I am sorry to hear that Dewayne Johnson, a groundskeeper contracted terminal cancer from Monsanto’s weedkiller, Roundup. It contains a dangerous herbicide, glyphosate, which Johnson proved caused his cancer. Monsanto hid the dangers of this herbicide for years putting profit over consumer health and welfare. And the health of their pets.
This article is about cats. And cats like to lie on the ground around the house or home where Roundup is likely to have been used. The moral is don’t use Roundup as a weedkiller if you have a cat or dog.
In fact you can widen that statement to all herbicides because unless you are sure the chemicals are safe assume that they are not. Herbicides other than glyphosate are also dangerous especially to cats who lie on the ground a lot and lick off chemicals on their sides and bellies.
Roundup is a straight weedkiller while Roundup For Lawns contains chemicals which kill weeds on lawns but do not attack the grass. The herbicides are selective in their action. Is Roundup For Lawns safer for cats than Roundup? It probably is slightly but the lawn treatment product contains four different herbicides: MCPA, quinclorac, dicamba and sulfentrazone. The last four are toxic to varying degrees to people and therefore cats. Dicamba is said to be more toxic than glyphosate. MPCA has a warning of DANGER on the label as it can cause liver damage and reversible anemia and eye irritation.
Why do we use these products at all around the home? There are up 150 million cats (domestic and feral estimated) in the US. They are walking on lawns and driveways all the time. They are snoozing on patios treated with herbicides. What’s happening?
Dewayne Johnson was awarded $289 million in compensation. It is one of those classic movie litigation stories. But of course he’d give it all away to have his health back. Big companies like Monsanto are often inherently unethical putting profit before all else.
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Herbicides are toxic to plants and used to destroy unwanted vegetation but they are also toxic to many living organisms of many species.
