Council responds regarding Roundup
28 June, 2012
“Council uses a range of ways to control weeds across the Shire,” said Johan Louw, Director of Environment and Infrastructure, Mount Alexander Shire Council.
“In parks and reserves areas in townships, these include extensive mulching, the use of weed matting and hand-weeding in some circumstances. A small amount of the less concentrated Biactive formula Roundup is used where needed. This lower concentrated product is not toxic to fish and a wetting agent is used to minimise the use and improve effectiveness.
“As part of our fire and flood prevention activities we also use Round-up Biactive twice a year (in May and August) to reduce weeds in some drains across the Shire and twice a year (in August and September) to control weeds on road shoulders in some areas.”
Posted in Environment, Featured slide, Health, Live in Castlemaine, Local Government, Local news, Nature/science, Social Justice
June 29th, 2012 at 11:59 am
Roundup Biactive still contains the chemicals that are subject of all the damning studies in the original article. These chemicals are shown to cause irreversible harm at rates of 1 p.p.m. – that is equal to one cupful of Roundup shared between three backyard swimming pools – each pool being 10 metres X 5 metres X 1.6 metres deep!
As to Roundup not being toxic to fish, a search of Wikipedia reveals that “The European Union (EU) classifies Roundup as R51/53 Toxic to aquatic organisms, may cause long-term adverse effects in the aquatic environment.” Council needs to publish the source of their “not toxic to fish” statement.
Also interesting to note that Monsanto’s UK website says that “Roundup Biactive never needs additional wetters, even at low rates of use . .” Why are unqualified people tinkering with dosages of chemicals to produce a spray outside the manufacturers recommendations?
July 3rd, 2012 at 8:46 pm
Here’s and solution to weeds. Set up a fermentation project at the tip to make crude alcohol, convert this into vinegar, concentrate it and spray THAT on the weeds. Concentrated acetic acid will kill any plant including Cape Weed in a few days. Then we can sell excess production of the acid.
July 6th, 2012 at 1:03 am
I cannot believe the absolute stupidity of using Roundup in drains that flow into waterways. Roundup messes with endocrine systems and has been associated with falling sperm counts in humans and distortions to biological reproduction lower down the food chain. I endorse Richard’s and Phillip’s remarks above. In addition to using concentrated vinegar, boiling water is also very effective. Some councils here and overseas have used quad bikes with Steamer attachments. This method controls weeds for almost exactly the same period as Roundup.