But council admits it keeps no records on spraying with glyphosate
CAMBRIDGESHIRE schools are allowed to authorise contractors looking after their grounds to use a weedkiller suspected of causing cancer.
The admission follows repeated approaches by Bronterre News over several weeks. Shockingly, however, the county council admits it has no information on which schools spray with glyphosate, a highly controversial herbicide said by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer to be “probably carcinogenic in humans”.
This despite the fact that German multinational pharmaceutical and life sciences company Bayer recently reached a $10.9bn settlement for 95,000 US cancer patients who claimed their illnesses were caused by Bayer’s glyphosate-containing weedkiller RoundUp, though the company admitted no liability or wrongdoing.
The council’s Liberal Democrat opposition immediately pledged an urgent investigation into glyphosate alternatives. Group leader Lucy Nethsingha said her personal position was that the authority should move away from it without delay.
She told Bronterre News: “It is an extremely damaging chemical and we should not be spraying it around. I am keen that we develop a different attitude to diversity in plants, and that ‘weeds’ be reconsidered as bringing that diversity, which is so important for the entire ecosystem in which we live.”
The council has also confirmed that it uses glyphosate to spot-treat weeds in parks and gardens and on roadside verges, but said the spray was not used in nature reserves.
It added that all schools in the county managed their own contractors. But it admitted it kept no information centrally on which schools allow use of glyphosate products. A statement added: “Each school adheres to Control of Substances Hazardous to Health regulations and follows health and safety guidelines on school sites, including managing the use of pesticides on school sites.”
In December 2017, the Health and Safety Executive agreed to renew its approval of glyphosate for five years. Apart from RoundUp, the chemical is also included in other brands of weedkiller marketed for back-garden use, and is widely employed in farming.
Last year, a slew of English councils announced they would phase out the use of chemical weedkillers on playgrounds, parks and pavements after a US court ordered Roundup manufacturer Monsanto, which is owned by Bayer, to pay just one user $80m (£61m) in damages after he developed cancer.
Hampshire county council said it was re-examining its use of glyphosate herbicides, the London borough of Richmond immediately began trials of non-chemical weed-removal and Trafford borough council voted to phase out all pesticides and weedkillers on council land.
Cambridge City Council last year introduced a total ban on its use of herbicides, saying that when it declared a biodiversity emergency it committed to making 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 glyphosate and pesticides, while 18 have introduced restrictions. C
Mac McGuire, the Cambridgeshire council’s Conservative chairman, failed to respond to an earlier approach by this website.
Details of the Cambridgeshire authority’s continued use of glyphosate emerged as a result of inquiries by bronterrenews.com.
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