<story><title>Why does the US allow a controversial weedkiller banned across the world?</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/28/paraquat-weedkiller-epa-ban</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>epgui</author><text>I’m a biochemist, and it drives me nuts how much the public worries about glyphosate but not really any other herbicides. Glyphosate may not be perfect but I’d worry more about almost any other type of herbicide, most of which are absolutely nasty.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rb229</author><text>I do not really buy this reasoning. Glyphosate has been proven to be harmful [ source: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Glyphosate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Glyphosate&lt;/a&gt; ]. Other things might be worse, sure, but that does not mean we can allow Glyohosate to be used without thinking about the risks.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why does the US allow a controversial weedkiller banned across the world?</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/28/paraquat-weedkiller-epa-ban</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>epgui</author><text>I’m a biochemist, and it drives me nuts how much the public worries about glyphosate but not really any other herbicides. Glyphosate may not be perfect but I’d worry more about almost any other type of herbicide, most of which are absolutely nasty.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>orwin</author><text>Yeah, we know, paraquat is 30 times more toxic than glyphosate, and have actual peer-reviewed studies with significant enough numbers to link it to an increase on Parkinson disease. I think there was a preliminary study on its effect on other neurodegenerative sickness, but i can&amp;#x27;t find it, so i guess it was scrapped.&lt;p&gt;Glyphosate at most could maybe increase by 30% the risks of a quite rare cancer for farmers who use it in high dosage (so glyphosate in conservation agriculture is likely to be harmless).&lt;p&gt;[edit] TFA talk about paraquat anyway :P</text></comment>