Featured experts Stephen Frantz, PhD, and Poison Free Malibu Founders Kian and Joel Schulman spoke about weed- and rodent-killing chemicals at the Malibu Democratic Club’s “Poisoning Paradise” presentation on Saturday morning. The event, which was free and open to the public, was part of the club’s Second Saturday Series.
Roundup
Frantz, who has a doctorate in pathobiology from Johns Hopkins University, and spent years working for the Centers for Disease Control and the New York Department of Health, is trying to stop the use of glyphosate — the primary ingredient in weed killer Roundup. He has been invited by Rep. Ted Lieu to present the latest science on glyphosate to the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as senatorial and congressional staff in Washington, D.C., on June 14.
“We call it ‘Silent Springs Reboot,’” he said with a laugh, referring to a book from the 1960s by Rachel Carson that documented the effects of pesticides on the environment.
“Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world and one of the most toxic substances ever created. For over 40 years, this poison has been sprayed on our food crops, homes, schools, playgrounds, parks, roadsides, hiking trails and forests,” he said.
The City of Malibu uses glyphosate in public parks, and it is also sprayed in and around Malibu by the California Department of Transportation and the National Park Service.
“On occasion, Roundup may be used to control weeds for worker safety and community convenience,” Parks and Recreation Director Bob Stallings told The Malibu Times in April 2016. He emphasized that “the product is not applied if there’s a chance of rain or high winds, in order to prevent the product from carrying outside the targeted area.”
“Know anyone with gut problems?” Frantz asked. “This herbicide contaminates our bodies, mother’s breast milk, most of our food, drinking water, wine, beer, cotton, tampons, and pet and livestock feed. It has been linked to many disorders … The World Health Organization has deemed glyphosate a potential human carcinogen.”
Poison Free Malibu
Kian Schulman, co-founder of nonprofit Poison Free Malibu, voiced her frustration about trying to get the City of Malibu to stop using herbicides and pesticides in public parks.
“Our park supervisor’s last job was in pest control,” Kian said, “and they’re still determined to use these poisons, no matter how much we try to educate them … I’ve heard nothing but rhetoric from Bob [Stallings] and Drew [Belter, Parks and Recreation supervisor] for years.”
Poison Free Malibu brought in an expert in natural turf management a couple of years ago at its own expense: Charles “Chip” Osborne, Jr., founder and president of Osborne Organics. He provided the city with an 80-page report on how to maintain turf without the use of chemicals, but the report “was ignored” by the city, Kian claimed.
Rodenticides
Poison Free Malibu Co-founder Joel Schulman showed statistics that thousands of children and pets in the U.S. either die or become gravely ill after eating rat poison. He said part of the problem is that the manufacturers put flavorings like peanut butter into the poison to attract rodents to the bait, but it also tastes good to family pets and children who eat it.
He said the safest way to deter rodents is to keep lids to garbage cans and trash dumpsters closed and latched in order to take away rodents’ food source, and to use screening or hardware cloth to close up any holes around the house where rodents could be getting in, like around TV cables, pipes or dryer vents.
The widespread use of rodenticides, usually placed in green plastic bait boxes by commercial pest management companies, has resulted in the poisons spreading up the food chain and killing local mountain lions, bobcats and coyotes. The poison does not kill the rodent for several days; it just slows them down, making an easy meal for predators like owls. Then the predator ingests the poison and dies.
The Schulmans said they have found the poison bait boxes around many Malibu restaurants, shopping centers, schools and apartment complexes, often next to open trash dumpsters. They explained that it is against the law to not have lids on trash dumpsters in Malibu, but it is seldom enforced.
“Don’t believe a pest control company when they tell you ‘the poison we use is safe,’” Joel said. “There is no good poison.”
Poison Free Malibu is working to change Malibu’s LCP to ban harmful chemicals.
