California Mom Successfully Gets Cancer-Causing Herbicide Eliminated from Community- You Can, Too!

California Mom Successfully Gets Cancer-Causing Herbicide Eliminated from Community- You Can, Too!
(Beyond Pesticides, May 1, 2015) A recent success in grassroots activism comes through Tracy Madlener, a mother of two, who got her neighborhood in Laguna Hills, California to eliminate the use of Roundup, a widely-used weedkiller. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an intergovernmental agency forming part of the World Health Organization (WHO)recently classified Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, as carcinogenic in people based on animal studies. The classification is technically “probably carcinogenic to humans (Group 2A),” sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity based on laboratory studies. Gravely concerned, Ms. Madlener began her mission to eliminate the use of toxic Roundup in her neighborhood, with some help from Beyond Pesticides, sharing her progress on a new Facebook page ‘How to Create a Toxic-Free Community’ along the way.

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Just five days in she posted a video blog about getting started: organizing, sending emails, making a to-do list, and making phone calls for research purposes. She also built up a network and informed others in the area, contacted other moms doing similar work to ban harmful chemicals in their areas for advice, spoke with landscapers to suggest healthier options, researched environmentally- and health-conscious alternatives to Roundup for local use, and made folders with information to hand out to her local Home Owners’ Association board members, meeting them and writing personal letters to help them understand her mission.

With summer just around the corner, grassroots activism is as important as ever in stemming the use of hazardous chemicals around the country. Beyond Pesticides has the tools necessary for activists like you to increase environmental awareness in your community through our Databases that Support Action. We promote getting active to safeguard your community and the surrounding environment from toxic insults: teach your neighbors how to maintain their land without toxic pesticides, protect honeybees from neonicotinoids insecticides, aquatic species from endocrine disrupting chemicals, and the streams, lakes, and rivers we all depend on from the widespread use of harmful synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.

Beyond Pesticides promotes these actions and many more through our Tools for Change page. This page is designed to help activists and other concerned citizens organize around a variety of pesticide issues on the local, state, and national level. Learn how to organize a campaign and talk to your neighbors about pesticides with our factsheets. With these efforts, your community can join those of: Boulder, Colorado, where the first “bee-safe” neighborhood was established;Portland, Oregon and others, where bee-killing neonicotinoids were banned; and Maryland’s Takoma Park, where all pesticides were outlawed from public and private use; as well as many more.

We hope you will use our resources, take action, and educate others on the ways toxic chemicals jeopardize the complex natural processes on which we rely. Through the promotion and adoption of alternative systems like organic, we can work with the Earth’s natural systems to produce a safer, healthier world for all living species.

To make your community sustainable and take it off the pesticide treadmill, join Beyond Pesticides’ community-based campaigns through our website, or contact us directly atinfo@beyondpesticides.org.

Source: AltHealthWorks