Dangerous pesticides being used in UK schools

Totally agree with the above comments, this is such a nonsensical waste of presumably public money resulting solely to create PR for two quango/ngo's who desperately need to highlight anything they can to justify their existence. The aim I guess is to get the Daily Mail interested resulting in a panic that eventually causes government to rethink and impose a system in a short space of time which may actually have more harmful consequences than present. It insinuates that the school authorities and contractors are failing to adequately safeguard, without any referral to systems in place or evidence of actual incidences.

There are real risks in the playground which have not been highlighted - namely contaminated soils. As more and more schools adopt the idea of growing on their grounds without any real discussion as to the right proceedure of ensuring soils are adequately tested to do this. This is not hype but maybe because the solution is via practitioners and not via a PR led campaign resulting in yet more middle management jobs for the boys it will never be an issue.

Replies

Pip Howard January 15, 2010 at 8:39pm

Totally agree with the above comments, this is such a nonsensical waste of presumably public money resulting solely to create PR for two quango/ngo's who desperately need to highlight anything they can to justify their existence. The aim I guess is to get the Daily Mail interested resulting in a panic that eventually causes government to rethink and impose a system in a short space of time which may actually have more harmful consequences than present. It insinuates that the school authorities and contractors are failing to adequately safeguard, without any referral to systems in place or evidence of actual incidences.

There are real risks in the playground which have not been highlighted - namely contaminated soils. As more and more schools adopt the idea of growing on their grounds without any real discussion as to the right proceedure of ensuring soils are adequately tested to do this. This is not hype but maybe because the solution is via practitioners and not via a PR led campaign resulting in yet more middle management jobs for the boys it will never be an issue.
Geoff Norfolk January 15, 2010 at 9:55pm

Any literature under "Ecologist" has got to be biased........ mind you, we're probably biased the other way!!
Looking at the data that was used for glyphosate, they only appeared to reach their conclusion using data from 7 people, 3 exposed and 4 controls, so don't really think it can be taken very seriously....... as Paul says....... "a load of crap"!