Dear Jay Fisette and Arlington County Board,

We, the undersigned organizations, businesses, civic associations, farmers, and members of the medical community write to request support of local action to ban the spraying of glyphosate on public lands in Arlington County and the strict regulation of spraying on private property in the area.

In 2015, the Word Health Organization announced that glyphosate was a 'probably carcinogen' for humans. In fact, the test animals used in the original studies submitted to the EPA for glyphosate all developed tumors in multiple organs as a result of their participation. The EPA records were unsealed and made public in 2015. In fact, glyphosate is patented as an antibiotic and has been linked to other diseases as well as cancer such as Diabetes and Autism. The World Health Organization is one of the leading authorities on public health.

According to U. S. Geological Survey data, nearly 280 million pounds of glyphosate was sprayed in America in 2012 on crops. To put this in perspective, there are 318.9 million people in the United States as of 2014. So, there were almost as many pounds of glyphosate sprayed as people in the country in recent years. Glyphosate was introduced in the early 1970's. Since that time, . A 2004 study by Flowers showed that risks of all childhood cancers increased for pesticide applicators; children. In 2003, De Roos found that subjects who used five or more possibly carcinogenic pesticides were twice as likely to develop cancer than those who used none, but when glyphosate was not included, that trend was not evident.

Glyphosate is an active ingredient in many herbicides such as Roundup, Dicamba and 2, 4-D.; It is up to the Arlington County Board to protect its residents, especially small children, from exposure to this chemical. Other jurisdictions, including Montgomery County, Maryland and Irvine, CA have taken action to ban this chemical from public lands and to regulate the chemical on private property of residents

We are calling on the Arlington County Board to take definitive action to protect County residents. Our children are especially vulnerable to glyphosate and should not be exposed to the chemical at any level. It is the responsibility of the local government to protect its citizens. We, the undersigned, also hope that the County will draft a complaint to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and call on that institution to review the data on glyphosate and revoke the registration of glyphosate containing pesticides.

Sincerely,

Arlington County Residents