Badder Living through Chemistry

I would ask that the Lakewood Parks & Rec Dept. rethink their policy of managing the parks landscape with the herbicide Roundup. The chemical (glyphosate) is turning up in our food and water and has been deemed a probable carcinogen by the EU, when we were told (1) it does not remain in the environment, (2) it is harmless and (3) it is effective against weeds.

Well, it does remain in the environment - 10 of the 11 Ben & Jerry's ice cream samples that were taken recently have tested positive for glyphosate, because ice cream uses milk which comes from cows which eat grass maintained with Roundup. Google it. (2) it is not harmless, French researchers (pub. Chemical Research in Toxicology, Jan. 2017) tested glyphosate and its delivery chemical POEA both separately and together and found in all three instances that they destroyed human embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells.  (3) Roundup may kill weeds but they evolve resistance and come back as superweeds; then Monsanto intensifies its product to fight the superweeds (recently approved by the EPA) and the toxicity rises. Our chldren play on the grass in the parks. We picnic there. Our dogs stick their wet noses into the grass and shrubs and snuffle and inhale deeply everything there, including Roundup. The rain comes and washes the application into the creeks, where it flows on through the whole city, and every rafter, wader and swimmer that touches the water, every duck, dog and rabbit that drinks the water will get it, because our water treatment systems do not filter it out.

LPR needs to rely more on mechanical removal of weeds - mowing, weed-whacking, and mulching, as well as test methods with high-acidity vinegar and electronic zappers, instead of trying to use chemicals to carve out a lovely-to-look-at-but-deadly-to-touch landscape. I see no effort to do this in Lakewood. What I have seen is numbers of Lakewood employees with huge spray canisters and no protective gear scooting around the parks in their mini-jeeps ejecting huge fountains of this stuff across the saturated fields. The lack of awareness of the danger of this chemical is astonishing. This needs to change. A park should be safe first and then beautiful. It can be done, you just need to work it out.