Poison on our pavements

Dear Editor

I met this guy on our street (see picture) recently who I presume works for Amey. I asked him what he was spraying on the pavement and he replied: “It’s only Round-Up”. When I told him this was not just dangerous to his health but to the whole ecology of our planet, he said he knew, but he was only “spot spraying”. I asked him why he was not wearing protective clothing (he had no face mask or gloves) and he told me that he had these but had been advised not to wear them as this scared the general public. I told him the public was quite right to be scared as we don’t want poison sprayed on our pavements! In the States, a court case against Monsanto was won by a man who developed cancer after using Roundup. He was awarded $289 million in damages.

Pesticides and herbicides are contributing to what is now being called the 6th mass extinction of species. When was the last time you had to scrape insects from your windscreen? When I first started driving back in the 1970s every summer journey resulted in the windscreen being covered in insects. Now we rarely need to do this. Scientists have found In the last 25 years, three-quarters of all flying insects have disappeared in Germany. This has a knock-on effect on birds, amphibians and other species.

We have known about the dangers of herbicides and pesticides since 1962 when Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring. Glyphosate has been banned in Holland, Denmark, Sweden and France and some Councils around the UK such as Trafford, Brighton, Bristol and Croydon. But last year Sheffield City Council sprayed 1750 litres of Glyphosate on our pavements, verges and parks. Please sign the petition to stop this at https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/sheffield-city-council-to-stop-using-glyphosate. More than 3200 people have already signed. 5000 signatures will force a debate in the Town Hall.

Yours faithfully

Graham Wroe

Letter to the Sheffield Star