Port Glasgow pet owners concerned about herbicides used by council

The local authority is now being called upon to stop using the concoction to treat areas of open public ground.

Yvette Craig - one of a number of dog owners to raise concerns - told how her seven-year-old sproodle Millie suddenly became unwell after a walk in Port Glasgow's Coronation Park.

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Yvette, who lives at Gourock Ropeworks in the town, told the Telegraph: “I was speaking to some of my neighbours and they were all telling me their dogs had been getting ill.

“Millie had diarrhoea and was being sick everywhere, it was sort of yellow bile at first, and then she wasn’t eating.

“There are only two dogs in my flats that haven’t been ill and they’re Pomeranians that don’t get out much."

Yvette has reached out on social media in attempt to find others affected and says she has heard back from more than a dozen local pet owners whose animals had fallen ill in April - when the park was sprayed by the council.

Another dog owner, Sammi-Jo Stott, whose five-month-old staffie Diablo fell ill after visiting Coronation Park around the same time, is also concerned about the use of herbicides by the local authority.

She said: “We go there walking there twice a day sometimes.

“Me, my mum and my dad were walking him and my mum said not to let him walk near the sculptures in the park because the council had obviously been spraying something.

“I told her they weren’t going to be spraying something that was harmful to pets.

“It was just after that Diablo got ill.

“That’s the only place I’d walked him and I don’t let him eat anything off the ground.

“We’ve not been back to Coronation Park since, if we go back at all it’ll be winter time.

“He’s like my child, it’s worrying when he gets ill, he’s only wee.

“The council haven’t let anybody know, I wouldn’t have noticed it if my mum hadn’t pointed it out.”

Millie's owner, Yvette, said: “Everyone that I’ve spoken to about their dogs getting ill has said it was from the last two weeks in April.

“You can see looking about the park that weeds are still everywhere, I don’t think it’s doing anything other than making animals sick.”

She has called on the council to cease using herbicides altogether and instead hire people to maintain the areas they oversee through manual means.

She is particularly concerned about the presence of glyphosate, a cancer-linked chemical which is contained in some of the herbicides the council uses.

The local authority previously confirmed to the Telegraph it had sprayed thousands of litres of weedkillers containing glyphosate over a five-year period.

Products with the substance have been shown to trigger a loss of biodiversity, and the chemical was classified as a probable cause of cancer by the World Health Organisation in 2015.

Yvette added: “If anything happened to Millie, I would kill myself because she’s my life.

“Other people are the same about their dogs, a lot of people aren’t going to come down and walk their dogs here if they know about this.

“The council should notify dog owners, down in England some councils actually notify area by area and say when spraying will be going on.

“I wasn’t aware of this [the spraying] before and nobody was.

“I can’t get far [from my house], if I can’t bring Millie here then that’s not fair to her, I can’t go walks for miles."

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An Inverclyde Council spokesperson said: “We carry out work every year to tackle weeds, overgrown vegetation and problem species, such as Japanese knotweed, to ensure public areas are accessible, welcoming for our residents and visitors, and prevent further spread, particularly of problem species.

“The products we use comply with all relevant guidelines, are licensed, and deemed safe to use by UK and European health and safety authorities.

“In fact, products are readily available to members of the public to purchase, and their contents are similar to those found in products that are available ‘off the shelf’ in shops and other outlets.

“Products we use have a long-lasting effect and have been chosen for that purpose in order to minimise costs to provide greater value for taxpayers’ money and also limit the frequency of spraying.

“Our staff are fully trained to use these products safely, wear personal protective equipment, and we have invested in equipment that allows us to target specific areas and reduce the amount of product being used.”