alt Hacker NewsImportant to note it's not Glyphosate on trial, it's Roundup. There is a huge gulf between studies and conclusions on Glyphosate, and studies and conclusions on Roundup. Glyphosate is the safest and most effective herbicide known to mankind. Roundup - which includes Glyphosate, in addition to other additives - may be unnecessarily dangerous.
Also worth noting that Monsanto could stop selling Roundup entirely, and it wouldn't really matter. Monsanto's Glyphosate patent expired, so you can get cheaper Glyphosate from many different manufacturers. Which is great, because it means we can avoid the potentially-more-dangerous Roundup, and use the simpler base chemical instead. Distancing the pesticide from the "evil corporation" might actually make people less afraid of it.
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Monsanto is pretty consistent about trying to change the noun to glyphosate from roundup any chance they get.
If you refer to it as glyphosate, as GP does, that either means you've fallen victim to their PR campaign, or labels you as a paid astroturfer.
A key paper on its safety from 2000 was retracted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46161125
Like the tobacco industry before them, a Monsanto employee proposed producing a scientific paper with outside scientists: “by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak” — see https://retractionwatch.com/2025/12/04/glyphosate-safety-art...
While glyphosate may technically be considered safe, there are reports and I believe lawsuits about it reacting with hard water creating extremely unsafe compounds. ie. it poisons your ground water.
https://www.worldenergydata.org/roundup-herbicide-ingredient...
> you can get cheaper Glyphosate from many different manufacturers. Which is great, because it means we can avoid the potentially-more-dangerous Roundup, and use the simpler base chemical instead.
Unspecified Glyphosate product isn't better because it's not Roundup. If some ingredient in Roundup is dangerous, let's drop the Glyphosate conversation and look for herbicides without that other mystery chemical.
It really seems like you're looking for a reason to justify Roundup as uniquely bad, in the face of evidence, with extremely vague statements.
There are numerous studies that show glyphosate binds with aluminum and other metals, having negative impacts on public health.
"Aluminum and Glyphosate Can Synergistically Induce Pineal Gland Pathology: Connection to Gut Dysbiosis and Neurological Disease"
https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=53106
"Glyphosate, a chelating agent—relevant for ecological risk assessment?"
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5823954/
"Glyphosate complexation to aluminium(III). An equilibrium and structural study in solution using potentiometry, multinuclear NMR, ATR–FTIR, ESI-MS and DFT calculations"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01620...