It is surprising that Base Gagetown still chooses to repeatedly burn on the Base training area, despite what is now know about combusted dioxins, while concurrently and additionally choosing to spray with both ground and aerial applications of the glyphosate herbicide.
Glyphosate was recently labelled a probable carcinogen by the cancer research body of the World Health Organization. The Base’s own stated efforts to “review and implement alternative methods,” presumably, but to no avail, acknowledges the well documented dangers.
In an effort to effect its stated desired “golf course appearance” for the ongoing live-fire exercises on this heavily forested leased Crown land, situated awkwardly between two major cities and down the very spine of New Brunswick, such destruction perhaps helps contribute to our dubious distinction of being #1 in several leading cancers.
This is not surprising given the toxic chemical effluence emitted from combustion of accumulated burns year after year, coupled with the millions of liters of toxic spraying with deadly herbicides over massive acreage since the mid-1950s. All of this particulate matter migrates into the air, the land and, ultimately the Saint John River.
Unconscionable but somehow markedly comical to see it now labeled as a “Vegetation Management Program.”
Gloria Paul is concerned citizen of Hoyt, NB.