Glyphosate Injury by Arkansas Rice
Planning your garden for the spring? Planning to use herbicides to kill weeds in your garden? If you are considering any chemical for your garden, think twice about it and think hard about the safety. If you think that any ”Pesticide is safe” that is sold in the stores, think again. More and more evidence seems to say that this is a myth. See here.
Weed by dan mogford
They newest scientific evidence coming out is that one of the most extensively used herbicides in the history of agriculture, glyphosate, is dangerous. This “systemic herbicide can have extensive unintended effects on nutruient efficiency and disease severity, thereby threatening its agricultural sustainability.” See here.
Denmark banned its use in 2003 because it contaminated the drinking water. The EU has been discussing the ban of its use as have areas of Canada and other countries.
You may ask, Why is TheGardenLady talking about glyphosate?, a substance which you never heard about. That is because glyphosate is the chemical name. The herbicides that have it as an ingredient have it listed on the side of the bag in smallish letters. We know of the herbicide that contains glyphosate by its trade name not its chemical name. But if you read the chemicals listed on the container of the herbicide, you will see the word glyphosate listed as a main chemical in one of the most commonly used herbicides. There are different products with glyphosate in them. See here.
Round-up is one of the biggest sellers.
It is sad to learn of these side effects because there are fewer and fewer products that are capable of removing some of the toughest weeds. Farmers have depended on this herbicide to remove some terribly invasive weeds and it has been sold to home gardeners. But the health of our environment is extremely important to protect. See here.
I knew that it was just a matter of time before glyphosate was determined to be dangerous. Has there ever been a chemical like this that hasn’t eventually been banned from the market, DDT being the most publicized? There are just no easy answers ever. You need to get out the shovel and dig out the weeds. If I can run my nursery organically, home gardeners can certainly do the same in their gardens.
Hi!
Recently I´ve read on the internet a lot about the dangers of Glyphosate. We are just a little family living in the countryside of Finland, yet we believe that the use of the weedkiller containing Glyphosate has caused a lot of problems to us. Please bear with me as I´ll try to explain what´s happened. We moved here in 2002 and so far everything was so clean, calm and peaceful, but four weeks ago our cats died. One we found in the garden already dead and stiff and four days later the second cat was seriously ill. So serious, that we took him to a vet. My husband suspected poisoning, as there were no outer symptoms of a struggle or anything on the first cat, but he seemed to have a swollen mouth (inside). So, suspecting that the second cat also had poisoning, as he was “crying” in pain and drooling, my husband rushed him to the local vet. The vet being a foreigner meant that that they didn´t understand each other fully, but according to my husbands explanation, she understood that he suspected poisoning and wrote it down on the sheet of paper. She then gave some “carbon” powder and said that he was to give it to the cat every two hours. So, my husband and the cat returned home. Sometimes the cat seemed better, then suddenly he got worse, at least at first. During the night I got upto check and see the cat every two hours, as I could hear he had difficulties breathing, he had slight fits, his eyes went a little strange looking, like black holes and I could see his heart beating very fast and he was drooling. By the time morning came, he had how many slight fits and convulsions and the same symptoms. When morning arrived he seemed suddenly better and went to eat, but it looks as though this was a bad thing, as after he ate, he rapidly got worse and worse, he seemed to imagine that “something” was following him and that he was in great danger, as he kept looking around, hissing and trying to run away, he was drooling more and more and having one fit after another until he went into one grand mal fit which after it was over he went into a state of shock. Meanwhile my husband was drastically trying to phone a vet, that would not be busy. Those he rang, had no time! He wanted to know what we could do and where we could bring the cat too. Finally after the cat had been in the last grand mal fit for already half an hour, we reached a vet that told us to bring him in immediately. We had to drive at least 20 min. to reach them. By this time, we believed already that there wasn´t really anything they could do. The vet took his temperature and it was high! She gave him some intravenous fluids to prevent dehydration. Then the vet said that they would do their best and that it would be better that we return home and that they would ring when they knew more. We returned home and shortly after they rang us to tell the sad news that he died. His heart gave in and stopped! We drove back again to the vets and asked more. The vet said that he died of poisoning. We asked, what kind and where should we look? The vet replied that it´s the kind that farmers use for weed killing! We returned home and continued the discussion in the car. We agreed that these cats always stayed nearby, they´re only a year old and always came when we called them, so to our view, the nearest farmer, was too far away for them to get poisoned by his substances, thus we had to think of somewhere nearer. We thought that, as the house we live in is so old, that perhaps there is something somewhere we haven´t noticed. Even though, to our view, we´ve already been through every little corner and seen everything, we went again through the house and outer buildings, like the barn and checked in case we´ve missed something. We didn´t find anything. We keep our paints, paint thinners etc. under lock and key in our garage. We don´t use any weed killers on our vegetable patch, rather we pull each weed up by hand! My husband rode his bike to meet our youngest son from school and on the way he remembered that the many who hires the forest behind and next to our home used weed killer in the summer 2009 and again in the summer 2010! So here´s a quick history of what we´ve noticed – Summer 2009 they sprayed the forest with weed killer. Autumn our very first cat we´ve ever owned disappeared without trace (only about one year old). No-one seems to have seen him, even though we left little notes along with a photo in our local shop and on the pages of the internet for “Lost pets”. November 2009 our male goat had similar symptoms. Our other goats had a strange skin and fur problem. The vet didn´t know what was wrong with the goats! He had never seen this kind of problem before. Anyway, we were thinking should we have the male goat put down, as he had eaten too little, his stomach was getting bloated and he was weak. Finally we decided it´d be better to put him out of pain and that was the right decision, as when we awoke one morning, we could hear his cries of agony all the way to our front door! I rang a local hunter and he came about 10 min. later and put our poor “Voitto” (2½ yrs old) to sleep. Evira (an authority in Finland who deals with e.g. safety of food etc) picked up the carcass and took it somewhere where they get rid of all dead cows, sheep and goats etc. as the law is we can´t bury him in our own garden. The goats were most likely contaminated by eating the fir tree branches we got from that forest! Summer 2010 came and the man hiring the forest used more weed killer. Autumn came and our second cat we´ve ever owned also mysteriousl disappeared without trace and no-one seems so have seen her (she too was only about one year old)! Now we arrive to spring 2011 and our two other young cats have died as explained above. More noticable things that have happened since the first spraying are that we used to have lots and lots of little frogs jumping in and through our garden, a certain time of the year, and every year, but since, they´ve got less and less, as of today, we´ve checked the deep ditches which are like a labyrinth in the forest, going criss cross, and we haven´t seen even one frog or any frog spawn. We´ve had three birds that have died without any signs of what caused their deaths! We used to get lots and lots of different kinds of butterflies, but these too are less and less different kinds. We used to have swallows nesting in our barn every year, except these past two years! To our view this is like a puzzle somehow forming, as we noticed the likely cause. So my husband and two sons went into the forest and searched the rubbish that´s been left. In one of the sacks there was at least six empty bottles along with labels of e.g.Roundup etc.along with empty food containers and empty drink containers. We believe that a mouse has perhaps eaten there and the cats ate the mouse as my sons had seen that the cats had shared and eaten a mouse before they died. My husband took a couple of loose labels with him and we took these to the local environment authorities and they also contacted the nearest health protection dept in a nearby town. These authorities took photos of the rubbish and water samples, one from the ditch and one from our well, as they were spraying too near our well. We also live on the boarder of the local ground water area! Our vegetable patch is right next to the area they were spraying! the rubbish is still to this day sitting in the same place. We can see it from our garden! Some of the empty plastic bags are being thrown about with the wind! …..Yesterday the health safety dept. rang and said that the water results were clear. He doubts that the cats or goat died of this glyphosate, but we believe otherwise. To our view too many coincidences you see! He agreed that the frog population would suffer but nothing else. To his view, the goat and cats would need a large amount to die from glyphosate poisoning, whereas we disagree. I´ve read a lot about this substance and believe it is NOT as safe as they advertise it to be, therefore I and my husband are extremely concerned about the liberal use of this substance, which is why I write this message.
Please, is there anything you can do about this, or do you know of any other company/group that we could contact about this, as we believe the authorities are just brushing this problem “under the carpet” as it were, which means, these animals that died with great agony and pain have died in vain? We sincerely hope that this substance – Glyphosate/Glysophate will be banned or the very least have much stricter rules for use!
Debbie,
Finland
I thought roundup was harmless too. I live in Phoenix, AZ and sprayed the few weeds in my desert landscaping, thinking it was ok. Tonight, my male cat exhibited milder but similar symptoms,to the ones you described. I Google the symptoms and found that poisoning causes cats to drool. Since the only different chemical he could have been Round up, I suspect thus is what happened. He seems ok for right now, maybe he didn’t eat too much of the treated weed, but I will keep an eye on him and fund another way to control the weeds!
😢 Hope your cat survived and is well.