There’s nothing like a jury deciding a product contributed to a terminally-ill patient’s cancer to focus your mind, especially when you spent the better part of five years handling its active ingredient at least three times a week.
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I first came across Roundup when working at a Bendigo gardening company.
That was in the late 2000s, long before chemical giant Monsanto was ordered to pay $US289 million to California’s Dewayne Johnson.
Our utes carried plastic 20 litre Roundup drums. We used different brands of herbicide during my time at the company, but all had the same active ingredient, glyphosate.
I remember a house where a client expressly requested we not spray two empty veggie patches. The man wanted his children to learn where food came from and didn’t want to compromise the soil with what he called poison.
Our foreman was, of course, happy to oblige. The customer was always right. But afterwards, my foreman quietly told me that the guy had nothing to worry about. Glyphosate is only active for an hour, tops.
I knew that already, but I was not quite convinced. It was not that I had any reason to think glyphosate might cause cancer. It was just that when I thought about all those times since the 1970s countless farmers and gardeners had coated weeds in the world’s most widely used herbicide, I wondered if anyone could be certain there would never be any unexpected consequences.
Even then, I never worried when diluted glyphosate sloshed out the top of my spray backpack and in between my shoulder blades. Nor was I worried about my fingers and palms being covered in glyphosate.
It was not practical to wash my hands with soap or change clothing when visiting the many properties I worked each day. Plus, getting a bit of glyphosate on me was a reality of using the equipment. Dirt or glyphosate crystals would get stuck in the narrow nozzle at the end of my backpack’s wand. I had to unscrew it, with a burst of diluted chemical spurting out.
I am just glad that whenever I cleaned that nozzle I used a twig. I know of people who would simply put their lips over the end of the nozzle and blow.
Monsanto points to 800 scientific studies and reviews supporting its claim glyphosate does not cause cancer. I can only watch their appeal against last Friday’s court decision and hope that their science is right.
My future, and those of my former colleagues, might hang on it.
Tom O’Callaghan is a Bendigo Advertiser journalist.
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