As I reported in the July Ponsonby News, decisions on the use or banning of glyphosate in New Zealand are largely in the hands of the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), who up to now have declared glyphosate safe for use and not carcinogenic.
As I reported in the July Ponsonby News, decisions on the use or banning of glyphosate in New Zealand are largely in the hands of the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), who up to now have declared glyphosate safe for use and not carcinogenic.
This flies in the face of the latest international research which has found glyphosate a ‘probable carcinogen’. Scientists are cautious in their wording, hence the word ‘probable’.
I have written to the newly appointed Chief Scientist of the EPA, Professor Michael Bunce, asking for an update on the EPA’s latest attitudes to the continued use of glyphosate. At the time of going to press I had not had a reply. When I phoned the EPA I was told Professor Bunce doesn’t take up his role until some time next month.
We have had modest success in the Waitemata Board area. Glyphosate has been banned in several local parks and more phasing out of its use is planned. It is good to read that local board member, and possible chair after the October election, Richard Northey ‘led the charge against glyphosate use in inner city parks’. During this election campaign tell Northey how pleased you are with that commitment and ask him for wider banning.
In the meantime, I want to tell readers a little of my own history with agrichemical use. Yes, I used Roundup with glyphosate until I knew better, but during my university years back in the late 50s, I did several holiday stints with a helicopter firm.
We sprayed gorse and willows on Northland farms with 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T. My job was to drive the tanker carrying the chemicals from farm to farm to meet the chopper. I then had to fill the chopper’s tank with the liquid chemical, and off it flew to spray the farm. I had no gloves, no mask, absolutely no protection at all from the spray which got all over my hands and face.
It was many years before Ivon Watkins Dow, suppliers of these chemicals, finally succumbed to protest pressure and government edicts that those two chemicals were deadly poisonous. Readers will remember that 2,4,5-T was an ingredient of Agent Orange which did such horrific damage in Vietnam.
It took from 1959 until 1987 to stop these chemicals from being used, and 1989 before they were banned by the government. DDT was also banned in 1989, whereas Rachel Carson had chronicled its carcinogenic qualities in the US as early as 1960 in her seminal book, ‘The Silent Spring’.
The cheese ad says, ‘these things take time’, but there is a massive difference between letting cheese mature and killing people with poisonous agrichemicals.
Bureaucracy often moves at a glacial pace, but when lives are at stake, time is of the essence.
Glyphosate use must be stopped – now. (JOHN ELLIOTT)