IN REPLY to Liz Macdonald (Sign Spray Petition, Gazette, May 19) I will definitely not be signing a petition to stop the council using glyphosate.

This is a chemical widely used for a long time in agriculture and domestically under the trade name Roundup that the EU wants to ban because it might cause cancer.

This is despite the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) insisting glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer, and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifying the carcinogenicity potential of glyphosate as Category E: “evidence of non-carcinogenicity for humans”.

I would much prefer to pay the council to use weed killer to prevent the footpaths and drains becoming overgrown than pay much more for people to pick the weeds out by hand.

Glyphosate is set to become the latest in a long list of products the EU commission has banned with no proper justification, which then have to be replaced by something twice as expensive and half as effective – just one more reason we should have nothing more to do with them.

John Bennett

Bannetts Tree Crescent

Alveston