WHY IS Cambridgeshire County Council still using a notorious weedkiller said by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to be “probably carcinogenic”?
And why is it so reluctant to admit that it does?
The council is among a rapidly shrinking number of local authorities in the UK to continue to douse school grounds, parks and other public open spaces with various brands of glyphosate – the active chemical within Roundup and many other herbicides. In doing so it appears worryingly backward.
IARC is after all not a name to be shrugged off. Funded by the World Health Organization, its crucial research is seen as the benchmark for determining what agents may be cancer-causing.
In sounding the alarm, it’s far from being alone. In February 2019, a high-profile collaborative study by three US universities reported that people with particularly high exposures to glyphosate-based herbicides – for instance those spraying it – could have a 41 per cent increased relative risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Multiple theories have been voiced about why this increased risk might arise, such as the idea that glyphosate may mimic the behaviour of certain hormones. One study, by researchers in Thailand, suggested that, by doing so, even low levels of glyphosate could increase the growth-rate of breast cancer cells in petri dishes.
There are claimed links between glyphosate exposure and everything from coeliac disease to autism, and suspicions of a connection with inflammatory disorders such as intestinal cancer.
There is concern that it could pose a risk to bees, and it has been known for many years to be hazardous to fish.
There is thus a multitude of reasons to wonder at Cambridgeshire County Council’s sanctioning of glyphosate. It operates over a huge swathe of eastern England totalling more than 1,300 square miles, and it now emerges that a so far undeclared number of its departments contribute to the vast quantities of glyphosate-based herbicides sprayed across gardens and fields worldwide – an estimated 6.1 billion kilos between 2005 and 2014 – the most recent point at which data has been collected. That is more than any other herbicide, and it makes the council’s continued use of the chemical a matter of significant concern.
It’s not as if we’re talking about a pressing need to take stern action to counter the threat of triffid-like abominations that will happily leap at your throat when your back is turned. Rather, in addition to human health considerations, this is about not killing beautiful and interesting plants likely to be of enormous importance to the world’s rapidly declining insect populations.
One morning recently I watched despairingly as an outside contractor for the council soaked with herbicide a fascinating range of wild plants in the grounds of a primary school in Trumpington.
I asked the company, based in Melbourn, Cambridgeshire, what they had used. Was it glyphosate? The reply was evasive. “It is an amenity approved chemical used in all open spaces. We are not allowed to even buy any other. Used in all schools and public areas.”
In the same way, try to extract from the council basic information about what – if anything – is its policy on herbicides and other chemical sprays and you’re likely to be in for a long haul.
I asked whether, like Cambridge City Council, the county council had adopted a policy over use of herbicides and pesticides in open spaces – including school grounds – that it manages and, if it had, what that policy was.
To prise from the authority the fact that yes, it does spray glyphosate, but no, it would decline to reveal immediately any detailed information on its use, took another five emails spread over six days. Far too many councils readily forget that they are not elected in order to then shut out the public.
Initially, I was told by the a member of the council’s communications department: “I’ve looked into this for you, but as the use of herbicides and pesticides falls across a number of different departments I would recommend you contact the FOI team about this.”
Why? Why erect a barrier when a council’s default position ought to be one of openness? Why do so many councils persist in making the free flow of information the exception not the rule?
In a less secretive society, the Freedom of Information Act would never have been necessary. A vast range of authorities now employ specific staffs merely to relay simple answers to simple questions from the public and from journalists, answers that in a healthy democracy would be readily and openly available without the requirement to wade through a welter of bureaucracy.
The FOI is enormously costly to taxpayers, yet the fundamental superfluity of this piece of legislation is rarely acknowledged, publicly or privately. There was in fact no earthly reason why Bronterre News should have to go through a lengthy rigmarole simply to find out whether a council uses a specific herbicide.
Further evasion followed.
Three days after my initial inquiry, we were told: “Cambridgeshire County Council does not have one formal policy on the use of herbicides and pesticides in open spaces, but each department carefully considers its use of them. We do have specific policies, such as not using them on nature reserves, and only using them elsewhere where we need to spot treat weed growth. We are working longer term to better maintain verges to improve biodiversity and reduce weed growth and seeking natural alternatives.”
Fine. But do you use glyphosate?
Later the same day, the curtain of secrecy – mixed perhaps with discomfort about what turned out to be the council’s clearly unenlightened position – inches upwards.
“Glyphosate products are used by some departments but not others”, the council admits. “For example, they are not used in our nature reserves.”
For Heaven’s sake, this is getting silly. We ask: “So which departments do use glyphosate products? Please provide specific information.
“Are they, for example, used in parks and gardens managed by the county council?
“Are glyphosate products used in school grounds?” (On 26 September, I had witnessed liberal backpack spraying in the grounds of, and around the perimeter of, Fawcett Primary School, Trumpington.)
But the mad time-and-money-wasting palaver ground on.
On 5 October, the council yet again batted back our simple yet important query, a press officer telling us: “As this enquiry will need to be put to several departments across the council and will take a significant amount of time to respond to, I recommend you submit an FOI request.”
It’s a recommendation we will ignore.
* By continuing to use glyphosate, Cambridgeshire County Council finds itself increasingly isolated.
In contrast, the progressively greener Cambridge City Council, which has pledged to get more and more trees planted, introduced a total ban on its use of herbicides from August 2019, saying that when it declared a biodiversity emergency it committed to make its parks and open spaces more hospitable to plants and animals.
Elsewhere in the UK, 31 local authorities have variously banned or are phasing out their use of glyphosate and pesticides, while 18 have introduced restrictions, according to the admirable campaigners Pesticides Action Network UK.
Bronterre News 