{"id":84860,"date":"2019-01-14T15:03:31","date_gmt":"2019-01-14T22:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=84860"},"modified":"2019-01-14T15:03:31","modified_gmt":"2019-01-14T22:03:31","slug":"health-canadas-affirmation-of-the-safety-of-the-herbicide-glyphosate-upsets-aloy-and-christie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/01\/14\/health-canadas-affirmation-of-the-safety-of-the-herbicide-glyphosate-upsets-aloy-and-christie\/","title":{"rendered":"Health Canada’s affirmation of\u00a0 the safety of\u00a0 the herbicide Glyphosate\u00a0 upsets Aloy and Christie!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

I thank the Lankaweb editor for publishing a\u00a0 note about the recent unanimous re-affirmation of the
\nsafety of the herbicide glyphosate by a team of 20 Canadian scientists. See: https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/01\/12\/health-canada-concludes-new-review-of-glyphosate-herbicide\/<\/a><\/p>\n

When this news item appeared in the Lankaweb, two commentators responded to it. I felt that those comments should be responded to in this manner, as a short article,\u00a0 rather than in the response format as the\u00a0 issues brought up\u00a0 by Aloy\u201d and by Christie\u201d are likely to the shared by other readers too. Hence they merit\u00a0 a detailed answer. Furthermore, every scientist who is knowledgeable on these topics must regard it as his\/her solemn duty to bring out the facts, and squash\u00a0 myths widely held by\u00a0 some segments of the public,\u00a0 in order to safeguard Sri Lanka’s\u00a0 march towards agricultural self-sufficiency and environmental sustainability.<\/p>\n

This news item is of prime interest\u00a0 as\u00a0 Sri Lanka was the only country in the world to impose a total ban on the herbicide although it if often falsely claimed that other countries have banned it (http:\/\/dh-web.org\/green\/NatuNewsFake.html<\/a> ).<\/p>\n

The ban was\u00a0 based on the false claim that the herbicide is a likely cause of the kidney disease that has began to plague Sri Lanka’s NCP\u00a0 since the early 1990s. The ban was imposed in January 2105 by President Sirisena at the behest of Ven. Rathana, although the National Academy of Sciences in Sri Lanka and other learned societies\u00a0 had opposed such a ban. I myself have written articles on this topic since 2012 when fake science\u00a0 was presented to the Nation, with a pretence that\u00a0 it\u00a0 is based on revelations from God Natha himself.<\/p>\n

The ban was reversed in July 2018 due to the collapse of the tea market, the collapse of the cultivation of Indian corn (Bada Iringu\u201d) and other crops. Corn\u00a0 is\u00a0 an important economic enterprise for many small cultivators in large\u00a0 parts of the country. The impending closure of teas estates implied a total loss to the ecosystem due to their irreversible conversion into housing and tourist conglomerates. The total loss to the country over the three years of\u00a0 the ban is estimated to be around 50 billion in foreign exchange. It will be an up-hill task to recapture lost markets.<\/p>\n

Alloy’s Questions.
\nAloy states that :
\n(1) The population which is predominantly Sinhalese in the NCP area is depleting. And there are large number of CKDu cases there. First solve this problem\u201d.
\n(2)\u00a0 Then we can talk about the use of Glyphosate in other countries however small the traces in their systems.
\n(3) Till then let us eliminate agro chemicals one by one and revert to bio fertilizer.
\n(4) There was no CKDu in the olden days. It started after the uncontrolled use of agrochemicals.<\/p>\n

Let us take Aloy’s point number (1).
\nIndeed, the kidney disease CKDu strikes any one living sufficiently long in certain villages in the NCP,
\nirrespective of whether they identify themselves as\u00a0 Sinhalese or\u00a0 Tamils. It also strikes people in areas like Mullativu (Mooladoova) where the population is predominantly Tamil speaking, and this is an area where agrochemicals have NEVER\u00a0 been used\u00a0 for various reasons.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, domestic animals (dogs, cats), mice, rabbits and livestock (goats, cattle, pigs) who live in the same environment as the farmers who get CKDu do NOT contract this disease, although those animals are very susceptible, and are in fact used in laboratory research on this type of disease.<\/p>\n

The animals drink water from\u00a0 paddy fields (containing agrochemicals) and irrigation canals, but do NOT get sick. People who get sick do not drink\u00a0 such water, but use their own dug wells. Scientists have found that these dug wells contain unacceptable amounts of fluoride of geological origin, together
\nwith water hardness caused by the presence of magnesium and calcium salts in the water. Furthermore
\nscientists have shown that it is this combination of fluoride and hard water that causes CKDu. It has nothing to do with the use of agrochemicals.\u00a0 This has been confirmed by feeding this water, as well as normal water to laboratory mice. Independently, the Kidney specialists at the Kandy Hospital have done research where they have examined the blood of CKDu patients using a research\u00a0 technique\u00a0 known as molecular-pathway analysis. They have shown that the patients all have pathway markers arising from the action of fluoride as well as viral infections. See their latest research report:
\nhttps:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/325399594_Transcriptome_analysis_supports_viral_infection_and_fluoride_toxicity_as_contributors_to_chronic_kidney_disease_of_unknown_etiology_CKDu_in_Sri_Lank<\/a><\/p>\n

SO WE KNOW FAIRLY WELL WHAT CAUSES CKDu.
\nThe solution for PREVENTING the disease is to provide clean water, so that the people do NOT\u00a0 drink contaminated well water. Providing tanks to collect rain water has been tired out in the NCP\u00a0 and worked well even during the past two years of drought. This costs a few cents a litre (cost of amortizing the tank) compared to Rs 1-3 per litre using imported reverse-osmosis plants that need electricity and\u00a0 and expensive filtration membranes.<\/p>\n

2. Alloy says Then we can talk about the use of Glyphosate in other countries however small the traces in their systems\u201d.<\/p>\n

No traces of glyphosate have been found in their systems\u201d, if\u00a0\u00a0 Aloy is thinking about\u00a0 CKDu patients. The WHO study found that 97% of the CKDu patients did not have any significant amounts of glyphosate. About 3% who seemed to have a few parts per billion glyphosate is a quantity\u00a0 well within the statistical error of such investigations<\/p>\n

3. Alloy says Till then let us eliminate agrochemicals one by one and revert to bio fertilizer\u201d.<\/p>\n

Till when?
\nBio-fertilizers are also agrochemicals with another name.
\nWhere is this bio fertilizer\u201d available? Does Aloy know how much is needed? Does he know how much they cost? You need about a ton of bio fertilizer per Kg of mineral fertilizer to have the same effect in soils where fertilizer is needed. Also, biofertilzer costs much more. It is also not as healthy as touted by the organic-food supermarket chains.<\/p>\n

What is the toxic contamination data for bio fertilizers\u201d? Bio fertilizers often have as much or more metal toxins like Cadmium, As, etc., as conventional fertilizers, because the plants that went to make the bio-fertilizer accumulate these toxins from the soil. The soil naturally contains cadmium, and other metallic ore, as seen from Sri Lankan geological data. The traces found in the soil are accumulated by green plants (plants don’t have kidneys to flush out the toxins, and so they accumulate toxins in the plant. So straw has some 200 times more cadmium toxins than in the soil).<\/p>\n

The total organic\u201d food production using bio fertilizers in the whole world is less than 2% today, , even though\u00a0 such organic\u201d methods have existed since the 1920s in the West. It has existed\u00a0 from time immemorial among rural people who eked out a subsistence\u00a0 level of existence from such agriculture, feeding a much smaller population. It has been shown by many people including organic-farming researchers at the Swiss Institute,\u00a0\u00a0 that organic farming even if extensively adopted,\u00a0 cannot feed even half the world population without extensive land use, land erosion and the deployment of vast amounts of water (see: https:\/\/dh-web.org\/place.names\/posts\/CD-Mueller-OrganicL.pd<\/a> ).
\nJust as private education (however\u00a0 superior\u00a0 it is) cannot replace free public education, the push for organic farming can only produce a two-tier food system that will\u00a0 ultimately enfeeble the food supply of the less fortunate.<\/p>\n

(4). Aloy says:
\nThere was no CKDu in the olden days. It started after the uncontrolled use of agrochemicals\u201d.<\/p>\n

This is completely contrary to facts.
\nCKDu is not found everywhere agrochemicals are used .Paddy farming requires very little glyphosate (herbicide)\u00a0 or mineral fertilizers compared to many other crops like tea or corn . CKDu\u00a0 is found in certain NCP villages where the geology naturally has fluoride. The disease started only after the accelerated\u00a0 Mahaweli program came into being, where people were settled hurriedly, and in higher ground away from agricultural tanks. As the water is too far, they dug their own household wells and drank water from them.
\nThese were areas that were NOT populated in the old days, due to lack of water, and malaria.
\nIn the old days people lived very close to Tanks and irrigation canals, and got their water from such sources and did not drink water containing fluorides. Although very small amounts of fluoride are\u00a0 good for health (prevents dental carries etc.), fluoride\u00a0 is toxic if the safe threshold is exceeded. This safe threshold is reduced in the presence of magnesium salts found in hard water, and makes hard well water containing fluoride the trigger of kidney disease.<\/p>\n

Christie’s Question.
\nNow let us see what Christie, the second respondent had to say.\u00a0 He says:
\nLooks like you had your daily dose. How is it now compared to old Monsanto.
\nCanada Health got nothing to do with us\u201d.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Canadian agricultural health has a LOT to do with Sri Lankan\u00a0 food.\u00a0 Most of the\u00a0 lentils (parippu\u201d), and significant amounts of chick peas, soya beans, Canola oil etc., that Sri Lankans consume originate in Canada, even when they are imported from an intermediate source like India.<\/p>\n

Upper class Sri Lankan activists who mobilize\u201d to fight\u201d genetically modified foods (GMO foods) probably do not realize that their daily diet is implicitly made up of such GMO products, and that 80% of the nitrogen in their bodies have been produced using the Harber-Bosch process that has fed the world since the early 1900s.\u00a0 People fail to understand that a major fraction of the food that feeds the 7.2 billion people of the world living today\u00a0 in 195 countries of the world come from the agriculture of just a few\u00a0 countries who are leaders\u00a0 in industrial agriculture. That should not be so, especially for a country like Sri Lanka with abundant water,\u00a0 fertile soil and a proud\u00a0 agricultural past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Chandre Dharmawardana, Canada. I thank the Lankaweb editor for publishing a\u00a0 note about the recent unanimous re-affirmation of the safety of the herbicide glyphosate by a team of 20 Canadian scientists. See: https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/01\/12\/health-canada-concludes-new-review-of-glyphosate-herbicide\/ When this news item appeared in the Lankaweb, two commentators responded to it. I felt that those comments should be responded […]<\/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-84860","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\/84860","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=84860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}