Most of the articles published by No More Glyphosate NZ focus on scientific studies, regulatory decisions and independent laboratory testing.
But behind every research paper and every policy debate are real people.
From time to time, people contact us wanting to share their own experiences and explain why this issue has become so important to them personally. These stories cannot tell us what caused an illness, nor are they presented as scientific proof. They are simply the lived experiences of ordinary New Zealanders who have been left asking difficult questions.
The following story has been shared with permission.
He Trusted It Was Safe
My husband was a typical Kiwi farm boy, growing up seeing paddocks being sprayed. As an adult living in the suburbs, he regularly sprayed our section. Well, why wouldn’t he? The weedkiller (RoundUp) was very effective and he believed the manufacturer’s assurances that it was safe. So, he sprayed our section whenever weeds appeared.
My Concerns
I expressed my concerns to my husband about just how “safe” the weedkiller might not be when it was so effective at killing weeds. I raised those concerns again when all 12 of my rose bushes died, and again after I experienced yet another miscarriage. In total, I had five miscarriages.
Each time, my husband insisted he believed the manufacturer’s assurances that RoundUp was completely safe. Looking back now, I think part of him simply didn’t want to believe otherwise. If RoundUp wasn’t safe, then he would have had to find another way to manage the weeds. It was convenient, it worked, and he trusted that the people selling it knew what they were talking about.
The Diagnosis
My husband was usually a fit, healthy person. As a teenager he had played First XV rugby for his high school, and even at just over 60 he was still going for an hour-long mountain bike ride every weekend.
Then he started having trouble speaking because the muscles in his throat were becoming weak. Later, he couldn’t walk properly because the muscles in his legs were also weakening. After a series of tests, the specialist diagnosed Motor Neurone Disease (MND), a terminal illness with an average life expectancy of just over two years from diagnosis. There is no cure, and there are no treatments that significantly alter its course.
Like many families facing a diagnosis like this, we started reading everything we could find.
There is still no single known cause of MND. We came across information about a number of possible risk factors, including pesticide exposure, as well as reports describing disease clusters in some occupations and sporting groups. Whether any of that applied to my husband, we will never know, but it certainly gave us a lot to think about.
The explanation that made the most sense to me compared MND to a game of Jenga. The wooden blocks are your body. Some people have incredibly strong towers that can withstand all sorts of knocks, while others may have underlying vulnerabilities where it only takes one or two additional factors for everything to collapse. I don’t know whether that’s the right explanation, but it helped me understand why people exposed to similar things can have very different outcomes.
His Final Apology
After my husband was told that he had MND, his first word to me was, “Sorry.”
He had come to believe that years of spraying RoundUp around our home may have contributed to his illness. Whether he was right or wrong is something we’ll probably never know, but it was a belief that stayed with him for the rest of his life.
Just over two years later, he was gone, leaving me to raise our children on my own.
Why I Never Went to ACC
People have asked me why I never made an ACC claim.
The simple answer is that I didn’t see the point. My previous experience had been that ACC wanted a particular event, on a particular day, with one clearly identifiable cause. I didn’t have that, so it felt like a pointless use of what little energy I had left.
How do you put a date on years of environmental exposure? How do you prove something when there is no single event to point to? At the time, I decided my energy was better spent looking after my family than fighting a battle I didn’t believe I could win.
Why We Are Sharing This Story
Stories like this are deeply personal. They don’t prove that a particular chemical caused a particular illness, and they are not intended to replace scientific research.
What they do remind us is that behind every discussion about glyphosate, regulation and public health are real people and real families. When someone develops a devastating illness with no clear explanation, it is entirely understandable that they begin searching for answers and asking whether anything in their environment may have played a role.
Those questions deserve careful scientific investigation, transparent regulation and an open willingness to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
That is why No More Glyphosate NZ continues to advocate for independent research, greater transparency and a regulatory system that gives New Zealanders confidence that legitimate questions are being properly examined.
Editor’s Note: The above article shares one New Zealand family’s personal experience after a Motor Neurone Disease diagnosis. It is published with permission and reflects the author’s own observations, beliefs and questions. It is not presented as evidence that glyphosate caused Motor Neurone Disease, nor does it establish a causal relationship between glyphosate exposure and any particular illness.
If you would like to share your own experience relating to glyphosate exposure, we’d be happy to hear from you. While personal stories cannot establish cause and effect, they can help illustrate the real-world questions that many New Zealand families continue to ask.
Image Source & Attribution
We’re grateful to the talented photographers and designers whose work enhances our content. The feature image on this page is by PhanuwatNandee.
