{"id":80272,"date":"2018-08-18T13:58:19","date_gmt":"2018-08-18T20:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=80272"},"modified":"2018-08-18T13:58:19","modified_gmt":"2018-08-18T20:58:19","slug":"reply-to-grusha-andrews-rant-on-glyphosate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/08\/18\/reply-to-grusha-andrews-rant-on-glyphosate\/","title":{"rendered":"Reply to Grusha Andrews’ rant on glyphosate."},"content":{"rendered":"

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

I am glad that Grusha Andrews (GA) has given me another opportunity to discuss agrochemicals and the scientific approach to the elucidation of causative factors of ill health and disease. The readers may\u00a0 note Grusha Andrews’\u00a0 tone of the holy Inquisitor, nay of the Nazi Sturmabteilung<\/em> in dealing with\u00a0 myself, Dr. Padeniaya,\u00a0 Ven. Ratana, Dr. Jayasumana and others. Did she wake up from a glyphosic dream after reading my article in the Colombo Telegraph entitled Can A California Jury Decide If A Pesticide Caused Gardener Johnson\u2019s Cancer?<\/em>\u201d, on 13th<\/sup> August 2018.<\/p>\n

Goebblesian Invective.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am labeled a a specimen of a \u2018scientist\u2019 who is using scientific jargon to advocate cancer, chronic kidney disease and death to Sri Lankans. I am said to be a descendant of the Nazis who performed trials on captured Jews, the Caucasians who trialled gynaecological instruments on Negro women without anaesthesia or their consents – (sic) – having the immoral audacity to consistently advocate to \u2018lesser humans\u2019 what they protect themselves from in their countries of residence\u201d. I am also said to be a `quasi scientist’.<\/p>\n

Grusha Andrews is the very opposite of all that. She is the White American or Shining knight who came to defeat the Nazis and save the free world. The female Chevalier-Garter of the Thistle- is also called a Knight.\u00a0 Having whipped herself into a lather of righteous indignation befitting an\u00a0 executioner of the Holy Inquisition about to\u00a0 torch heretics, Grusha Andrews goes for more victims. Calling names may have been the war cry of barbarians.<\/p>\n

Dr. Padeniya is declared a noncompoop-hood\u201d.\u00a0 Lady GA turns to Ven. Athureliye Ratana and present him\u00a0\u00a0 (without the Ven.\u201d)\u00a0 as an extremist Buddhist monk defecating in a pit in\u00a0 Lady GA’s\u00a0 mind. She\u00a0 is the very epitome of moderation. She upends this verbal diarrhea claiming that the idiocy of Padeniya , Jayasumana et al. <\/em>\u00a0\u00a0(sic) does not absolve Chandre Dharmawardana and his team of devil\u2019s advocates from their criminality<\/em> towards the human beings of Sri Lanka\u201d- she forgot the earthworms!<\/p>\n

Indeed, this crusader\u00a0 now moves to reveal what she thinks is the\u00a0 miserable motive of this devil’s team \u2013 filthy lucre<\/em>! They\u00a0 risk generations of humans to fatten the pockets …\u00a0 the likes of Dharmawardana till a 20 year\u00a0 prospective study is completed?<\/em>\u201d However, before burning the agents of Satan,\u00a0 Lady GA\u00a0 must\u00a0 right the realm of her fellow Knight, Sir Bradford Hill!<\/p>\n

I disagree completely with Venerable Ratana, Dr. Jayasumana, Dr. Padeniaya and others, but\u00a0 have never used such contemptible language against them in my writings. They, like Grusha Andrews, are all part of the frightened public who believe that they are fighting a holy war against rapacious global agricultural giants and their agents. They think that their plate of food, and their glass of water are poisoned by agrochemicals and see the mote of glyphosate residues but not the toxic beam of fossil fuel residues. They hang on fake science or Natha Deiyyo to rationalize their fear.\u00a0 If medieval people believed that evil spirits caused disease, today’s bogey bugs\u00a0 are the agrochemicals said to be present everywhere\u201d! Scientists who\u00a0 favour any use of agrochemicals are tar-brushed as paid agents of agro-companies\u201d as in Dr. Jayasumana’s scurrilous book\u00a0 Wakugadu Hatana\u201d.<\/p>\n

This discourse is\u00a0 increasingly fascist,\u00a0 insinuating\u00a0 those who hold opposite opinions to be\u00a0 ‘dirty jews working for big business and against the Fatherland’. Today in Sri Lanka, there are Shining Knights hurling unsubstantiated accusations from every corner.\u00a0 They judge others by their standards. Indeed, how can one sleep, when this type of\u00a0 crude discourse is more and more current, with Jayasumana and Grusha Andrews as common bedfellows.<\/p>\n

Bradford Hill criteria for identifying causative agents of diseases.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I discuss environmental science, food technology etc. with colleagues and students, ‘what is healthy’<\/em>, and what causes what<\/em>\u201d invariably come up. In physics, the concept of cause is obsolete, but not in epidemiology. The Bardford Hill approach is best for students without much mathematics. Those with a mastery of mathematics can construct a mathematical model, and\u00a0 immediately discover the redundancies and errors in the Bradford Hill criteria [these are exposed by a factor-group analysis, also called an eigenvector analysis \u2013 indeed, we need the ‘jargon’ to be precise ]. But GA has failed to see these and reproach\u00a0 my alleged cunning\u201d.<\/p>\n

The so-called biological gradient<\/em>\u00a0 criterion falls logically under my very first item, i.e., Strength of association between so called ’cause and effect (disease)’. That is, when the dose of the causative agent increases, the chance of developing the disease, or the strength of the epidemic,\u00a0 increases proportionately.<\/p>\n

Thus countries which use a very large amount of agrochemicals and pesticides should show proportionately higher incidence of cancer, kidney and liver diseases if agrochemicals are involved. However, what is seen is a NEGATIVE CORRELATION. I gave the figures for several countries. The figures for New Zealand and USA are 1717 and 137 kg\/hectare (2015 World bank data) respectively, while Qatar uses\u00a0 over 7100 kg\/hectare. Data for over 150 countries verify this negative correlation. Even within Sri Lanka, the highest use of glyphosate is in the Tea Estates, while the lowest\u00a0 is in the paddy fields. Yet it is the paddy farmers who\u00a0\u00a0 contract a kidney disease of unknown aetiology (CKDu), and in only certain Dry-Zone villages. In spite of this, the anti-industry lobby jumps to link CKDu with glyphosate use, although what we see is an ANTI-CORRELATION.<\/p>\n

A strong correlation with CKDu is found for people who drink stagnant water from household wells, many of which are high in fluoride, and contain\u00a0 hard\u00a0 water (i.e., having magnesium and calcium ions). A correlation does not establish a cause, but an anti-correlation\u00a0 eliminates a proposed cause. It is fluoride and magnesium together that\u00a0 satisfy the criteria for causing CKDu. For more details, see my research paper published in the Journal of Environmental Geochemistry, volume 40, p 705\u00a0 (2017), https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s10653-017-0017-4<\/a> and references therein.<\/p>\n

All such science is\u00a0 irrelevant to our\u00a0 Crusader.\u00a0\u00a0 Lady GA\u00a0 draws me over the burning coals claiming I cunningly<\/em> neglected temporality\u201d in my list. She elucidates temporality\u201d for the uninitiated by saying that\u00a0 the longer a person is exposed to the causative agent the higher the chance of developing the disease\u201d. Contrary to Bardford Hill’s position, I recommend that the first seven tests be applied first, and then, if\u00a0 successful one\u00a0 moves to the time dependent tests (temporality\u201d) as toxico-kinetic studies are more difficult and expensive.\u00a0 That is why I skip it from my\u00a0 initial list for the evaluation of an aetiology.<\/p>\n

After\u00a0 unleashing\u00a0 high dudgeon GA asks a question about the length of the studies taken to establish the safety of Glyphosate formulations. Here is the question, written in Lady GA’s\u00a0 adaptation of the\u00a0 Goebbels invective:<\/p>\n

Quasi scientists of the inhuman<\/em> calibre of Dharmawardana\u201d who scream<\/em> for long prospective studies to assert the causality between cancer and Glyphosate before its ban don\u2019t seem to question the \u2018800 studies \u2018that \u2018prove\u2019 glyphosates are safe. Were they prospective cohort studies? How many years were the exposed subjects followed up to arrive at the conclusion that Glyphosphates are safe? Who funded such study? …(sic)…Are we to risk generations of humans to fatten the pockets<\/em> of the industry giants and the likes of Dharmawardana till a 20 year prospective study is completed?<\/p>\n

If Lady GA had simply Googled for long-term studies (chronic toxicity studies) on glyphosate she could have found out the needed answers without fattening pockets or resorting to uncivilized invective. Most advanced countries have their own cohort studies, while US studies are the most comprehensive. I gave the answers in my article in the Colombo Telegraph.<\/p>\n

Giant\u00a0 health study of nearly a lakh of farmers for almost a quarter century.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I had repeatedly alluded to the long study\u00a0 of 90,000-farmer that lasted nearly 25 years (Bradford Hill’s temporality criterion), and not just 20 years. The study was funded\u00a0 by the Dept. of Health of the US government, and conducted by independent scientists. It was reported in The Journal of the\u00a0 National Cancer Institute.<\/em>, 2017, DOI: 10.1093\/jnci\/djx233., published on 17th<\/sup> November, 2017. There had also been many earlier studies of\u00a0 shorter durations.\u00a0 Many of these farmers had used glyphosates before the study, and hence their exposure was possibly longer than 25 years.\u00a0 They were exposed to glyphosate containing all the usual adjuvants (i.e., ~5% of wetting agents, used also in shampoos). The health, body fluids and physiology of the farmers were monitored in detail,\u00a0 compared with control samples and the data analyzed mathematically instead of simplistic Bradford Hill criteria (but of course including them more correctly).\u00a0 David Spiegelhalter, a professor at Britain\u2019s Cambridge University, an FRS and an expert in analyzing statistical risks (with no stake in this research), said the results were from a very large and careful study\u201d and showed no significant relationship between glyphosate use and any type of cancer<\/strong> including non-Hodgkin Lymphoma.<\/p>\n

But the California jury\u00a0 incorrectly affirmed\u00a0 that gardener Johnson’s\u00a0 Lymphoma was caused by Glyphosate use! Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.<\/p>\n

The main adversaries of Glyphosate are the NGOs and health-food chains that oppose GMO foods. Does\u00a0 Lady GA believe that the 107 Nobel Laureates who wrote to the Washington Post (30th<\/sup> June 2016) blasting Green\u201d NGOs for their Luddite anti-science position are nothing but\u00a0 paid agents of agrochemical companies, or\u00a0 descendant of the Nazis who performed trials on captured Jews, the Caucasians who trialled gynaecological instruments on Negro women without anaesthesia or their consents<\/em> ?<\/p>\n

The Precautionary Principle.<\/strong><\/p>\n

GA’s chivalry\u201d and humanity have no bounds. She asserts that ‘when scientists, epidemiologists and oncologists want Glyphosphate controls on the precautionary principals of medicine, the likes of Dharmawardana ask for evidence from prospective cohort studies’<\/em>. Ga wants to act before doing the studies in true Mikado style. Indeed, first the execution and then the trial\u201d!<\/p>\n

The precautionary principle is incorrectly used<\/em> when you ban<\/em> a dangerous substance. Societies have evolved sophisticated precautionary principles improving on primitive ban and\u00a0 banish<\/em>\u201d (BB) approaches. The modern approach is to control and constrain<\/em>\u201d (CC) instead of BB. Even strong narcotics (e.g., opioids) are available to physicians when they need them \u2013 they are not banned. All pharmaceuticals are more dangerous than glyphosate, but they are available through trained pharmacists by prescription. Radioactive materials are similarly controlled and constrained. An agrochemical subject to a precautionary principle\u00a0 should NOT be sold in the open market, but made available to farmers only through\u00a0 licensed technicians who apply the optimal amount in a farm or in a school yard. Then, clumsy gardeners like Johnson who admit to getting fully doused with Glyphosate, not once but at least twice, will not\u00a0 access the material.<\/p>\n

Banning a coveted substance creates a black market, producing a more dangerous situation. Smuggled glyphosate was easily available in Sri Lanka during the\u00a0 ban. That is why the modern application of the precautionary principle is to use CC instead of BB. Glyphosate should be available to all users and not just Tea and Rubber planters, or else the unjust law will be breached.<\/p>\n

Those concerned with precaution cannot ignore more serious dangers\u00a0 perhaps a factor of million stronger. Petroleum and diesel fumes, burnt-garbage emissions, and dust carrying urban toxins are class-1 carcinogens. These are everywhere, in large amounts in the ecosystem and in food. Pharmaceuticals in urine flushed down\u00a0 go into water ways. These toxins are ignored, and we are told that traces of glyphosate, a mere class-II hazard, are present everywhere\u201d. So what, and indeed, by how much<\/em>? A French beekeeper has filed a case because there are 16 parts per billion of glyphosate in some samples of honey. Given that the JCPR which is an arm of the WHO allows 1 mg\/kg of body weight (i.e., one part per million) per day of glyphosate, the alleged contamination from glyphosate is\u00a0 nearly a million times smaller than accepted chronic toxicity levels<\/strong>. That is, if the ban-and-banish\u201d style precautionary principle is to be applied, then we should first ban all fossil fuels, paints and industrial solvents, toilets running into sewers etc., before banning a virtually non-existent hazard which is\u00a0 measurable only by the power of modern analytical chemistry. This hazard is grossly exaggerated by green-food\u201d vendors and fear-mongering NGOs.<\/p>\n

Is Glyphosate carcinogenic?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Glyphosate was deemed a probable<\/em> (but not a definitely established ) class-II carcinogen by the IARC of the WHO only in 2014. The IARC identified a hazard, and not a health risk. Even this is disputed, ironically enough by another arm of the WHO and the FAO named the Joint committee on pesticide residues (JCPR). Their communique of May 16th<\/sup>, 2016 implies that glyphosate is not a chronic agro-toxin. A daily intake of even 1 mg per kg of body weight is deemed safe!<\/p>\n

Johnson claims he was not warned of the dangers of gyphosate when the accidental dousing with glyphosate happened. That happened before 2014, prior to its classification in class-II. So how does the California jury conclude that the gardener had been misled? May be the Jurors were like Grusha Andrews in their mindset.<\/p>\n

Monsanto documents are alleged to prove that they knew it to be a carcinogen\u201d. What the Monsanto internal documents prove is that their scientists were considering<\/em> the possibility that Glyphosate is carcinogenic, and were investigating<\/em> that. However, no one has concluded that it is truly carcinogenic even today.\u00a0 The Jury erred in linking\u00a0 Johnson’s Lymphoma to\u00a0 glyphosate. It could have justly taken Monsanto and the US regulatory bodies to task\u00a0 for their too cozy relationship.<\/p>\n

Is glyphosate bad for the environment?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many websites run by Organic Food chains etc.,\u00a0 claim that glyphosate kills bacteria and earthworms. The internet is full of fake news. If you consult research journals maintained by learned societies or universities, or standard textbooks, a different picture emerges. Glyphosate is broken down by bacteria into amino acid derivatives and phosphates which are food for bacteria. So, most types of bacteria thrive in the presence of small amounts of glyphosate, which are what the soil gets (parts per billion) as the glyphosate is sprayed in dilution as an aerosol.\u00a0 Similarly, earthworms thrive better as glyphosate binds to toxic metals like cadmium and make them insoluble. For instance, regarding the beneficial effect towards earthworms, see e,g,:\u00a0 Zhou et al, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry<\/em>, vol. 33, p 2351-2357 (2014). Also, see Lane et al, Peobiologia<\/em>, vol. 55, pages 325-342 (2012) regarding the effect of glyphosate on the bacterial biomass. In contrast, organic farmers\u00a0 should note that many common substances can be toxic,\u00a0 e.g.,\u00a0 used ground coffee if added to garden soils\u00a0 kill earthworms and bacteria as it is acidic and\u00a0 has sufficient caffeine to be toxic to such organisms.<\/p>\n

The public is worried about the alleged persistence\u201d of glyphosate in the environment. In tropical climates glyphosate is broken down in a few days, or gets firmly attached to metallic elements like calcium, aluminum, cadmium etc., and from insoluble substances rendering them harmless. Here a French jury\u00a0 erred gravely in\u00a0 its judgment on the bio-degradability of glyphosate.<\/p>\n

In Sri Lanka, the WHO study [Jayatilleke et al. BMC Nephrology, vol. 14, p 160\u00a0 (2013)] found that 97% of CKDu\u00a0 patients had no significant detectable amounts of glyphosate in their body fluids. The waterways of Sri Lanka have no traces of glyphosate, because, if such glyphosate exists, then there cannot be green algae or green weeds (e.g., Water Hyacinth) in the water. Hence Dr. Ranil Senanayake’s concern\u00a0 about monitoring leakage of glyphosate into rivers is trivially solved by looking at the presence of algae in our water ways.<\/p>\n

The belief that the Mahaweli river brings down agricultural toxins from the hills is completely false.<\/p>\n

The extremely high rainfall dilutes any washoff to parts per billion or trillion (as shown in the research journal, Environmental Geochemistry and Health, 23 June 2018: DOI: 10.1007\/s10653-018-0140-x , ) and hence becomes environmentally inconsequential.<\/p>\n

Water analysis by the Geologists at Peradniya University (Prof. Chandrajith et al 2016), by the WHO team in 2013 (Jayatilleke et al), by a team from the University of Tokyo (Kawakami et al, Nanayakkara et al, 2014), and also from the national water board (Dr. Jayasinghe et al) have shown that the amounts of cadmium, arsenic, lead etc., found in the Mahaweli and other waterways are miniscule and hundreds of times smaller than the WHO specified danger levels. These in fact correspond to naturally occurring amounts present in the soil.<\/p>\n

Grusha Andrews’ list of countries that allegedly banned\u201d Glyphosate<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This list is completely misleading, and reports the scum that collects to the top of the internet, rather than looking at\u00a0 what has been gazetted by these countries. Various politicians in these countries\u00a0 have promised to\u00a0 ban\u201d glyphosate to appease individuals like Grusha Andrews and Ven. Ratana, but they do not ban the product. In Canada, Glyphosate is available in most Home & Garden sections of Home Depot, Canadian Tire etc. Only two countries banned glyphosate outright, viz., Sri Lanka and San Salvador. Both have now reversed the ban and glyphosate is\u00a0 available for agricultural use. It is available in over 190 countries the world over, for use in agriculture, golf courses, school grounds , city parks, railway tracks etc.. These include\u00a0 the countries listed by GA where some of them\u00a0 seek to introduce a CC-type precautionary principle rather than a ban.\u00a0 A\u00a0 more detailed account of such fake news is given in my article:\u00a0 http:\/\/dh-web.org\/green\/NatuNewsFake.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Grusha Andrews’ Libelous charge.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The author Gursha Andrews\u00a0 has accused the present writer of receiving money from agrochemical multinationals and fattening pockets\u201d. This is a very serious libelous and unsubstantiated charge that can be taken up through the proper channels to seek justice, unless the author withdraws them forthwith and clarifies her position, or provides evidence to substantiate her claims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Chandre Dharmawardana, Canada I am glad that Grusha Andrews (GA) has given me another opportunity to discuss agrochemicals and the scientific approach to the elucidation of causative factors of ill health and disease. The readers may\u00a0 note Grusha Andrews’\u00a0 tone of the holy Inquisitor, nay of the Nazi Sturmabteilung in dealing with\u00a0 myself, Dr. […]<\/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-80272","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\/80272","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=80272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}