In this time of COVID-19 our City of Encinitas City parks are more important than ever, providing a critically-needed respite for residents. More than ever, parks and public lands need to be free from synthetic herbicides.

We are asking our city leaders to make our health and our children their priority over weed control. It should be a basic human right for our children to be protected from harmful pesticides where they play. 

Did you know that Encinitas City maintained property is frequently sprayed with carcinogenic and endocrine disrupting pesticides? Glyphosate (active ingredient in Roundup) and 2,4-D (active ingredient in Speedzone and Agent Orange). 

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a division of the World Health Organization (WHO), declared that glyphosate, may cause cancer in humans and recently upheld this evaluation in January of 2018. Despite this warning, the City of Encinitas continues to spray glyphosate and other toxic pesticides and herbicides mostly for cosmetic landscaping purposes, i.e., to kill weeds and control pests.

Not only does the World Health Organization's cancer agency state glyphosate is "possibly carcinogenic to humans.” Last April a public health agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), released the long-awaited Draft Toxicological Profile for Glyphosate. And, it supports and strengthens the 2015 cancer assessment of another health agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

"We’ve been studying the impact of toxins on children for the past 30 years and reached the inescapable conclusion: little things matter. We’ve discovered that extremely low levels of toxins can impact brain development. The American Academy of Pediatrics states that there is “no safe level of pesticide exposure for children.” - Non Toxic Neighborhood's advisor Dr. Bruce Lanphear

Thankfully today there are cost effective and proven solutions!

Harvard University successfully switched to an organic management in 2009. Today over 50 cities across the U.S. including Irvine, California have placed organically driven policies or bans in place to protect their residents and their cities from these harmful pesticides. 

Since 2016 the City of Irvine has successfully, and organically, maintained all pest pressure from weeds to rodents, on more than 570 acres of community and neighborhood parks, athletic fields; over 6,000 acres of open space, over 800 acres of public right-of-way, including street medians and parkways; 70,000 trees; and nearly 1.5 million square feet of facilities. The City of Irvine has demonstrated that you can have beautiful parks, athletic fields, and open space, that meet community expectations, without the use of harmful pesticides. and we would like to see Encinitas join in this critical and responsible endeavor.

PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION to demonstrate to our representatives in Encinitas that you want them to stop "allowing" and using harmful pesticides in our parks, and switch to an organically driven landscaping policy. 

For more information, please visit our partners websites:

www.nontoxicneighborhoods.org/non-toxic-encinitas

www.nontoxicneighborhoods.org 

Watch this video, Little Things Matter, to learn how toxins damage the developing brain.

Non Toxic Neighborhood's Advisors:

Bruce Blumberg, Professor of Developmental and Cell Biology in UCI’s School of Biological Sciences and Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Biomedical Engineering.

“The major challenge with showing that a chemical causes cancer in humans [as opposed to animals] is that the cancer typically develops many years after exposure.” Bruce Blumberg

Bruce Lanphear, MD, MPH, Epidemiologist, Professor Simon Fraser University Director of Children’s Health and Environmental

"Toxins can have a life-long impact on children. We’ve also discovered that even extremely low levels of toxins can impact brain development. By allowing children to be exposed to toxins or chemicals of unknown toxicity, we are unwittingly using our children in a massive experiment." Bruce Lanphear

Philip J. Landrigan, MD, MSc, FAAP, Dean for Global Health. Professor of Preventive Medicine and Pediatrics
Arnhold Institute for Global Health Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

“Pregnant women, infants and young children are especially vulnerable to toxic chemicals in their environments. Even extremely low-dose exposures during these vulnerable periods in early life can result in lasting damage. This is why it is so important to protect the most sensitive among us. By protecting them, we preserve the health of all.” Philip J. Landrigan, MD, MSc, FAAP

Dean Baker, MD, MPH Director, Center for Occupational and Environmental Health Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics, and Epidemiology University of California, Irvine

Zach Bush MD, triple board certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism, and Hospice and Palliative Care

Thank you! Bruce, Jenn, Phil, Dean, Stephanie, Kim, Lauren, Seamus, Zach, Andrea, Bjorn, Jessie, Leia, David and the rest of us!