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this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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Kinda weird this has to be done at the bill level, there isn't a health agency that monitors these things and bans as necessary?
There is, but banning these substances is a political process not a scientific one. It's definitely true that this should be done by experts and not politicians.
The thing is that it's impossible to set up an experiment to show that something is safe. All you can do is collect more evidence that something is not dangerous. This leads to GRAS.
There's also the additional fact that the dosage makes the poison. There is no substance for which a single molecule can harm you meaningfully.
Roundup is about as toxic as tablesalt. Caffeine is vastly more toxic than that. And Tylenol, well, that simply wouldn't be approved if it were invented today. The ratio between the therapeutic dose and the lethal dose is too small.
Then there's tradition and utility.
Plenty of herbal supplements and even foods are quite dangerous but are sold because they always were and they are "natural".
We can all agree that certain substances don't belong in food - either because they are useless or there's strong evidence they're harmful.
It's the useful ones for which there is some evidence that they may cause issues when given in extreme doses, but a vast number of substances exhibit that behavior. Caffeine and Tylenol, for example. You do not think of these as poisons, but they are. Caffeine is so dangerous that you have to go through a lot of trouble to get it in its pure form.
The fact is that those supstances are certainly more dangerous than the substances in the article, but people are not clamoring to ban them.
And all this complexity is before people's individual interests are involved.
This is why when you compare, say, us and eu food regulations you find substances that are on one list and not the other. One is not a superset of the other.
Anyway, these substances are not "toxic" in really any correct usage of the term, and it's probably very unlikely that a ban will make anyone healthier or happier, despite what you may read about when you Google these substances. Even if you go to the scientific level.
Scientists can have their own agenda. They're still people. Or they can just be bad scientists. Or they can just be churning out papers as fast as possible to increase their prestige.
It used to be that the top paper that came up (it may still be up in the list) when you search glyphosate and bees was a bad paper. It did correctly conclude that glyphosate killed the bees when they put it in the honey, but they had to put so much in there in order to see any effect at all that the concentration was high enough to actually kill aquatic weeds. Next it wasn't properly controlled. Do you know what else will kill bees if put it in their honey? Water. And most definitely caffeine. I assure you a very small amount of caffeine in honey will kill a nest.
It's just a political thing with good optics because who can argue with banning a "toxic" substance.
Prions would like a word.
Y'know technically, you are right. I forget that proteins can be singular molecules.
Awesome! Glad to have this added to the conversation.
I actually had this thought and was thinking about adding something like this earlier today.
You're technically correct, in a sense. There still needs to be lots of these to cause problems. If there aren't lots, there's no problem.
It would be the same for any self replicating thing. Bacteria, viruses, fungi, and prions, but they replicate. I will grant you a single large parasite could do this, but at that point, we're talking about tigers and such as a technicality as well.
Potentially one of these things could cause problems by reproducing. I think it's just unlikely. I don't know how we could demonstrate that though. I imagine a single virus or bacterium can lead to disease. I just suspect the probability is low.
Like you, my first thought was prions, but they have to actually come into contact with the protein to catalyze its misfolding. That'd be rare in the protein soup, I suppose.
Anyway. Nice comment!
None of the things you've listed here are single molecules except for the prion. A single cell, even for simple organisms, is made up of millions of proteins. Viruses come close, but are still made up of the nucleus and the capsid.
A protein could be considered a single molecule, but it also could not.
Molecule is hardly the right term for most things, e.g. polonium or salt.
I intended to be more general but didn't want to go further of into the weeds. I considered 1 unit, but that's misleading.
Let's go with the etymology of molecule: small amount.
All proteins are not singular molecules, but the ones that are... are. Proteins are actually classified partly by if they are a single molecule or several (quartenary structure). Polymers, as long as the chain of bonds isn't broken, are giant molecules by definition.
I get what you mean here, that a single molecule doesn't cause harm and quantity matters, and I agree. It would just be technically correct to say non-polymer molecules.
there's a medium artificial with the same title if anyone is interested. (1 minute google search)
For sure, a must read. The OP who referred to it, clearly didn't. Not you, Hello Hotel, thanks for the link.
You seem to have missed my meaning.
I have no disagreement with that article, except the tone.
I hadn't heard about the article before, but frankly, the topic is part of what I was trying to convey.
Your intentions were clear.
That it's not as simple as saying "something is as safe as table salt"?
You seem to have missed that.
And how does me saying I agree with that article not correct your misconception?
The explanation by the PhD basically explains how your argument is absolutely flawed.
Can you read! For fucks sake!
You've missed the whole point of the post.
Are bees typically used to find the toxicity of a substance for humans? I thought that was rats or something.
They were trying to link glyphosate to colony collapse disorder.
Yeah, you'd typically use rats or mice.
It's interesting to me, that if you had said this exact phrase in relation to climate change research, or any other politically divisive science, you would have been down voted to oblivion, but when talking about this, you got up voted. What you've written here is true regardless of the subject matter, but when it comes to agendas, it's even more true in politically divisive science.
Yeah... I'm fine being a liberal, but this place is toxic.
I'm not sure how much longer I'll tolerate it.
It's just too many angry, ignorant people unwilling to accept challenges to their beliefs.
Just because your beliefs are left wing doesn't mean you shouldn't question them.
If you had the largest molecule made entirely of antimatter, would it annihilate with enough energy to be dangerous?