Roundup, a common herbicide, was sprayed this week along roads running next to the Pepacton Reservoir, which supplies much of New York City's vast supply of unfiltered drinking water.
Our columnist Ellen Verni sent us a photo of a notice posted on Reservoir Road in Middletown alerting residents of the spraying. The sign, she writes in an email, was posted right next to a patch of berries.
Verni reports that the spraying is new -- she writes that until recently, these same stretches of land were mowed.
Roundup has been the top-selling herbicide in the country for decades, partly because it is "broad spectrum" -- it kills most plants it is applied to. But there is scientific evidence that counters manufacturer Monsanto's claims that Roundup is harmless to humans and the environment. (For example, two recent studies from Chemical Research in Toxicology: a 2008 study on Roundup's effects on human umbilical, embryonic, and placental cells, and a 2010 study that found Roundup exposure caused deformities in frog and chicken embryos [link will download a PDF].)
Monsanto got into trouble in New York state in 1996 for advertising safety claims for the pesticide, including a claim that the pesticide didn't leach through soil after being applied to plants. This June, an environmental group called Earth Open Source published a report linking Roundup to birth defects and alleging that regulators have willfully ignored studies showing this:
Scientific research published in 2010 showed that Roundup and the chemical on which it is based, glyphosate, cause birth defects in frog and chicken embryos at dilutions much lower than those used in agricultural and garden spraying ... Industry (including Monsanto) has known since the 1980s that glyphosate causes malformations in experimental animals at high doses[.]
This week's edition of the Catskill Mountain News ran a story on the spraying of Roundup around the reservoir. The New York Department of Environmental Protection gave the newspaper a statement about its rationale for allowing Roundup use near the Pepacton:
"The DEP follows federal and state requirements and regulations for the use of Roundup, which indicate that if it is properly used by a trained and competent applicator within the NYC Watershed System, then the likelihood of Roundup entering local water systems via streams or indirect application is near zero," said DEP Spokeswoman Mercedes Padilla.
The paper also reported that the federal EPA was conducting a new study on the toxicity of glyphosate, which began in 2009 and has not yet been completed.
