THE City of Wanneroo says its review of the pesticide glyphosate is only about its use on council-owned land and not its use by householders and farmers.
Wanneroo councillors voted on Tuesday, September 24 for the city to review its use of the common but lately increasingly contentious pesticide with a view to discontinuing its use.
This prompted the Nationals WA to claim the move would set a dangerous precedent for others to follow.
Moore MLA Shane Love said the City of Wanneroo had no authority as a herbicide regulator.
“It is of great concern that the leaders of the city are pushing this agenda and I expect it will be met with serious pushback from local government colleagues from regional Western Australia,’’ he said.
But on Thursday, September 26 Mayor Tracey Roberts said the review was about its use on city owned land – its parks, streetscapes and bushlands – and not about its use by the agricultural industry.
Cr Roberts, who is being challenged by North Coast ward candidate Sonet Coetzee for the position of mayor in the October election, gave the example of concerns being raised about spraying on a public verge and the possibility of the spray drifting through a fence on to a resident’s vegetable garden.
During discussion of the item at the September 24 council meeting she said the use of the pesticide had been questioned due to a number of publications including the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), and the several legal cases in the USA against the chemical’s manufacturer.
Alliance for a Clean Environment spokeswoman Jane Bremmer said Systems Pest Management Perth director David Piggott advised that it was often the case that people entered sprayed areas while the chemical was still active, as council’s removed their signs as soon as the chemical was touch dry according to the manufacturers label advice.
This they said led to a common misconception that once a chemical was dry it was somehow rendered benign or safe but the active ingredients in herbicides often had long half-lives (ie more than one week) which were not considered in the advice provided to protect human health by the manufacturer or in the risk management undertaken by local governments.
But Nationals WA leader Mia Davies said a 2016 review by the federal Government’s Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority concluded exposure to glyphosate did not pose a carcinogenic or genotoxic risk to humans.
“Opponents to the use of glyphosate point to an IARC report but don’t read the fine print,’’ she said.
“According to the IARC, glyphosate poses as much danger to humans as eating red meat or drinking a beverage above 65° Celsius.
A regular coffee is served at a hotter temperature.”
Ms Bremmer said the most recent meta-analysis (the statistical procedure for combining data from multiple studies) about glyphosate-based herbicides and risk for non-Hodgkin lymphoma was carried out in July this year.
In Exposure to glyphosate-based herbicides and risk for non-Hodgkin lymphoma: A meta-analysis and supporting evidence, the five authors said they investigated whether there was an association between high cumulative exposures to glyphosate-based herbicides and increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in humans.
They concluded that overall, in accordance with findings from experimental animal and mechanistic studies, their meta-analysis of human epidemiological studies suggested a compelling link between exposures to glyphosate-based herbicides and increased risk for non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
