By Anna Lenzer

On Monday morning, a group plans to assemble in New York City’s Times Square to protest Monsanto, one of the largest suppliers of herbicides in the world. New York City might seem like an unlikely place to rail against a company that deals mostly with agriculture. But the protesters don’t have to look much farther than the surrounding streets and parks for their connection to the company.

According to the Department of Health’s report on city pesticide use in 2011, Roundup, the weed-killing key to Monsanto’s agribusiness empire, is the city’s most heavily used liquid herbicide. Roundup is Monsanto’s signature blend of glyphosate—a compound that works by disrupting an enzyme key to plant growth—and other ingredients to destroy weeds.

Monsanto’s Roundup brand alone was applied by the city nearly 500 times last year—about a dozen bathtubs’ worth in undiluted form, according to DOH’s annual pesticide figures—mostly via the Roundup Ultra formulation, a more concentrated version of the original. The Parks Department, responsible for most of the city’s Roundup use, declined to answer my request for a description of where it uses Roundup and how much, though did confirm its use in iconic locations like Central, Prospect, and Riverside parks. Roundup applications are done “at various locations throughout the city system under careful supervision and in very limited quantities,” was the extent of Parks’ disclosure on the subject.

arks also declined my request for a sample of the warning sign or safety protocols that it posts around areas where Roundup is sprayed, though signs from previous years noted that Roundup applications, at sites like Central Park’s Turtle Pond and Metropolitan Museum grounds, were done at 4 a.m. Parks didn’t answer my question about how long it warns passers-by away from sprayed areas.

Even the city’s Department of Environmental Protection uses and supervises the use of Roundup and other glyphosate products to treat areas within the city’s water supply lands. City reports note DEP’s use of Roundup around sites like the Pepacton Reservoir—more than 100 miles northwest of NYC in Delaware County, the largest capacity reservoir in the city’s drinking-water system, supplying more than 25 percent of its water intake—and along upstate railway rights-of-way like the MTA’s Beacon and Harlem lines.

Yet when I asked DEP for a complete list of sites where it uses Roundup and other glyphosate products, and how much it uses, agency spokeswoman Mercedes Padilla got back to me to insist that “DEP doesn’t use Roundup.” When I pointed out to her and other staff that the city’s own reports detailed DEP’s use of Roundup and other glyphosate products, they said they’d look into it. I have yet to hear back from anyone in that office.

According to the Department of Health’s yearly pesticide report, the city’s extensive use of Roundup is not a concern since “glyphosate poses little risk of acute poisonings or chronic health effects and has not been shown to be carcinogenic.” But the city’s own “Reducing Workplace Toxics” website lists glyphosate as a toxin to be avoided and recommends mechanical weed removal or the use of nontoxic alternatives like vinegar, alcohol, or boiling water. “[Glyphosates] are poisonous and can cause harm to humans as well,” the city page warns, adding that glyphosate can cause an array of symptoms from vomiting to low blood pressure to convulsions, “may damage liver and kidneys,” and that high-level exposure can cause irregular heartbeat and death.

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