RoundUp is dangerous

We've been cleaning up our back shed over the last couple of weeks. Yep, it's a lo-o-ng process!

Today I was moving stuff around and noticed a container of RoundUp, and said to myself, in an organic garden there is no room for such a poison. But then I thought, what if a really, really hard-to-get-rid-of weed needs just a teensy touch of poison, applied carefully with a small paintbrush? And so I put the container back on the shelf.

What was I thinking of? It's a poison!

And, in a satisfyingly timely happening, Grace Elliot, a veterinarian, sent in a comment today responding to my post about the dangers of glyphosate (RoundUp). She mentioned the abstract of an article in the Journal of the British Veterinary Association. So I checked up the reference, and this is part of it:

According to the Centre National d’Informations Toxicologiques Vétérinaires (CNITV) (Burgat and others 1998, Berny and others 2010), the Italian Veterinary Toxicologic Assistance Service (SATV) (Giuliano Albo and Nebbia 2004) and the human Poison Control Centre of Milan (Centro Antiveleni di Milano, CAV) (Caloni and others 2012), glyphosate is the herbicide most commonly involved in animal poisonings. Since its launch, the Veterinary Poisons Information Service (VPIS) in London has received 1323 enquiries about dogs (n=992) and cats (n=331) exposed to glyphosate-based products (Bates and Edwards 2013).

Glyphosate is the herbicide most commonly involved in animal poisonings.

I remember my brother telling me about the time his neighbour sprayed the lawn with RoundUp and found dead rabbits lying there the following day.