Glyphosate is killing us all — let’s act

In 2015 a research project carried out by the University of California found high levels of the herbicide Glyphosate in the urine of 93 percent of the Americans tested nationwide.

Americans are waking up to the fact that the popular but over-used and misused herbicides, Monsanto’s Roundup and Dow Chemical’s  2,4D, containing Glyphosate, are toxic carcinogens. They are found in our environment and drinking water virtually everywhere, with severe, possibly life-threatening, impact on human health and the environment.

The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) issued a series of warnings to all Member States about these herbicides, culminating in the announcement in 2015 that Glyphosate can cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a potentially fatal cancer of the lymph system. In response, the countries of the European Union (EU) have enacted laws tightly restricting (but not entirely banning) the use of Roundup and 2,4D for most agricultural and public application purposes.

 But the USA, where free market corporate profits rule, has failed, so far, to take comparable legislative action at federal level.  These herbicides are over-used and misused in the United States. This is so widespread that there are few drinking water sources in the nation, including private wells and public water supply systems, that are free of Glyphosate contamination. Glyphosate has even been found in California wines. Roundup is sprayed particularly heavily on GMO food products, and finds its way to your grocery shelf.

The failure of Congress to regulate the misuse of herbicidal Glyphosate and its presence in U.S. food products adversely affects the reputation and exports of the USA. Recently, Taiwan recalled all Quaker Oats products imported from the U.S. after detecting Glyphosate in 10 out of 36 oatmeal products, exceeding the country’s legal limit of 0.1 parts per million. In France, the national courts have found Monsanto guilty, and fined the company, for lying about their own internal research on the toxicity and persistence of Roundup in the environment. One cannot expect for-profit corporations readily to own up to “inconvenient truths” about their products.

Monsanto is currently facing class action suits in a number of states by plaintiffs who have suffered cancer and other illness due to exposure to Roundup. Countless Canadian and U.S. studies have shown that exposure to Glyphosate-formulated herbicides can cause birth defects, physical and mental abnormalities, genetic mutations, destruction of red blood cells, kidney damage, autism, senility, coronary disease, a range of cancers, and in many cases even death, in both humans and animal models. This is not to say that exposure to Roundup or 2,4D will necessarily result in all these conditions, but incurring any one of them is disaster enough.

Here in Connecticut, biologists from Yale and UConn found that the spraying of Glyphosate-formulated herbicides to kill “unsightly” weeds along state highway Route 44 between Avon and Canton was the cause of horrible sexual and other physical deformities (such as double heads, and convoluted internal organs)  in amphibians, reptiles and fish living in adjacent wetlands, ponds and watercourses. This proved that the warnings on herbicide product labels not to use near water were  well-advised, but were ignored at our peril.

On state highway Route 41, which runs from Sharon to The Hotchkiss School, the barrier fence along Beardsley Pond Reservoir, which provides drinking water to the Sharon public school, the town center and hospital, is routinely sprayed annually. So is the barrier along Beeslick swamp near the Salisbury-Sharon transfer station. On Route 4 between Sharon and Cornwall, the barrier fence along the swamp, which drains into Hatch Pond, is heavily dosed. The railroad tracks running along the Housatonic are sprayed, so the herbicide is washed into the river after every rainfall.  Meanwhile, our friends in Massachusetts do not put herbicide along their highways. Doesn’t this suggest that spraying in Connecticut is unnecessary?

What must all this be doing to us and to our children? We need to take defensive action in Connecticut. This is the year, above all years, when the public expects our legislative and executive leaders to make rational decisions, balancing needs, risks, costs and outcomes. 

State Rep. Roberta Willis (D-64), introduced legislation to stop spraying schoolyards and public parks with herbicides. She is retiring from office in 2017, but Bill Riiska has stepped forward as candidate for the 64th District, and he has a strong environmental protection platform including stopping the spraying of State roads and train tracks near waterways with herbicides.

Sharon resident Anthony Piel is a former director and general legal counsel of the World Health Organization.