“They cause cancer whether you choose to think so or not.”
Yup. They don’t cause cancer whether you choose to think they do. No need to link any sorces because the state of the real scientific art is such that the link has not been established.
Go back to your garden. It certainly has been established. Even if you think it hasn’t been, why do you NEED to take chances?
Feel free to come here and hand dig every single root clump of this invasive vine for the next four or five years to save the native plants that it is killing and displacing. I’m not using herbicide near any food stuffs, nor am I using it to have a “fancy” garden or a “perfect” lawn.
We don’t use lawn fertilizers or any of that stuff, and never have. I use compost and some organic fertilizers on specific beds and plants only.
I came to the conclusion that this noxious weed–introduced by some unknown idiot–is causing more environmental damage than a modest amount of Round-up applied carefully to its leaves, not sprayed out of great hoses soaking the earth as in the pictures on the Rodale website. (Which BTW would not allow me to read its articles.)
I don’t know whether you can buy it in your state without an applicator’s license, but Dow makes two herbicides called Grayzone and Remedy that work great – they will even kill kudzu if used together. I’ve mixed the two together and put in a gallon sprayer and they will kill anything. I’ve had a jug of each that was left over from a big kudzu killing project some years ago and they are still working just fine. These herbicides kill broadleafs only, and will absolutely kill a tree, so be careful (however, sometimes I want to kill saplings). I sprayed some on some Virginia Creeper a few weeks ago and the whole vine was dead a few days later.
I keep a box of doctor’s surgical gloves at the house that I use all the time to keep my hands from getting dirty, and especially for when doing tasks like this. You definitely want to wear gloves when working with any herbicide, pesticide, or other chemical.
When mixing chemicals, squirt in a half-teaspoon per gallon of water of dish soap. This acts as a surfactant and is cheaper than what the farm supply house sells.