KINGSTON — The North Kitsap School District has been treating their campuses with RoundUp twice per year, but one local resident says twice a year is still too much.

Former teacher Marilyn Bode believes the North Kitsap School District should immediately discontinue its use of RoundUp because it contains glyphosate — a chemical that has spurred international debate. The district typically uses RoundUp twice per year, but Bode said it is potentially dangerous to humans and therefore should be avoided.

“If there’s any question at all,” she said, the district should halt its use of RoundUp. “Obviously there are huge questions … and when there isn’t any doubt in countries that have banned it, why do we insist on using it?”

Organizations around the world have found differentiating, and at times, controversial results from studies done on the Monsanto Corporation’s weedkiller.

For example, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is a part of the World Health Organization, found that the chemical is “probably carcinogenic,” based on limited evidence it causes cancer in humans and sufficient evidence it causes cancer in animals.

According to a Reuters article by Kate Kelland, though, “significant changes” were made between the draft of the IARC’s report on glyphosate and the published version where “non-carcinogenic findings” were edited out.

“One effect of the changes to the draft, reviewed by Reuters in a comparison with the published report, was the removal of multiple scientists’ conclusions that their studies had found no link between glyphosate and cancer in laboratory animals,” the article read.

Still, county and city council members have passed their own resolutions to do away with RoundUp. Although there have been varying study conclusions, Bode said just the possibility that glyphosate is harmful to humans should move the district to stop using it on its campuses.

Jennifer Markaryan, communications and community relations coordinator for the NKSD, said the district uses RoundUp at its schools and on its secondary schools’ ball fields. The weed-killing chemical is regulated by the Washington Department of Agriculture, she said, and there are no suitable replacements for it at this time.

“Our state licensed applicators follow the state application and posting guidelines as mandated,” she said. “We usually apply it two times per year, in the spring and in the fall, when buildings are not occupied.”

For the secondary schools’ ball fields, Markaryan said RoundUp is used twice per year where the grass and dirt meet (on the edge of the infields) and is not applied as a “blanket treatment.”

Bode said she believes both the districts that use RoundUp and the Washington Department of Agriculture should do more to find alternatives that aren’t in question while independent researchers and scientists continue examining glyphosate’s effects on humans.

“A lot of the studies that have been done are Monsanto studies that say [glyphosate] isn’t harmful,” she said. “This is probably one of the most powerful organizations in the world as far as our health goes. This huge corporation is making enormous profits by controlling our food, water and landscape.”

Three NK schools — Kingston Middle School, Kingston High School and Richard Gordon Elementary School — sit uphill from Appletree Cove and Bode is worried that glyphosate may end up in water.

Bode argued that even though RoundUp is cheap and easy to obtain, “it’s costly on us.”

—Jacob Moore is a reporter for Kitsap News Group. Contact him at Jmoore@soundpublishing.com.