I recently spoke with the Environmental Protection Authority in Wellington about a review of the poisonous glyphosate, present in popular herbicide, Roundup.
A review, under the Hazardous Substances Act is possible, but I was unable to speak to the new chief scientist, Professor Mike Bunce, who strangely has been seconded to the Health Ministry for three months. No one would tell me what that was all about.
Now, with a new strong government in power, and a Green Party local MP, we must push Auckland Council hard to seek and adopt alternative weed control on our street berms parks and reserves. The status quo tells us alternatives are too expensive, but when cancers proliferate in our young people and begin to manifest sometimes years later, New Zealand could well be in the same position as the USA and many other countries where the makers of Roundup and other chemicals are being sued for billions of dollars. Remember, German pharmaceutical firm Bayer, bought Monsanto, maker of glyphosate products for 62 billion dollars - for cash!
Ponsonby News will continue to call for the banishment of glyphosates until it happens. This is not a recent whim. There has been consistent pressure to ban it for years, well before I entered the fray, but as a student in the late 1950s I worked for a helicopter spraying gorse and willows with 2,4,D and 2,4,5,T - the dreaded ingredient of agent orange in Vietnam. I have suffered some non-specific illnesses which the famous Dr Matt Tizard said were almost certainly herbicide poisons.
It’s 60 years since Rachel Carson’s famous book Silent Spring, led to the banning of DDT. How long must we wait? (John Elliott)
#banroundup banglyphosate #bantoxicpoisons