I was wondering if anyone knew if it was possible to remove glycine from glyphosate (herbicide), leaving methylphosphonic acid?

you REALLY don`t want to messing about with organo-phosphates! trust me!!!

Glyphosate is not that dangerous. It can be purchased OTC at concentrations of up to 30% or so, in so-called Round-up replenisher. Round-up is a weed-killer, used a lot over here.

 

In general, however, I must say that playing around with organo-phosphorous compounds is not the smartest thing to do, when you don't know exactly what you are doing.

Glyphosate itself is reasonably harmless, I have several litres of it myself as Agricultural concentrations (it`s like Honey when that strong), enough to do several hectares of land.

 

but since you`re thinking about adulterating an OTC product such as this, and asking such questions, I have to think to myself that this is NOT a wise move on your part!

I really wasn't planning on trying it as I agree that this isn't the kind of thing you should be playing around with, but I was curious as to whether such a procedure would be possible.

What I was wondering was if there is a way to separate an amine like this, similar to hydrolysis of an ester.

If you don't mind me asking, what's so bad about organic phosphates then? Except that ATP is a necessity for a mischievous thing called life (with a few exceptions probably).

The nerve gases are orgoanophophates.

Those are the most toxic eg. sarin, tabun, VX etc. while a lot of similar compounds are powerful insecticides eg. parathion.

 

Most of these seem to be esters of methylphosphonic acid or similar, though most of the insecticides have the double bonded oxygen replaced with a sulfur.

Why make what you can buy from Aldrich?

 

If you could hydrolyze (like water), then the leaving NH2 group would have to be replace with an OH. That compound is really easy to make.

 

Toxicity is toxicity. DNA is an organophosphate. Somehow, I'm not worried. The insecticides you mention are cholinesterase inhibitors. Beware of cholinesterase inhibitors.

Here we are, applying glyphosate like water, over the earth, and I had no idea! does anyone know what happens when animals ingest this? nerve gases? for real?

wow, I have so much to learn. As a child, I sat on the trailer, behind the tractor, driving through fields of young almond trees, spraying malathion, as the wind blew the malathion into our faces, for hours, ( that is what is wrong with me, haha). I really like this forum, have been enjoying reading everyone's posts, even though i have to go to google, and look everything up afterwards, ha!

Edited January 18, 201510 yr by chiwi

ok, does any scientist on this forum know what happens when you apply glyphosate to a plant, and then the plant is fed to cattle, and then we eat the cattle, as beef? Is it just like eating salt?

I have always wondered about that. but do not know the chemical reactions, does anyone know? Is the glyphosate broken down into harmless products? or?

Chiwi

An environmental chemist told me some years ago that glyphosate broke down relatively quickly in the environment. Given that glyphosphate is a phosphonate, I always found that a little surprising.

Searching for "glyphosate degradation" or "glyphosate metabolism" should produce lots of results. One of the main products is aminomethylphosphonic acid, which seems pretty harmless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aminomethylphosphonic_acid

An environmental chemist told me some years ago that glyphosate broke down relatively quickly in the environment. Given that glyphosphate is a phosphonate, I always found that a little surprising.

 

It does it like that:

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/Glyphosate_degradation.svg/820px-Glyphosate_degradation.svg.png