Activists Say Dow Weedkiller Is Harmful

(ENS)-A new e-mail campaign is demanding that Dow AgroSciences take Confront and other persistent, clopyralid-containing herbicides off the market until their safety to backyard and centralized composting processes can be shown.

The web-based campaign has been launched by the Athens, GA-based GrassRoots Recycling Network (GRRN) at www.grrn.org. “Confront is totally contradictory to all of our goals for recycling, resource conservation and sustainability,” said GRRN president Anne Morse. “Dow must follow the Precautionary Principle and withdraw Confront immediately until it can be proven safe for organics recycling [and] Dow must take financial responsibility for damage caused by its products,” she said, adding that losses in Washington State due to contaminated compost are significant.

A class of persistent herbicide products in turf and agricultural applications, of which clopyralid is a member, has been detected in finished compost in Washington state, Pennsylvania and New Zealand, says the trade journal BioCycle. The magazine said, “Sensitive plants like tomatoes, beans and sunflower grown in compost containing clopyralid can be deformed and damaged. Even compost containing manure from animals that have eaten hay treated with picloram, a Dow chemical in the same class, has been damaged by minute quantities of the herbicide.”