Laura Hayes,

"Not only is glyphosate dastardly on its own, it is even more dastardly when it pairs up with aluminum, including the ever-increasing amount of aluminum in vaccines."

That holds true for many substances. Substances that exhibit small beneficial or harmful effects in isolation can exhibit much larger beneficial or harmful effects when combined. I'm publishing a document shortly that will show the impacts of non-ionizing radiation when combined with at least one other agent. There are many examples where non-ionizing radiation may show little or no harmful effects in isolation, but when combined with some other agent, may show massive harmful effects.

I came across a paper to that effect this morning on a completely unrelated topic. To paraphrase: 'It has been previously shown that mixtures of toxic chemicals containing at least one lipophilic and one hydrophilic agent produce effects NOT PREDICTABLE FROM THE KNOWN TOXICOLOGY OF THE INDIVIDUAL SPECIES. These effects include attack on organs and systems not known to be impacted by the individual species, low-level toxicity induced by exposures to concentrations far below those known to be toxic by single chemicals in the mixtures and enhanced toxicity to humans.....The correlation presented here between lipophilic absorption with sequential hydrophilic absorption corroborates well these findings. In all the published studies, the LEVELS OF LIPOPHILES IN BLOOD ARE FAR LOWER THAN THOSE KNOWN TO BE ACUTELY TOXIC FOR THE INDIVIDUAL SPECIES.'

This concept has strong ramifications for vaccine safety testing, or, for that matter, testing for safety of any potentially harmful substance. Two major deficiencies of vaccine safety testing (in addition to the 'manufactured research' alleged by Thompson in the CDC's MMR safety testing) are that long-term safety studies of vaccines in isolation have not been performed even remotely adequately, and long (and even short) term testing of vaccines in combination have not been tested. And, when I say combination, I mean vaccines in combination with not only the other vaccines on the schedule, but with all potentially toxic stimuli (non-ionizing radiation, glyphosate, atrazine, fluoridation, biosludge, astroturf, high-fat-diet, air pollution, excess refined carbohydrates, etc).

Obviously, if we played the game according to the Precautionary Principle, where safety would have to be proven BEFORE a potentially toxic substance was introduced into the marketplace, almost nothing would get introduced. The costs associated with decades of human testing involving thousands of combinations of anything would be prohibitive.

In certain places in India arsenic is in the wellwater. It is used for drinkinking and farming etc. The people using it often develop skin lesions etc. http://ispub.com/IJTWM/3/2/9683

The fact that arsenic is a poisoning is not new. I had no idea that it is used as weed killer. Anyhow, no doubt it winds up in the surviving plants including sugar cane.

As to rice, it also contains unhealthy levels of mercury. I have stopped eating it. I don't know whether mercury was used in sugar cane plantations. But a combination of arsenic and mercury would not be great in any kind of food crop.

Linda 1: I knew that rice is an accumulator of arsenic, as the Brazil nut is of selenium, but I didn't know why rice from the southeast can have dangerous amounts it. Now I do. The arsenic in the cotton fields was probably used as an herbicide, like it was on sugarcane in Hawaii. California rice doesn't have dangerous levels of arsenic. Cotton is grown in California, but in an entirely different region than the rice, and I don't believe it was much grown before the 20th century, so it is less likely to have been sprayed with arsenate herbicides, although Dan scared the hell out of me with, "arsenic may be far worse a threat, not just historically, than we've realized." We probably shouldn't eat anything at all any more.

About arsenic in actual food or other ingested (or inhaled) substances.

Linda1 mentioned rice. And somewhere it's possible to find information about which rice(s) have the least amount of arsenic.

Also, don't forget chicken. So-called "factory farms" have been adding Roxarsone, or some other brand, of arsenic-containing supplement to chicken feed. The chicks grow faster, and the chickens are bigger. (Some, or perhaps a lot, of the "bigness" is retained water, in my opinion.)

And in teen-to-adult-to-elderly humans, smoking cigarettes will add a tiny trace of arsenic -- into the nose, throat, longs -- for each cigarette smoked. Tobacco plants also take up arsenic from the soil.

Smoke from forest fires carry arsenic, along with other pollution.

Yes, a lot of this has been mentioned already in the past. It just seemed to be the time to repeat it.

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Benedetta,
We need to find you an organic farmer who can share with you how they do without Round-up. I understand that it's very helpful, but the organic farmers don't use it. It's very bad stuff.

Dan,
Not about sugar, but are you aware that American rice crops are tainted by arsenic in the soil from what was used on the old cotton crops? Don't remember if it was in the fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides. When they first tried to grow rice on the old cotton fields, the rice didn't do well because of the arsenic in the soil. So what they did was just find (or develop?) a type of rice that could grow in arsenic contaminated soil. Problem solved! Except that the rice, that is also fed to babies in a first food (rice cereal) is high in arsenic. But I don't know how many years or decades went by before anyone ever thought to mention it to the public. Even now, I bet most people don't know, although I hope that most young parents know not to feed babies rice cereal as we did. Some groups, Consumers Reports I think was one of them, warned Americans to limit the amount of rice we consume. Pathetic that they could destroy an ancient food staple like rice.

thanks all for the comments which help me plan how to develop the series. the issue of arsenic in wastewater from refineries, and water in general, is one i've puzzled over a LOT. there are a number of vectors for arsenic exposure and it can be hard to isolate which vector is involved in any given situation. arsenic may be far worse a threat, not just historically, than we've realized. stay tuned and keep commenting! dan

There must have been residual arsenic in the refined sugar, but surely it was most highly concentrated in the wastewater from the refineries. Where was it dumped? Seems to be an association between paralysis and swimming. Perhaps the particular arsenic compound used in the pesticide had an especially damaging metabolic effect. Puzzling, puzzling!

Linda 1: Dr. Don Huber has some frightening things to say about glyphosate, as well.

Benedetta,
I know that Monsanto claimed that glyphosate breaks down within 24 hours. I've been told that's a lie. It is a persistent chemical and a nasty one - even worse combined with all the other stuff in the Round-up, especially adjuvants. Jeffrey Smith at Institute for Responsible Technology has the dirt on Round-up.

I know that just spraying and killing the weeds and then planting has been so helpful.
No longer does a farmer have to spend hours and equipment breaking and tilling the earth, only to have weeds survive even that.

And glyphosate does break down in the sun.

I could die from over work or a rash from poison ivy trying to clear out the fence rows to keep the electric fences clear or I could use glyphosate. I choose the later.

I don't doubt it is being abused, and perhaps damaging the pathways of bacteria in our gut.
Tilling the earth has it's down side too. It exposes the earth to winds and erosion and dust.

Perhaps there are some practices that should be looked at though. I am not exactly happy that toward the end of a plants life - they go in and spray it with glyphosate to make all the plants begin to die -thus the plant hurries up to reproduce - it's seeds - causing all of the plants to mature at the same time.

The farmer might just have to pay closer attention to the harvest time and watch his fields for natural and optimum maturity with spraying glyphosate right near harvest time.

But - Oh BUUUUUUUTTTTT -- I go back to the 70s it was not glyphosate - it was the vaccines.

I hope we find out in the next episode how long and how extensively (just Hawaii?) they used arsenic on OUR FOOD. I guess this was before they got the bright idea to spray everything with DDT. The brilliant mind of man. You can't make this stuff up.

John Stone says the EU have banned glyphosate. Unfortunately this is not the case. The decision has merely been delayed yet again until.....June 23rd. The date of the U.K. referendum. Watch this space. It's not over yet.

John Stone: That's the best news I've heard in a while. They've banned it entirely? UCSF recently tested urine samples of people not likely to use roundup or eat conventionally-raised produce, and 93% had glyphosate in their urine.

Oh geeesh, The king that held power during the American Revolution; Crazy King George the third; most beloved by the English People cause he started off as a wonderful ruler, a very stable personality, a good husband to his wife, a good father to his children. Then his doctors finds him out in his garden trying to plant beef stakes, to raise trees that produce meat.

the Lanncet reported in 2006 that a strand of his hair showed traces of arsenic.

Also a high incident of arsenic and diabetes too.