Activist Rails Against Pesticides in the Park

Here’s an article that appeared today in a New York newspaper. Voices like this one are the kinds of things that spur public dialogue.

By ISABEL VINCENT, The New York Post

Central Park may be hazardous to your health.

So says a personal trainer and environmental activist who’s enlisting
some of his clients to pressure the Central Park Conservancy to stop
using pesticides.

“One of the most insidious things about pesticides is that they harm
DNA,” says Ray Salomone, who trains his clients — A-list celebrities,
a two-time Olympic athlete, a Broadway producer and some of the
country’s most powerful CEOs in the park four days a week.

Since he discovered last July that the park uses a powerful pesticide
to combat weeds, Salomone has asked his clients to withdraw their
donations to the conservancy, the nonprofit that manages the park.

Salomone is particularly upset about the park’s use of Roundup, an
herbicide with the active ingredient glyphosate, a chemical that can
cause kidney and reproductive damage from lifetime exposure at high
levels, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

“You’re being poisoned when you walk through the park,” said Salomone,
who was part of a nuclear, biological and chemical weapons unit when
he was in the Army in 1990.

A past study showed that park management used too many harmful
pesticides.

“An analysis . . . reveals a pattern of heavy use of pesticides in
public areas; many of the pesticides used in the park pose significant
health risks and are highly persistent,” said a study commissioned by
Environmental Advocates of New York. isabel.vincent@nypost.com