Sadly, plutonium has side effects for us. Glyphosate may also have them, long term or short term. I don’t want to act as guinea pig. If you want, good for you.

Thalidomide was safe once. Until it wasn’t.

You might disagree, but it's not irrational at all. To follow your argument, if everything is chemicals - is it rational to presume everything is safe? Of course not, there are plenty of dangerous things in the world. Of course the -phobia demarks a fear as irrational, but this isn't "chemophobia".

> ~~~It’s not.~~~ Glyphosate is a herbicide: if you spray it on plants, those plants die. That is in fact its purpose.

It's also worth noting that while it's a herbicide, of course it's only effective as a herbicide at a certain concentration. Consider that <agricultural conglomerate X> intends to spray the weeds right next to the lettuce, not the lettuce itself, so they can make $$$ from that still-alive lettuce at market. It's still going to be exposed to a small amount of herbicide, just not in a "lethal" dose. Is it absorbed into the lettuce/does it make it to the consumer? I don't know. If it did, would it be harmful at that dose? Probably not, but I don't know. Does it accumulate in the body over time, to an eventual harmful dose? Don't know. But those questions all demonstrate that it's not simply an irrational fear; there is a good number of questions to answer to go from "this could be unsafe" to "this is definitely safe".

I don't have any views on Glyphosate at all, I know next to nothing about it. Just objecting to your first two points.

I hate it when ppl project a domain definition to destroy a good argument that uses non domain specific language.

It is obvious to everyone that the word “chemical” refers to moieties that are synthetic, not typically present in nature or in extremely high concentrations.

So, the OP was quite reasonably saying that chemicals not naturally present at certain concentrations should be tested for safety when high concentrations are proposed to be used.

It like those pedantic ppl who say that tomatoes aren’t vegetables. Of course they are! They are also botanical fruit, so what?

Anyway, my impression is that glyphosate is regularly detected in the water, the plants we eat, the animals we eat, in our own bodies.

Vinegar seems to work in my experience, a chemical I can drink.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_desiccation

edit: Of course it is sprayed on food [0][1].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW8SrXMW7Ug [1] http://web.mit.edu/demoscience/Monsanto/about.html

Replace chemicals with chemical compounds and you can have a more honest argument. And yes, putting random chemical compounds into the food chain should indeed be scrutinized.