There have been several letters to the Indy lately expressing fear about exposure to the herbicide glyphosate (Roundup). But there is little to be frightened of. It is probably no more toxic than laundry detergent.
Here are some things to consider.
Glyphosate decomposes by reaction with water, usually within days, into its component parts — an amino acid and phosphate. Both exist everywhere in your body. You are made up of amino acids, and phosphate floats freely in your blood. Nature must have learned how to deal with their combination eons ago. Also, there is a bonus. Amino acids and phosphate are both plant fertilizers.
It is common for people to conflate pesticides and herbicides. Pesticides are to be avoided so birds, bees and butterflies can thrive. Spot spraying the leaves of weeds with a herbicide to kill their roots is the only way to deal with many invasive plants. I regularly do gardening with a weed tool in one hand and a spray bottle of glyphosate in the other, choosing a windless day to avoid overspray. Bluebirds nest in my yard every year. Bees and butterflies abound.
You’ve probably heard about the multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Monsanto that was won by a plaintiff who claimed his cancer was due to using Roundup 20 years earlier. There is no possible way to prove that. But fancy lawyers can persuade a jury in San Francisco of almost anything.
Small amounts of man-made chemicals are often no problem to your health. While I certainly would not advise drinking glyphosate or laundry detergent, traces aren’t going to harm you. There are scientific studies that correlate glyphosate exposure with cell damage. But so do laundry detergent and half the chemicals in cosmetics.
Correlation does not prove causation. That takes a truly extensive study like that done to prove smoking causes lung cancer.
Fear of glyphosate leads to damaging groupthink. It has already hamstrung weed control efforts in other cities, and Laguna has its own problems. Gardening is all about weeding before seeding. Check out the pervasive weeds in Bluebird Park’s butterfly garden, Heisler Park, or the bottlebrush median strip of Laguna Canyon Road. Weeds everywhere.
Let us turn Laguna Beach into a beautiful garden city.
With help from Roundup.
Chris Reed, professor of chemistry, Laguna Beach
. But there is little to be frightened of. It is probably no more toxic than laundry detergent.){kind=link}
Dude
You are nuts. It’s a poison.
Monsanto made Agent Orange and now makes Roundup.
Can they be trusted to protect the health of Laguna’s citizens, dogs and wildlife?
The Vietnam Red Cross estimates that three million Vietnamese have been affected by Monsanto’s Agent Orange herbicide including at least 150,000 children born after the war with serious birth defects,” said Wells-Dang, referring to the toxic chemical in Agent Orange. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers were also exposed.
11 million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed in Vietnam over 20 million acres, putting three million Vietnam veterans and their families at risk.
From 1965 to 1969, the former Monsanto Company manufactured Agent Orange for the U.S. military as a wartime government contractor. Monsanto denied and discredited scientific evidence, government reports, and testimonial accounts of the toxicity of Agent Orange.
Monsanto, maker of Roundup, is not an ethical company. Real environmentalists do not use chemicals in Laguna’s Greenbelt.