Viewpoint: Use of pesticides at Hellgate High unsafe for students

Laura Reintjes

I always thought schools are safe places for students. However Hellgate, where I attend high school, uses pesticides that are illegal to even label as safe.

A records request found them to be using pesticides 7,000 times more toxic than DDT. They use multiple pesticides that cause cancer. They use a pesticide with one of the highest rates of secondary poisoning to mammals and birds, and that same pesticides accidentally poisons over 10,000 people in the US annually with the majority being children.

Every single Hellgate student and staff member is three times more likely to develop Parkinson’s than people with no connection to the high school because of the pesticides they use. My school can’t be called safe when it is contaminated with poisons.

The above-mentioned effects are when the pesticides are used correctly. This isn’t the case at Hellgate. My P.E. class went to have class in a field managed by MCPS. It was being treated with a pesticide known to cause cancer. The applicator informed the teacher that it was safe and said they could play on the herbicide-wet grass as he continued applying the pesticide.

MCPS guidelines mandate that the application should have been signed. It was not. They say there should have been a staff member making sure we didn’t  play on the grass. There was not. MCPS fails to even follow their own stated practices and use poisons that endanger the health of the environment and their staff and students.