.e., not in the plant kingdom). Far from killing micro-organisms and earthworms, glyphosate\u00a0 actually helps to remove metal toxins like cadmium (by chelation) from the soil\u00a0 and allows earth worms\u00a0 to flourish\u00a0 in soils inhospitable to organic life before the use of glyphosate, as has been demonstrated by Chinese scientists who studied extremely contaminated soils (see . Environ. Toxicol. Chem. Volume 33,<\/p>\n

pages 2351\u20132357, year 2014.). Of course, if Round up (which contains Glyphosate and tallowamine) were directly applied on the soil onto earthworms, they are affected adversely (by the tallowamine) and this has also been demonstrated by a recent Nature article (Nature-Scientific Reports<\/em>, vol. 5, 12886, year 2015).. But Glyphosate formulations are applied to foliage and not to the soil. Many countries are in fact switching onto glyphosate formulations free of tallowamine and they can be directly applied to the soil for soil remediation by removal of toxic metals like cadmium by converting them to water insoluble chelates.<\/p>\n

I have always held that the ban on glyphosate should never have been imposed. It should be lifted, NOT\u00a0 just for the benefit of the big tea plantations, but for the small-scale farmer,\u00a0 the vegetable farmer and all others. MYA (the ex-Minister) admitted that even after the ban, most practical-minded\u00a0 farmers (including himself) without ideological blinkers\u00a0 have\u00a0 used\u00a0 the glyphosate freely available at black-market in the toxin-free nation\u201d\u00a0 of Venerable Rathana, just as duty-free cars of MPs\u00a0 are available in the black market.<\/p>\n

While Ven. Rathana and his team regard\u00a0 Glyphosate as the very devil itself, the\u00a0 vast majority of scientists (including those in Sri Lanka) consider glyphosate to be benign and NOT a health risk. Its toxicity\u201d is similar to that of Lifebuoy soap. The International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC) of the WHO declared it a class-II hazard (i.e., similar to eating red meat\u201d in the ability to cause cancer) in 2014. The WHO and the FAO\u00a0 clarify that it is not a health risk at all and issued a press release on 16th<\/sup> May 2016. The FAO-WHO Joint Committee on Pesticide Residues effectively says that even a few tea spoons of full strength glyphosate consumed daily is quite safe!\u00a0 It is so safe that it may be sprayed without wearing gloves and goggles, even using\u00a0 formulations like Roundup\u201d which contain\u00a0 toxic additives like tallowamine to help bind to\u00a0 leaves. This is\u00a0 because the quantity in the spray\u00a0 is\u00a0 miniscule, unlike the amount of toxins absorbed by the farmer by inhaling diesel fumes from his own tractor. In 2004 Professor Acquavela\u00a0 and collaborators made an extended study of farmers in S. Carolina and Minnesota who used no goggles or gloves in spraying glyphosate. He\u00a0 found a maximum of 223 parts per billion (ppb) of glyphosate in urine, and a mean value of\u00a0\u00a0 3 ppb, i.e., well below the US threshold of 700 ppb, showing that the ingestion of glyphosate\u00a0 is negligible while the ingestion\u00a0 of the adjuvents is even smaller.<\/p>\n

The nonscientific public has misunderstood the IARC classification and concluded that glyphosate is a dangerous carcinogenic toxin. The toxins produced by Ven. Ratana’s duty free cars sold to the public at various times produce\u00a0 more harm to the environment than all the glyphosate used in the ex-minister MYA’s 30 acre tea estate in ten years.<\/p>\n

MYA correctly argued (Derana TV, 23 Aug, 2017) that while two tablets of paracetamol can cure a headache, it becomes a toxin if you take more; he correctly stated that the problem with agrochemicals\u00a0 is identical \u2013\u00a0 i.e., overuse.\u00a0 For\u00a0 Ven. Ratana,\u00a0\u00a0 glyphosate is worse than the LTTE\u201d, and beyond comparison with mere overuse. Claiming that any glyphosate applied in the hills comes down along the rivers to poison the whole country, Ven. R\u00a0 wants no glyphosate applied there.\u00a0 If any glyphosate is present in river water, then it would have\u00a0 killed all the algae in our water bodies, and this is manifestly not so.\u00a0 All chemical tests have shown that there is no glyphosate or its breakdown products in\u00a0 the river\u00a0 runoff as they rapidly decompose and react with the soil (in the tropics), playing a beneficial role by fixing heavy metals naturally present in the soil. Glyphosate itself breaks down and\u00a0 ultimately contributes to the phosphate needed in the soil.<\/p>\n

Every farmer knows of the egrets (Kokku\u201d) that follow his plough when he tills his land. If our soils are full of toxins and dead\u00a0 with no earthworms and soil organisms, then why do the egrets and other birds flock behind the plough? Why don’t the egrets drop dead? The soil is free of toxins and contain enough organisms to attract the birds. The biggest threats to our environment are (a) loss of habitat due to human encroachment, and (b) toxins and particulate matter\u00a0 from motor vehicles, farm equipment, and from industry. (c) another source of toxins is the bio-accumulation\u00a0 of trace elements by plants and in animal dung and their reuse in composting when a concentrated dose of metal toxins are returned to the earth. The so-called contaminated mineral fertilizers\u201d do not deliver significant amounts of metal toxins into the soil (for details, see Sec. 7\u00a0 of\u00a0 the\u00a0 article: https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1704.07906<\/a> ). In fact, it can be shown that even if heavily contaminated\u201d fertilizer (e.g., phosphate fertilizer containing 50 mg of Cd\u00a0 per kg of fertilizer, i.e., some 10 times larger than typically\u00a0 maximum stipulated values) adds negligible amounts of Cd toxin to the soil.\u00a0 For example, if\u00a0 we assume that 25 kg of phosphate<\/p>\n

fertilizer\/hectare are applied into a depth of 15 cm in paddy cultivation, it will add only<\/p>\n

1.25 \u03bcg of Cd and As per kilo of soil per application, while typical threshold values are 5 mg of<\/p>\n

As and 1 to 3 mg of Cd per kg of soil. Hence, even if all the Cd and As remain in the soil, with no wash-off, it will take 2.4 millenia to have a discernible effect on the Cd level in soil, 4 millenia to have an effect on the As levels in the soil. In reality much of the Cd or As gets washed of by monsoons.<\/p>\n

So the existing Cd levels are mostly of geological origin.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0 preposterous claim\u00a0 made by Nalaka Karunaratne\u00a0 stated that no one\u00a0 dares to drink water from a paddy field Vakkadaya\u201d (water port) any more. WHO Research and other independent\u00a0 studies\u00a0 show that the water in the vakkada, irrigation canals and tanks are perfectly safe to drink. The water in some specific household wells in the Rajarata contain geogenic fluoride (F)\u00a0 and magnesium (Mg). Conclusive evidence now point to\u00a0 the consumption of stagnant well water containing F and Mg as the cause of chronic kidney disease, with no links to glyphosate or heavy metals\u00a0 (see, e.g., research article in the renowned journal Nature-scientific reports<\/em>:\u00a0 DOI 10.1038\/srep42516,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 2017,\u00a0 and\u00a0 https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1704.07906\u00a0 in\u00a0 2017).<\/p>\n

Although glyphosate is less dangerous to soil organisms compared to\u00a0 soap,\u00a0 and even beneficial to the soil,\u00a0 the claim that glyphosate is a dangerous toxin is the unwavering message\u00a0 on the internet. Websites with catchy names like Natural agriculture\u201d, nature’s pulse\u201d,\u00a0 back-to earth\u201d, truthout.com\u201d,\u00a0 traditional kitchen\u201d, nature’s garden\u201d, green wholesome\u201d\u00a0 etc., flourish\u00a0 in the over-fed West and read\u00a0 in\u00a0 upper class Colombo\u00a0\u00a0 looking for ever-elitist, uncontaminated\u201d\u00a0 organic foods. The\u00a0 Hollywood celebrities with much money and little education set the trend.\u00a0 If you Google\u00a0 the words glyphosate\u201d and\u00a0 human toxicity\u201d, you come up with a\u00a0 smorgasbord of fake news and cooked up facts\u201d well\u00a0 anchored in pseudoscience. However, it\u00a0 requires expert knowledge to ferret out the errors, especially because biased experiments designed to prove\u00a0 <\/em>that\u00a0 glyphosate is toxic have been performed and published in fake journals which are now known as predatory journals<\/em>\u201d (see the report in http:\/\/science.sciencemag.org\/content\/342\/6154\/60.summary<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Close to a hundred Nobel Laureates issued a press statement (Washington Post, 4 July 2016) deploring faked science, and admonishing\u00a0 movements like GreenPeace\u201d to desist from creating and publicizing fake facts\u201d. These predatory journals\u00a0 look like proper scholarly journals, but they are not run by learned societies or reputed publishers. They publish anything once the fee is paid. Dr. Jayasumana of the Rajarata University, a\u00a0 Ms. Senanayake\u00a0 without scientific credentials but said to have psychic powers linking her to God Natha, and a US-based doctor used a predatory journal resoundingly named International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health<\/em>\u201d and\u00a0 owned\u00a0 privately by a Chinese businessman who also maintained an office in Switzerland. The many predatory journals launched by this businessman was already notorious and there was much news about it in the internet.<\/p>\n

The journal had been blacklisted at the time for at least one year\u00a0 by https:\/\/scholarlyoa.com\/<\/a>, a website which follows predatory journals. However, this was\u00a0 used\u00a0 by Jayasumana\u00a0 and colleagues\u00a0 to publish\u00a0 a hypothesis\u201d claiming that kidney disease is caused by the joint <\/em>action of arsenic, glyphosate and calcium (from hard water)\u00a0 forming a complex, all said to be found in the Rajarata. No evidence was presented, as there is none anyway. A proper journal would not have accepted it as the chemistry and physiology were patently wrong. Furthermore, no arsenic or glyphosate even as significant traces or exceeding controls\u00a0 has been detected in the Rajarata although today\u00a0 even one atom\u00a0 in a trillion other atoms can be detected.\u00a0 Biopsies on kidney patients have\u00a0 failed to detect any significant traces of glyphosate or its breakdown products\u00a0 in their blood, urine or body samples. And yet it was hailed by Green\u201d websites world over, and\u00a0 glyphosate has been declared the cause of kidney disease and\u00a0 banned from Sri Lanka, only to be replaced by black-market glyphosate. A country flooded in illegal hooch and narcotics has one more lucrative product\u00a0 for the underworld.<\/p>\n

The internet can be used to prove\u201d that France, Netherlands and even Russia have banned glyphosate. The reality is different. Only Sri Lanka and El Salvadore have actually gazetted a ban.\u00a0 Russia in its\u00a0 Soviet era ruined its agriculture and is now catching up making its own glyphosate and GMO products. In Sri Lanka the local Lysenkos and Rasputins, blinded by their own ideology and rhetoric\u00a0 are\u00a0 taking\u00a0 Sri Lanka\u00a0 to a dark era of poverty, malnutrition and traditional technology. The latter contains a large dose of superstition and some\u00a0 gems of wisdom; the wisdom is now well encoded into\u00a0 scientific agriculture.<\/p>\n

This rhetoric against fertilizers is also being used to sell fraudulent so-called bio-fertilizers with the blessings of the Presidential secretariate. A so called bio-based\u201d microbial fertilizer has been launched with high claims and being sold to farmers even though field tests showed that it did NOT have any fertilizer activity.\u00a0 The new product carries the name Biofilm Biofertilizer(BFBF), claimed to be based on the principle that some microbes (bacteria, fungi and algae) have the tendency to attach to surfaces and form multiple cellular communities bound together by extracellular polymers referred to as biofilms, which are supposedly more effective than individual microbes in nutrition provision to crops.\u00a0 That the product was a sham\u00a0 was highlighted and exposed in a number of articles by the veteran agriculturist Dr. Parakrama Waidyanatha, e.g.,\u00a0 in the Island newspaper\u00a0 3rd<\/sup> March 2017 ( http:\/\/www.island.lk\/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=161313<\/a>)\u00a0 and elsewhere. Many other astounding hoodwinks\u00a0 in terms of false claims by SEMA were revealed by Dr. Sarath Amarasiri\u00a0 (an ex-Director General of Agriculture) in the Island newspaper article dated 25th<\/sup> January 2017. Nevertheless, with SEMA’s blessing the farmers are being taken for a ride. Unfortunately\u00a0 the public frightened by so-called Toxic Fertilizers of foreign companies\u201d\u00a0 is with Ven. Ratana and other political con men.<\/p>\n

As a scientist who worked hard to establish food science\u00a0 and environmentally sustainable technologies in Sri Lanka in my days (1974-1975) as a Vice Chancellor and Professor of\u00a0 Chemistry at the Sri JayawardenePura university (then known as Vidyodaya University) , I can join with Dr. Panabokke to say that today’s Sri Lankan agriculture and food science are in the hands of Kattadiyas\u201d (Shamans).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Professor Chandre Dharmawardana, Ottawa, Canada. The government banned\u00a0 the popular herbicide\u00a0 known as Glyphosate\u201d in 2105 using the epidemic of Kidney Disease in the Rajarata as justification for its drastic action. It proposed to create a toxin free nation\u201d eventually banning agrochemicals.\u00a0 Ven. Ratana\u00a0 is\u00a0 Sri Lanka’s presidential adviser on agriculture, promising to rid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chandre-dharmawardana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}