More agencies banning Roundup
Weedkiller’s alleged cancer link raises liability concern
The East Bay Regional Park District’s unanimous decision last week to stop using the weedkiller Roundup puts the nation’s largest regional park system among a growing list of public agencies shunning the widely used herbicide over concerns it may cause cancer.
In California alone, dozens of cities, counties and public agencies — from Oakland, Marin County and the San Lorenzo Valley Water District to Los Angeles County and the University of California — have banned glyphosate, Roundup’s active ingredient, or moved to limit its use.
Those bans are expected to multiply in the wake of massive jury verdicts for people who blamed glyphosate exposure at home or work for their cancers. Those include a $2 billion award in May to a Livermore couple, an $80 million award in March later reduced to $25 million for a Sonoma County man and a $289 million award last August later reduced to $78 million for a Benicia schools maintenance worker.
“It’s prudent of municipalities to avoid having people have direct contact with Roundup,” said Michael Baum, senior partner with the law firm Baum Hedlund Aristei and Goldman in Los Angeles who worked on all three cases. “They have to be conscious of the health consequences.”
But the growing movement to ban glyphosate is raising concerns among some in public land management who argue that the herbicide is effective in protecting natural habitat from invasive plants and that perceived dangers need to be weighed against the risks and costs of alternatives.
“Scientific-based risk is one thing; if it’s public perception, that’s another,” said Doug Johnson, executive director of the California Invasive Plant Council, a nonprofit that protects the state’s environment from invasive plants. “It does rankle some people in the field because it’s a useful tool and it’s being taken away for reasons they don’t really feel holds water with science.”
Other large public agencies such as the Santa Clara Valley Water District are defending their
use of Roundup amid questions from the public.
“We use glyphosate for weed control and invasive species management along with other herbicide products,” said Valley Water spokesman Matt Keller. “Valley Water only uses herbicides of the lowest toxicity. Formulations of glyphosate used in riparian areas are approved by federal and state regulators because they are considered to be safe for use around fish and wildlife.”
Glyphosate was developed by the former Monsanto Company, which merged with Bayer last year, and was first registered with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1974. It has since been used on more than 100 food crops, including glyphosate-resistant corn, soybean, cotton, canola and sugar beet, and to control weeds in residential and public areas.
In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans,” making its continued use increasingly controversial. That prompted California to add glyphosate to its Proposition 65 list of substances known to cause cancer.
But the EPA as recently as April maintained that glyphosate is safe when used properly and is not carcinogenic.
Bayer disputes any proven cancer risk from glyphosate.
“There is no evidence that local municipalities who choose to move away from glyphosate for amenity weed management are enhancing safety,” Bayer said Thursday in a statement. “There is an extensive body of research on glyphosate and Bayer’s glyphosate-based herbicides, including more than 800 rigorous studies submitted to EPA, European and other regulators in connection with the registration process, that confirms that these products are safe when used as directed.”
But Baum said juries have been persuaded in part by documents showing that Roundup’s manufacturer acted like tobacco companies to downplay its product’s dangers, discredit critics, and spin regulators and journalists.
The East Bay park district’s board voted unanimously Tuesday to immediately ban glyphosate use in picnic areas and to fully eliminate its use in all developed park areas by the end of 2020. The district, which manages 73 parks, 55 miles of shoreline, and 1,250 miles of trails in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, had already reduced the herbicide’s use by two-thirds in the past two years, citing growing public concern.
“We are proud to be a leader in parkland management,” said East Bay Regional Park District President Ayn Wieskamp.
But it’s unclear what alternatives the district will turn to or how much they will cost. The district said that the glyphosate phaseout “will take substantial financial resources and significantly impact the park district’s general fund and staffing levels” and that an assessment of that was underway.
When the Sonoma County town of Windsor looked into discontinuing glyphosate in September, the estimated costs for pulling weeds by hand instead of using chemicals jumped eight-fold, from $33,000 to $280,000, according to a city report. That didn’t include potential worker compensation costs for injuries from “constant bending/ twisting and stooping to remove the weeds.”
The city said substituting other herbicides would add unknown costs because many “do not kill the root and require to be sprayed more often at a much higher concentration.”
In the Santa Cruz Mountains, the San Lorenzo Valley Water District board in 2017 agreed to allow limited use of glyphosate to protect sensitive Sand Hills watershed from invasive French broom and acacia. But the board was voted out and replaced by a slate that banned the compound this year.
The Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, which manages 63,000 acres of wilderness in the Santa Cruz Mountains in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, has greatly restricted glyphosate and other herbicide use in favor of mechanical or manual weed control. Spokeswoman Leigh Ann Gessner said glyphosate isn’t used anywhere near recreational areas but is allowed “where the threat from invasive species is such that it is a good tool to use.”
Johnson, of the California Invasive Plant Council, said he appreciates the public concern about chemical risks and the political realities public agencies are facing with the growing controversy surrounding glyphosate. He hopes they will avoid all-out bans and allow limited use where there’s no risk of public exposure. But he admits it’s hard to convince people that hand-pulling weeds or just letting them spread can be more environmentally damaging than limited herbicide spraying.
“It’s a touchy topic for us to talk about because we’re environmentalists in favor of using glyphosate,” Johnson said. “I think stopping using glyphosate in public picnic areas is good to remove that anxiety-producing practice. When it comes to 100% removal, that’s where there should be an examination. We do feel that herbicides are a useful tool in the toolbox.”