Day 11 – So Unbelievably Misleading, It Makes Me Dizzy!

There is a lovely small town in rural North Carolina in which everyone is welcoming and family is of utmost importance. The town’s history is rich in farming and it is not uncommon for homes to have large open land surrounding them. Pesticides are widely used, so trust in the manufacturers and EPA is high. RoundUp is commonly applied in landscaping to tame the notorious weeds of the deep South.

In this small town, I lost both my mother-in-law and father-in-law two years ago, at far too young of an age. My nonsmoking mother-in-law died from lung cancer. My father-in-law suffered a horrific, slow neurological death that Duke Hospital neurologists attributed to pesticide exposure. There are many stories of cancer in this town. Rampant cancer that people attribute to “bad luck” or “bad genes.” This same story is retold in not just this town, but in many towns that believe that RoundUp is safe enough to drink.