I NOTE with interest your report on the use of a glyphosate-based weedkiller (“Cancer-linked weedkillerused in city’s parks”, The Herald, November 3).
Its use in parks appears to be just one of the lesser problems associated with it. The weedkiller is sprayed onto cereals and oilseed rape just before harvesting to kill off the plants to make harvesting easier and allow planting of subsequent crops more rapidly. It is a systemic weedkiller and so ends up throughout the plant. Nearly one-third of UK cereal crops were sprayed with glyphosate in 2013. This use results in the weedkiller ending up in the food chain. Tests carried out by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee on pesticide residues in food have found that as much as 30 per cent of bread contains the weedkiller.
Recent research suggests that there are no safe levels of glyphosate in food. If the World Health Organisation has declared this substance a probable carcinogen would it not be sensible to stop spraying crops in this manner to stop the glyphosate entering the food chain? Austria banned the use of glyphosate for pre-harvest spraying citing the precautionary principle in July, 2013.
Rob Evans,
29 Dunmore Gardens, Dundee.
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